Hello,
Before you jump to any conclusions let me just assure you that everything is okay. No one slept with a third party or anything dramatic like that. We just separated. I suppose the catalyst was the incident last Christmas, at the beach house. Putting asides who was right or wrong, this was by far, the worst one yet and it caused a lot of damage.
We haven't lived in the same house since then. And that was the state of things until recently. A total of four months, our relationship on ice. I mean, we'd talk about the kids, about the daily mechanics of our lives but there was this ever widening division occuring. In the past, these riffs have always managed to mend themselves but this time? It just wouldn't go away.
I think what happened was that the fight dredged up a lot of things from the past. A lot of things we'd been careful to avoid.
The counsellor was no help either. I hated that little smug prick. Kathie recommended him to us. You know the kind of person I am. Basically, I was just showing up and going through the motions for Leslie's sake. To try and rebuild that bridge. Given the choice, I would not have taken part.
So we turned up, once a week, and sat there in the corner of the room. I really hated it because I felt like I was exposing my private life to a stranger. And you know I hate that kind of thing.
I think the main problem was the counsellor . Tobin the marriage counsellor . There were times when I just wanted to stand up and knock him out of his complacency. Because that's what he came across as to me. Complacent and arrogant. There we were, talking about the problems that were splitting us apart and he was absentmindedly doodling little cartoons in the margins of his notepad. Icebergs, clouds, lightning bolts, geometric patterns. This kind of thing. He had the listening cues down pat: the nodding of the head, the considered squint at a crucial juncture in the conversation and occasionally chucking in a "....and how does this make you feel Leslie?" I'd catch him regularly looking up at the clock, like how much more of this shit do I have to endure? Fifty minutes of this while Leslie was in tears and I was staring down at my hands feeling helpless. Fifty minutes at sixty-five dollars a pop.
Anyway, that was the status quo until recently. We were going in there every Tuesday, driving in from our separate abodes (by then I was living with my brother in Glebe). To be honest, I felt humiliated by the whole thing and I knew the kids were getting confused by it all. That was my greatest fear. I didn't want it to negatively impact on the kids. Anyway, we were getting further and further away from each other because that was the easy thing to do, right? The only time we saw each other in that last month was every Tuesday afternoon at 3 pm, first in this car park, after which we go into that over air-conditioned little office to disembowel our relationship in front of this prick. Fifteen years of marriage. Something I was not at all comfortable about.
You take things for granted. I mean really, who was this guy? Just some 30-year-old know it all in a generic office with a whiteboard and a digital clock. What does that actually mean? Are we supposed to put the future of our relationship in his hands? I mean how many years at TAFE do you have to train sit there like a condescending buddha, passing silent judgement on people's lives?
When it was my turn to listen, which to be perfectly honest seem to be most of the time, through the window I could see people walking past on the street, getting on with their lives without this kind of bullshit. I'm sure they had their own problems. Everyone does. They were walking around with their dignity intact. That was the difference.
And I would never say this allowed but our real problem stems from the fact that Leslie comes from a wealthy family. That is the root problem. If we're being honest. She and her bloody sister were Daddy's girls and they always got their own way. I more than adequately provided for my wife. The car she wanted, the clothes, the house in the new suburb close to her friends.....renovations and holidays. But somehow it will never be enough.
My brother tells me I'm soft for putting up with it. "Put your foot down", he says. Easy for him. I believe you should make the best of the cards you have been dealt. Or maybe I was just scared of changing horses midstream? I like order in things. At this age, I don't want disruption. Maybe I just didn't have it in me? Anyway, how would a real separation effect the kids?
I tried to express all this anxiety during our sessions but maybe it came out wrong. At least that was the way it was interpreted first by Leslie, then later by Tobin.
I was curious as to how long these sessions were going to last. Months? Years? Then our friend Kathie, the one who had initially recommended Tobin, got together with Leslie and they had a few wines one night. She told Leslie that she had run into Tobin at the cafe near the counselling centre. When Kathie casually asked about us, Tobin goes, Christ! Those guys? And he rolled his eyes dramatically.
Kathie goes, what do you mean "Christ! Those guys!"
And Tobin goes on to make some very disparaging remarks along the lines that we were suckers for punishment. That we were slaves to our own trivial hangups and neuroses. That our relationship was in fact, a big unwieldy and codependent mess. It's like watching two blind people try to beat each other up, laughed Tobin as he reached across the counter to accept his skinny latte.
