Therapy is good

Deirdre kicks my head back into shape. 

It was such a mistake cancelling my appointment with Deirdre my therapist last week. I might have avoided days of tears and grief. Perhaps not quite, as grief is something you have to go for, but there's healthy grief and unhealthy grief.

It had been feeling as though something had died. Really, it was that bad. Sitting in a flood of tears in her consulting room, I manage to get out: "It's like the whole time I was with Virgil I was clinging on to him as though he was a rock in a black, stormy sea. I hadn't been feeling right or good about myself and what I was doing with my life for years. I hoped he would be my saviour from myself, my darkness."

I think of an old painting I once saw of shipwrecked sinners saved by Jesus as they clung to the rocks.

Deirdre has a more tropical picture in her head but it's a good one. She says: "So, it's like you're a castaway on a tiny desert island. You've got just enough to stay alive although you're sick of having the shits from drinking coconut milk and only having fish to eat.

"You have to choose between staying on the island, where you're not happy, or striking out into the water. You don't know what will happen to you. Will you find land, or a ship, that takes you to another island, and then to the mainland and then to a city and an airport and finally a plane that will bring you home?"

Loving the analogy, I moan and laugh at the same time: "But the island looks so safe after I've left it. I miss it! And despite our differences Virgil and I had this really beautiful love..."

 Then Deirdre says: "Harlot, I hope you know I have nothing but respect for the love between you and Virgil, but I also know that since the first time you came to see me you were expressing severe dissatisfaction and resentment about your relationship. Neither of you can be right while you're in a boyfriend–girlfriend relationship with each other - it puts you both in a situation where to be true to yourselves you are not able to satisfy each other."

And she's right. She's so fucking right. Everyone, I mean everyone, needs a therapist like Deirdre.
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Back Again

This blog hasn't finished yet although I haven't been in the mood for writing for many months. Recently I've realised it is not good enough. My blog is not going to be a settler story, one of those journey journals which peter out just when things get interesting.

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Life soup

I can't work out why I don't want to write at the moment. Not long ago I could do little else. I think I was on some kind of trajectory and needed to describe it. At least I could describe it. Now I don't know what I'm doing and it's hard to write about. It's just messy. I'm living in a flat which has turned out to be the wrong flat and just sort of keeping my head above water somehow. Things I thought I didn't want a few months ago now feel like achievements to maintain. And I still don't know if I want them. At least I have something to be bothered about now which isn't totally about my relationship. And there's still that of course.

This evening Virgil is on a date with Sarah. Well, he's back now I think. He just sent me an email with flight options for our summer holiday. Possibly he wants me to know that he's back and thinking of me. Yesterday I texted him to say I didn't think I could see him last night as I was too upset at the thought of the seduction dinner I imagined he had planned for her. For several hours I stormed around thinking how I hoped Virgil would be impotent or prematurely ejaculate. I thought I would refuse to see him for several days as punishment. I thought I would refuse to ever sleep in the bed I used to share with him. I wanted to smash Sarah. I felt sick and tired of trying to do something that I find difficult and painful. I thought of breaking up with him.

'Yes, smash her! That slut!' roars Deirdre my therapist, laughing, when I tell her about it. Then she makes me concentrate on my own feelings rather than what I think about Virgil's behaviour and his desire to have an open relationship. I note that the feeling gives me a horrid sensation in my right kidney.

'I feel betrayed. I feel left out. I hate that I can't call or text him when he's with someone else!' I say at last.

The session ends up being a lot about my six-year-old self wanting my mum when she went into hospital one summer. There was a lot of being taken to the park by an au pair called Karin and my auntie Barbara came to look after us too. I missed my mum. When she came back there was yet another baby to look after. I buried my head in books and became precociously independent.

It's pretty early for a date to finish, I think. Virgil already told me that he didn't have a big seduction dinner planned. So what did happen and is he dating Sarah or just seeing her as a friend? I wish I understood. I surprise myself slightly: I don't feel good about Virgil being on a date but I am coping. I have even got past the malicious thoughts.

