Choice Theory (18 page)

“Francesca, we weren’t created to suffer alone. Talking about him with me will help.”

She seems a little more relaxed after I say this. She’s found out she can talk to me about him and feel safe, that I don’t judge. Maybe I can lighten things up a little; it’s worth a try. The heavier the going gets, the harder it will be for me to help her. If it can get a little lighter, she will be able to think more clearly. If it stays real heavy, she’ll just be aware of her misery.

“It’s like something from a storybook, isn’t it? Like he turned you from a frog into a princess, and now you think you’re going to have to go back to being a frog.”

“But that’s it exactly. I hated being a frog. I was a frog for so long I’d even stopped thinking I could ever be a princess. Robert came in for a drink of water and talked to me. When he did that, suddenly I was a princess. There’s not much talk around our house. We’re all frogs. We go
brrrp brrrp.
In my house it’s
brrrp
the farm,
brrrp
the kids,
brrrp
the parents, the blue ribbons, the high school, the price of corn, the worn-out tractor. All day
brrrp brrrp.
Robert talked to me, he was interested in me, he made love to me over and over. I’ve never felt that kind of love; I didn’t know it existed. And he had a life; he traveled with his camera. I went with him to the bridges. He asked me my opinion as he took the pictures. I loved being something more than a pair of working hands. I can’t tell you how good it felt to be alive for four days. When he left, it hurt so much. I could go on and on, but what good would it do? He’s gone and I’m dead.”

I understand her pain. But if the session focuses mostly on pain, I may do her more harm than good. And she is talking. The
brrrp brrrp
showed a little spark of creativity, which is always encouraging. But I have to figure out a way to get her to where she can see some hope. I have to practice what I preach—try to show her she has some satisfying choices even in this painful situation. She can’t change what she or Robert did, but she can control what she chooses to do now. I have to try to find something she wants now, something that she has control over, something that depends only on her and that no one can take away. This is the way to live through a conflict. Don’t focus on the conflict. Focus on something possible that isn’t part of the conflict. That will give
her time and maybe some hope. It’s about the only way a conflict can be successfully resolved. Things change, and in time most conflicts get diluted and forgotten. But right now I’ve got to get her to see that there’s more to life than the conflict.

“Francesca, think for a moment, why did you choose to come to see me? You knew I couldn’t undo what happened.”

There was a long pause, but I had introduced the word
choose
in a positive sense. I intimated that she made a good choice when she finally let my phone ring. Now my job is to steer the conversation around so she sees that something good actually happens in this hour. I don’t know what it can be, but I’ll keep thinking and something will come to me. Or maybe to her.

“I came to see you because I had to tell someone. You know that, you just said I had to talk. There is no one in Madison County who could even begin to understand why I would do such a thing. I’m not sure you understand how bottled up I was. That house was on fire for four days. Then my husband came home, and it was cold as ice again. I’ve tried to put up a front, but I haven’t been able to do it. I’ve been a zombie. He knows something’s wrong; the children sense it. I can’t go on like this. I didn’t come here looking for a miracle. I’m not asking you for a happy ending. The way I feel right now I’ll be satisfied if you’ll get me back to being a frog.”

“I agree you had to talk, but there is more to talk about than what happened with Robert. Suppose you had come a year ago, what would you have talked about then?”

“I didn’t come a year ago. Frogs don’t go to therapists.”

Frogs don’t go to therapists. Good. Another spark. I think we can get off the misery track.

“You’re wrong about that. A lot of frogs come to see me, but I can’t help them. I don’t think a counselor can do much for a frog. But what you just said, if you came to see me, it means you still want to be a princess. There’s a place in the world for princesses, even miserable princesses. I’ve helped more than a few of them.”

“There’s no place in the world for me. The world left with Robert; the world is gone.”