Katie told Leslie all this. And then Leslie told me. The following Tuesday, sitting in the room, Tobin was already four minutes late. At sixty-five bucks a pop. He came in wiping of hands on his trousers, sat down and flipped open his notepad. Presumably getting ready for a bit of afternoon sketching. Before we began, I asked him about client confidentiality. He knew right away what I was getting at. I could see it in his eyes, the way they narrowed down. The way his smile faltered for a minute. He got on the defensive right away. Come to think of it, this was the first time he was actually paying attention since we been coming here. Actually listening. I just sat there, my arms crossed, asking him questions about professionalism and client confidentiality. What did these things they mean to him? That's what I wanted to know. And he kept coming back with the same thing, saying "It is not uncommon for someone in my profession to consult with a colleague about a case." I grilled him a little bit more, kept the eye contact going for uncomfortably long periods of time, just to let him know I was squarely pissed off. Pissed off that he was using our relationship for a bit of stand-comedy in his free time. I mean, the work we do, the shit we all put up with, of course, it leaks into our dinner parties and drinking sessions as comic fodder. You'd be a liar to say otherwise. But in the middle of the day? With Kathie? With someone who is more of an acquaintance than a friend? What kind of bullshit was that?
Then he tried to sound reasonable and, in doing so, infer that I was being quite unreasonable. "I'm getting a lot of hostility from you....and it's making me quite uncomfortable," he said. It was obvious to me that he'd reached the bottom of his little bag of counsellor tricks by that point because he was squirming in his chair. I told him I wouldn't be paying for this session. He could shove the cost up his arse. I told him I would be writing a letter to the regulating body that oversees people like him, even though I had no intention. Why waste my time?
And then I walked out of the office. I think it kind of shocked Leslie out of her downward spiral. I think she recognised that we needed to get on with our lives and stop getting distracted by all this bullshit. Always striving for an ideal existence beyond your reach.
You can get so caught up in the process. Anyway, we moved on, patched things up. Two weeks later I moved back in. We haven't had any problems since. Nothing significant.
I keep running into Tobin at the supermarket, then in Dan Murphys or at the servo. I got nothing personally against him. We just walked right past each other. We should be complete strangers but he knows every bloody intimate detail of my relationship with Leslie. I'll give him one thing. He does have a stunning wife.
Anyway, that's how things are. What are you doing with yourself?
Before you jump to any conclusions let me just assure you that everything is okay. No one slept with a third party or anything dramatic like that. We just separated. I suppose the catalyst was the incident last Christmas, at the beach house. Putting asides who was right or wrong, this was by far, the worst one yet and it caused a lot of damage.
We haven't lived in the same house since then. And that was the state of things until recently. A total of four months, our relationship on ice. I mean, we'd talk about the kids, about the daily mechanics of our lives but there was this ever widening division occuring. In the past, these riffs have always managed to mend themselves but this time? It just wouldn't go away.
I think what happened was that the fight dredged up a lot of things from the past. A lot of things we'd been careful to avoid.
The counsellor was no help either. I hated that little smug prick. Kathie recommended him to us. You know the kind of person I am. Basically, I was just showing up and going through the motions for Leslie's sake. To try and rebuild that bridge. Given the choice, I would not have taken part.
So we turned up, once a week, and sat there in the corner of the room. I really hated it because I felt like I was exposing my private life to a stranger. And you know I hate that kind of thing.
I think the main problem was the counsellor . Tobin the marriage counsellor . There were times when I just wanted to stand up and knock him out of his complacency. Because that's what he came across as to me. Complacent and arrogant. There we were, talking about the problems that were splitting us apart and he was absentmindedly doodling little cartoons in the margins of his notepad. Icebergs, clouds, lightning bolts, geometric patterns. This kind of thing. He had the listening cues down pat: the nodding of the head, the considered squint at a crucial juncture in the conversation and occasionally chucking in a "....and how does this make you feel Leslie?" I'd catch him regularly looking up at the clock, like how much more of this shit do I have to endure? Fifty minutes of this while Leslie was in tears and I was staring down at my hands feeling helpless. Fifty minutes at sixty-five dollars a pop.
Anyway, that was the status quo until recently. We were going in there every Tuesday, driving in from our separate abodes (by then I was living with my brother in Glebe). To be honest, I felt humiliated by the whole thing and I knew the kids were getting confused by it all. That was my greatest fear. I didn't want it to negatively impact on the kids. Anyway, we were getting further and further away from each other because that was the easy thing to do, right? The only time we saw each other in that last month was every Tuesday afternoon at 3 pm, first in this car park, after which we go into that over air-conditioned little office to disembowel our relationship in front of this prick. Fifteen years of marriage. Something I was not at all comfortable about.