I have a seduction dinner planned, by the way. Next week at Tim's flat I'm going to be the seducée who gets cooked for and (probably) fucked. I don't know if I have the stomach for it. Is that kind of certainty sexy? Am I really up for this? But a really good fuck is something I really wouldn't mind having. And if I take a vibrator with me I might come. Alot! Having only had sex with Tim a couple of times, several years ago, I don't know what his position is on vibrators. However, he already thinks I'm a sexual freak/superwoman so he can't be that much of a prude.
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Motivations and progress

I complain to my therapist, Deirdre, that Virgil is incompetent. He cannot tie up properly and he cannot beat to my satisfaction. He doesn't care about kink enough to be skillful. Virgil is a very amazing head on a body that he doesn't really live in. Dyspraxic is the word I use in private. It's unkind but therapy sessions are not a place to pull punches about people who aren't there. I think about how much better for me solo-therapy is than joint therapy.

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Just so you know

It's not easy to write a blog this week, but I've been talking alot with friends and I had an amazing therapy session yesterday. Afterward I went back to my friend Geri's house, where I am staying for a few days, and wrote this. I'm not going to edit it really. You might as well read what's on my tiny mind.

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Virgil prepares to get back in the saddle and I know all about it

New communications strategy: share as much as possible. Unless you are truly disinterested in what your partner gets up to on their solo adventures, don't ask don't tell policies create massive opportunities for paranoia and insecurity to fester. An open relationship is something you do together.

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Royalty

I tell Deirdre what happened at the play party - about playing on my own and giving permission for Virgil to play with Voracious C. It's a satisfying vignette and she asks me to describe in more detail how I felt at the time. I say: Well, when Virgil asked me to describe what I had been doing in front of the others I felt annoyed actually and defensive. It was cheeky of him but he always likes to hear about my solo adventures in as much detail as possible. It turns him on.

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Talk to me, lover

Er, oh... cringe. I recently alluded to a terrible, ongoing disagreement about sex that Virgil and I had been having. And actually, even though it severely ESCALATED over the last week and things were said that had previously only been thought, it was a point of tension in our relationship for a long time. Now the terrible, ongoing disagreement is no more. If I'm honest I would prefer to simply slink away and drop the subject, but I think it's worth a coda. I'd like to think I can admit when I've been wrong about something.

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History

I meet up with a very old friend and her daughter. I am apprehensive almost to the point of cancelling. Andrea and I were teenage best buddies but she's really hard work these days. She rarely comes to the city and swears she no longer feels safe. Andrea jokes relentlessly about how her family drive her mad and confound her. She just can't seem to say anything positive or pleasant. I want to say: Well if you really feel like you're such a martyr to everyone that's a problem. What I say is: Why don't you change what you do?

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Visualisations

I was a mess when I got to Deirdre's consulting room yesterday. A summer cold, even more dentistry and not eating or sleeping well for days hadn't helped. I felt fragile and transparent, like I could buckle in on myself.

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A big Gestalt vomit

Mid-afternoon on the sofa, I masturbate to some bad kink fiction. It is a mechanical release so that I won't feel horny later. This morning I sat in Sigi the therapist's room and cried as I regurgitated some of my most painful memories. I talked about standing by my dad's hospital bed when I thought he was dying and he told me that he had given up trying to connect with me. We didn't use the word connect - it was 1991 - but you know what I mean.

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The important question

I send a text to say yes to Sigi the therapist. She hasn't texted back yet. Maybe she'll veto me. Sigi can have a chance. If it doesn't work I'll try someone else.

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I prevaricate and give myself until Monday to make up my mind

Yesterday morning I thought, I must phone the therapist, but I didn't. I spent most of the day working at home on a project Virgil and I are collaborating on. Then it's too late.

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I need to make a decision about therapy

ge·stalt/gəˈSHtält/

Noun:

An organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts

Today I went to see the Gestalt therapist. We talked for 50 minutes, mostly about my problems and whether Gestalt might work for me. Sigi's main concern seems to be that I want a quick fix and might not get it. My main concern is that Sigi isn't very articulate and lacks assurance. She's a trainee. I still don't really know what Gestalt therapy is.


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What's my motivation?

Here's a thorny question: At our counselling session I am spouting off about how painful it is for me when Virgil goes off on dates. How difficult I find the idea of him being intimate in a meaningful way with other people. How much it hurts to imagine him being excited about, kissing and having sex with other women who he is attached to. I can't stop going on about it. D says, What do you get out of feeling like that?

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Talking about therapy

I applied for low-cost (read trainee) Gestalt therapy. No, I don't know what that is either, but our relationship counsellor Douglas suggested it and we trust Douglas.

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