… and what did it all mean?”
This is the question that began each of our first 3 sessions. She seemed endlessly sad and hopelessly confused. She told me that he seemed to want to be with her, and that she always had so much fun when they were together. He listened to her talk for hours, sometimes joining with his own reminisces and other times just holding her closely while she “chattered” about this and that – basking in the acceptance she felt in his arm and the desire she saw in his eyes. Still… sometimes he didn’t act in the ways she wanted, and did not call her for days. “What did it all mean?” she wanted to know.
As the sessions progressed, we discovered more about her long-held interpretations of loving behavior, and how her’s might have been different from his. We talked about how some people feel loved only when they receive the kind of affection that they themselves would offer to someone – the love we give being the kind of love we know best. We talked about what he might be feeling when she acted angrily or she pouted for reasons he could not understand. And we finally found that she needed more attention and affirmation than she had realized, and perhaps more than he was capable of giving… or even perhaps more than was possible for anyone to give consistently.
My client was not unlike some other people, in that she loved deeply and desired passionately, but lacked true understanding of and empathy for her lover. She essentially wanted someone who lived and loved just like her, and was continually disappointed when her partners had not been able – or willing - to “become her.” She began to see that she had been too quick to take offense, too often assumed the worst, and reacted with flashes of volatile and punishing anger that she herself would not have tolerated. And then finally she understood why: she was afraid. Afraid not only that he didn’t really love her, but that perhaps she was not worthy of loving. She began to reveal some of the things she’d said and done to make him feel the fear and pain she sometimes felt. Most of her insults were mild. A few were definitely very vindictive and probably incredibly hurtful to her lover. It seemed that she hadn’t really ever considered how very hurtful she’d been.
Before too long, she decided that she and her lover had been right for each other, but had not been able to “capture” their love. There had been complications and entanglements to deal with, and she admitted that they hadn’t dealt with these very effectively.
She was still a little sad as we finished therapy, but now for reasons she felt were the better ones, and with a more realistic perspective about her future.