“The world is gone? I’m not so sure of that. If you go home and your daughter has been hit by a car and is in the hospital asking for you or your son is there telling you his girlfriend is pregnant, are you going to sigh and tell them the world is gone? Francesca, the world is very much here. What may be gone is your marriage. You had a visit from a messenger. Was that the message?”

“What are you telling me, that I should leave my husband?

“I’m telling you that we have to take a look at your marriage. You looked at it hard for four days with Robert; you took a good look at it as soon as he walked in the door. You came here to talk about your marriage and we had better get started.”

If I can persuade her to take a look at her marriage, I think we can make progress. She can’t do anything about Robert, but she can do something about her marriage. If she is to stay married to Richard, that marriage has to change. She knows it. Change doesn’t have to be the end of the marriage. That will be up to her and up to him, too, if she can send him the message that the marriage, as it is, isn’t working.

“The children need their father.”

Good. She’s accepted my invitation to talk about her relationship with her husband. That’s something over which she has some control. There is little sense wasting time talking about things over which she has no control. I’ve got to deal with her as if I may never see her again. Time is precious; we’ve got to make some progress.

“All kids need their mothers and their fathers. But they don’t need them together if they are miserable with each other. You thought about that. It crossed your mind that they may all be better off if you dropped out of their lives, if you went off with Robert.”

“I did, but I knew it was a fantasy. I told you I could never go off with him. I couldn’t leave my husband, my kids; I couldn’t. I told you.”

“I didn’t say you could. All I’m saying is you thought about it. Your mind opened for a moment to that possibility. But Robert’s
gone. Have all the possibilities in your life gone with him? You’ve had six weeks and you know how you feel. Do you really believe you can just go back to the way you were?”

“What else can I do? What reason do I have to leave? It wasn’t his fault that Robert came in the door.”

“Let’s not talk about the reason to leave. Let’s talk about the reason to stay. What do you have with Richard?”

“I have a family. I have my children.”

“And right now, the way you are, what do they have with you?”

“Not very much, a zombie, a dead woman.”

“Excuse me, for a moment I forgot you were dead. I was beginning to hope you were thinking about looking for a new life. Francesca, this is what I do. When people come here and tell me that their old life isn’t working, I help them to figure out a new one. If your old life was working, you wouldn’t have gone to bed with Robert. He wasn’t some traveling seducer. He did what he did because he could see your life wasn’t working. You had it written all over your face. He couldn’t miss it when he walked in the door. But it wasn’t only Robert you fell in love with; it was also the idea of a new life. Robert is gone. Are you prepared to give up the idea of a new life, too?”

“You’re being cruel.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Dangling a new life in front of me. The way I feel right now I’m better prepared to be dead than to even think about a new life. You’re talking as if I can just shuck all this pain like you shuck an ear of corn. I can barely get through the day; I can’t even think of what to make for dinner. A new life is as remote to me right now as the far side of the moon.”

You can see the power of depressing. It’s so immobilizing. What she is struggling with as I talk about a new life is the third reason to depress. It’s easier to continue to depress than even to think of a different life, much less a new life. She’s preparing herself to spend the rest of her life depressing, and if I don’t help her, she may. Part of the reason she came here is to reassure herself
that counseling can’t help her. I’m now saying it can, and she calls it cruel. That’s the way depressing works; the misery destroys hope. To say nothing, when I know she may choose to depress for the rest of her life, would be more cruel. If I can do something about it, I’m going to. By calling me cruel, she’s trying to scare me off, but I don’t scare off easily. She’s finding out how persistent I am, and I think she likes it.

“If you’re dead, you don’t have to get through the day. Dead is the perfect excuse for doing nothing. Robert brought you back to life. If he was here, he’d tell you,
I’m gone, Francesca, but please stay alive.
I know he would.”

“But look what happened, look at me. I looked in the mirror this morning and I saw my dead face. If this is what being alive for a few days ends up doing, I don’t want any more of it. I know what you’re getting at. It’s not so bad; take another chance. What else can you say? I don’t blame you, you have to say something. You offer a new life, but to me it’s just words. Go ahead, tell me what you mean. What would a new life for me be like?

