Part 1: Would you like to cry Now?
I get a lot of male clients these days. They often come in secretly, saying that their friends don’t know where they are, that our meetings are their dirty little secrets. They treat me like some hidden addiction or like I some side piece their wives don’t need to know about. Its simultaneously amusing and sad the lengths these men will go to in an effort to paint themselves as perfect to the world before coming to see me.
I remember once a young man came – he didn’t have an appointment so my secretary told him he could either make one or wait four hours until I was free to speak with him. This young man, just sat there in the waiting room. He didn’t read any of the books there, he didn’t take out his phone to watch YouTube, he just sat there looking at the clock. When I came out to get my first client, he waved at me and him, when I came for my second client, he smiled, my third client, he smiled and waved and for my fourth client, he did the same. Very respectable young man, very well dressed, very calm, very kind, from the outside he was just, nice.
I came out of my office again, this time to collect him. He stood up, walked over to me slowly, then shook my hand. I lead him into the room and as we sat down, he began to cry. He cried for the entire hour – took some tissues from the desk next to him, cleaned his face; then left. He would come again week after week, for the next ten weeks, this time with appointments, always at 12pm on Fridays, just to cry.
One Saturday while out in the real world, far from my dungeon of male secrets I saw him with his family, he looked happy, respectable and nice. He was not the broken beaten and bruised man that sits on my couch every week crying a river. One day after about 40 or so sessions he came to my office, I reached for the tissues, but he stopped me.
“Are we not crying today?” these were, oddly the first real question I asked him since our first encounter.
“No.”
“Are we talking?”
“I love my wife; however, I can’t say no to her.”
“Why do you think that?”
“If I say no she will leave me.”
“That’s a large jump. Why does her leaving bother you?”
“I do not wish to be left again; it hurts to be left.”
“Okay-”
“I keep saying yes, and its draining me, but I can’t say no, because she will leave me and I would rather not be left…”
“So you cry?”
“So I cry.”
“What does your wife think you do for an hour every Friday at 12?”
“She thinks that I am at work.”
“Work is a good one, most people use work. Its predictable, logical, you know, it hides a lot. I assume you pay cash like all the others so she doesn’t see the therapy charges?”
“Yes.”
“Smart, but, I warn you. She’ll find out eventually, surprise you at work one day, call your boss to check if you’re busy. You will have to explain all of this to her eventually. Why not just tell her ‘No’ and avoid all these lies?”
“She doesn’t need to know. Cause then she’ll try to fix it. She’ll ask me to do less, and instead of feeling the pressure of always having to say yes I will feel the loneliness of never being asked in the first place.”
“And the price you pay to maintain her needing you, to maintain the image of perfection, is an hour with me, crying?”
“Yes.”
“That sounds insane. You do know this?”
“Yes.” There was silence for a few minutes.
“Would you like to cry now Nicholas?”
“Yes.”