You take things for granted. I mean really, who was this guy? Just some 30-year-old know it all in a generic office with a whiteboard and a digital clock. What does that actually mean? Are we supposed to put the future of our relationship in his hands? I mean how many years at TAFE do you have to train sit there like a condescending buddha, passing silent judgement on people's lives?
When it was my turn to listen, which to be perfectly honest seem to be most of the time, through the window I could see people walking past on the street, getting on with their lives without this kind of bullshit. I'm sure they had their own problems. Everyone does. They were walking around with their dignity intact. That was the difference.
And I would never say this allowed but our real problem stems from the fact that Leslie comes from a wealthy family. That is the root problem. If we're being honest. She and her bloody sister were Daddy's girls and they always got their own way. I more than adequately provided for my wife. The car she wanted, the clothes, the house in the new suburb close to her friends.....renovations and holidays. But somehow it will never be enough.
My brother tells me I'm soft for putting up with it. "Put your foot down", he says. Easy for him. I believe you should make the best of the cards you have been dealt. Or maybe I was just scared of changing horses midstream? I like order in things. At this age, I don't want disruption. Maybe I just didn't have it in me? Anyway, how would a real separation effect the kids?
I tried to express all this anxiety during our sessions but maybe it came out wrong. At least that was the way it was interpreted first by Leslie, then later by Tobin.
I was curious as to how long these sessions were going to last. Months? Years? Then our friend Kathie, the one who had initially recommended Tobin, got together with Leslie and they had a few wines one night. She told Leslie that she had run into Tobin at the cafe near the counselling centre. When Kathie casually asked about us, Tobin goes, Christ! Those guys? And he rolled his eyes dramatically.
Kathie goes, what do you mean "Christ! Those guys!"
And Tobin goes on to make some very disparaging remarks along the lines that we were suckers for punishment. That we were slaves to our own trivial hangups and neuroses. That our relationship was in fact, a big unwieldy and codependent mess. It's like watching two blind people try to beat each other up, laughed Tobin as he reached across the counter to accept his skinny latte.
Katie told Leslie all this. And then Leslie told me. The following Tuesday, sitting in the room, Tobin was already four minutes late. At sixty-five bucks a pop. He came in wiping of hands on his trousers, sat down and flipped open his notepad. Presumably getting ready for a bit of afternoon sketching. Before we began, I asked him about client confidentiality. He knew right away what I was getting at. I could see it in his eyes, the way they narrowed down. The way his smile faltered for a minute. He got on the defensive right away. Come to think of it, this was the first time he was actually paying attention since we been coming here. Actually listening. I just sat there, my arms crossed, asking him questions about professionalism and client confidentiality. What did these things they mean to him? That's what I wanted to know. And he kept coming back with the same thing, saying "It is not uncommon for someone in my profession to consult with a colleague about a case." I grilled him a little bit more, kept the eye contact going for uncomfortably long periods of time, just to let him know I was squarely pissed off. Pissed off that he was using our relationship for a bit of stand-comedy in his free time. I mean, the work we do, the shit we all put up with, of course, it leaks into our dinner parties and drinking sessions as comic fodder. You'd be a liar to say otherwise. But in the middle of the day? With Kathie? With someone who is more of an acquaintance than a friend? What kind of bullshit was that?
Then he tried to sound reasonable and, in doing so, infer that I was being quite unreasonable. "I'm getting a lot of hostility from you....and it's making me quite uncomfortable," he said. It was obvious to me that he'd reached the bottom of his little bag of counsellor tricks by that point because he was squirming in his chair. I told him I wouldn't be paying for this session. He could shove the cost up his arse. I told him I would be writing a letter to the regulating body that oversees people like him, even though I had no intention. Why waste my time?
And then I walked out of the office. I think it kind of shocked Leslie out of her downward spiral. I think she recognised that we needed to get on with our lives and stop getting distracted by all this bullshit. Always striving for an ideal existence beyond your reach.
You can get so caught up in the process. Anyway, we moved on, patched things up. Two weeks later I moved back in. We haven't had any problems since. Nothing significant.
I keep running into Tobin at the supermarket, then in Dan Murphys or at the servo. I got nothing personally against him. We just walked right past each other. We should be complete strangers but he knows every bloody intimate detail of my relationship with Leslie. I'll give him one thing. He does have a stunning wife.
Anyway, that's how things are. What are you doing with yourself?
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