I’ve taken her to the point where she’s asked the real question. She’s beginning to doubt the depressing she’s choosing. She wants specifics, something tangible. She’s calling my hand. Is it all talk or can I offer her something? And she wants to be offered something. She’s interested, she’s depressing much less right now.

“OK, I can tell you this. It would be a life in which you were in control of some of it. For you, that would be a new life. When you married Richard and came here from Italy, you gave up what little control you had. He’s been in control. From his standpoint, he’s done all the
right
things, but have they been right for you? He just took it for granted that you wanted what he wanted, and it’s not really his fault. When did you ever tell him anything different? You made the same mistake with Robert: He came here, he loved you and you loved him, and he left. I doubt if anyone had ever loved him like you did. But he was in control. He knew as soon as you went to bed with him that you were giving him your heart, and he took it. And he left with it. After you made love, did he ever say, ’My God, Francesca, you really love me; tell me what do
you want. I don’t know if I can give you what you want, but please tell me; maybe I can do something.’”

“No one has ever asked me what I want. No one, ever. My God, why are you telling me this? I feel awful. How can you do this to me. How?”

She burst into tears again. She cried much harder than before. I didn’t say anything. But I was ready to tell her something as soon as she stopped. After about five minutes, she slowed down and then stopped.

“Now you’re making sense. You’re crying for something you can do something about. You can’t do anything about Robert or Richard—what they did or what you did with them. But you can do something about your life right now.”

“What can I do? What do you mean? I don’t understand.”

“I mean like coming here to see me. You did it; you didn’t ask anyone else, you didn’t depend on anyone else. And you haven’t hurt anyone else. No one in the whole world is going to get hurt because of what we talk about. This is all for you.”

“But what if I decide I want a divorce? Won’t Richard get hurt?”

Now we are at a critical point. Right now, a million men and women are at this same point—if I leave, won’t I hurt my husband or my wife? Of course, Francesca’s husband will be hurt. But there is another question that must be answered: Doesn’t Francesca also have some responsibility about how she feels and what she does in this situation? Is Richard all right and Francesca all wrong? The answer is that neither is all right and neither is all wrong. That will always be the answer to that question until we evolve into a race of perfect people. Francesca’s problem is not whether she will hurt Richard or Richard has hurt her. The answer to that question, if it is to be answered, is what Francesca can do now that may help
her
and may also have the potential of helping the marriage. She chose to stay behind; she was too loyal to leave. But does loyalty also mean accepting a life she can no longer live—the life that led her to Robert? She changed her life when she fell in love with Robert. Now, if she chooses to, she can
figure out how to have a better life with Richard. It can’t be the same as it was. And in figuring out how to have a better life with Richard, she has to have some help from him. Not just his help for a better life for her, but his help for a better marriage, which would mean a better life for him, too. This is the direction in which I want to try to take the counseling—the direction that all marital counseling should take. I may not succeed, but it is clear that without some good counseling, she may never get any further than depressing by herself.

“We’re not talking about doing anything right now that will hurt anyone. We’re trying to figure out how you can help yourself. If you can do that, maybe you can help Richard, too.”

“What do you mean help myself? You’re talking about me leaving the farm. I do a lot on that farm. He’d lose all I do for him. He’d be devastated.”

“He’d lose what he gets from you. He’d lose the work you’ve given him for over twenty years. And you’re right, he’d be upset. But I’m not talking about the work, I’m talking about him losing you. If you are as miserable as you are now and don’t say anything, that’s not being fair to you or fair to him. Tell him the truth. Tell him you are unhappy. Not unhappy with him, that would be cruel. Unhappy with the life you lead on that farm. Would you be willing to tell him that?”

“He wouldn’t understand. He’d say, ’What are you talking about? You’ve never complained before. I don’t understand.’”