by Phoebe Fox
Why would a man who clearly loved his wife so much betray her?
I tried to imagine my dad in the same position and couldn’t. Even though I knew—from his own lips—that he’d once cheated on my mom, the woman around whom his entire being revolved.
There are those who claim that monogamy is unnatural, goes against biology and every instinct we have as animals. Maybe so, but what makes us human is our free will. We’re not slaves to our base impulses—we choose. Why we make those choices isn’t always apparent to us—that’s the raison d’etre for my entire profession. But we have to accept that these decisions are under our control.
Our impulses may be instinctive, but our actions are up to us.
Sherman Schmidt watched Antonio talk with wide eyes. A couple of the women—Carolyn, whose husband left her for a younger woman, and Rebecca, whose boyfriend was cheating on her with her boss—sat back in their chairs, arms crossed and matching accusatory glares on their faces. Sheila stared at her lap—all she ever did, I’d already learned. Dina seemed equal parts fascinated and repelled by him. The others simply listened as if sitting around a campfire hearing ghost stories—I had to admit that Antonio’s tales were pretty wild, and he was a talented storyteller.
I couldn’t understand the appeal he apparently held to so many females—and males, as he confessed to having accepted the occasional hand job from unusually persistent homosexuals, although he hastened to assure everyone that he was the farthest thing from gay. Antonio was good-looking, sure—dark hair and olive skin, eyes so big and brown he looked like Black Beauty, and a tall, fit body that he held with an appealing confidence. He was an attractive man by any standard, but I didn’t feel any compulsion to rip off my panties and throw myself at him.
“It’s not like I even liked the girl.” Antonio was telling us of his most recent transgression, sitting at an angle in the ladder-back chair at the yacht club with one leg bent up on the rung of the chair beside him and the other on the floor. I didn’t think he was conscious of the pose; it was just his instinct to put his junk on display.
“You’ve said that a couple of times,” I observed. “Why is it that you want to point that out?”
Antonio looked over at me and slowly sat up. “That’s funny. I thought you were gonna ask me why I did it if I didn’t like her.”
“That’s what we’re hoping to get at eventually, isn’t it?”
He sighed like a released balloon. “Yeah, I guess.”
“So why is it you want us to know you didn’t even like the person you were sexual with, Antonio?”
He gave a half grin. “Geez. You don’t let things go, do you?” I shrugged. “Well. I don’t know. I guess...Am I, um, am I trying to shock you guys or something?”
“Are you?”
He glanced around the circle of people, then shook his head. “Nah. If you haven’t been shocked yet, then I got nothin’.” He stared at me, eyebrows pulled together, but I didn’t think he was glaring at me so much as thinking hard. “Maybe I’m trying to convince myself? Or...I dunno, maybe I think it makes it less bad if I don’t like these women? Maybe that makes it less awful for Mary Lynn?”
Suddenly he blinked. “Shit. Oh, wow.” He shoved a hand to his face, index finger and thumb wiping at his eyes. “Shit. How about that. That’s it, huh? I think that makes it better for her somehow, if I don’t even care?”
I softened my gaze. “Is that how it feels? Like it’s less hurtful to your wife if you’re removed from these women?”
“I guess, yeah. That’s what I think,” he whispered. “Like that’s not really cheating.”
I wanted to talk his realization out—why he felt that way, what drew him to other women, whether he consciously picked women he knew he wouldn’t care about. It was “circling the drain,” as I liked to call it: working our way slowly toward the crux of the issue—why Antonio felt a compulsion to cheat—without shoving the client where I thought he needed to go. Realizations had to come from my patient, not me, to have any lasting impact.
But group therapy didn’t work quite the same way as one-on-one sessions.
“I think you’re a sex addict,” Dina Jones piped up.
Antonio’s gaze shot to her face. “What? Nah. No way. Look at me.” He spread his arms so we could take in his fit body so clearly outlined by his tight black T-shirt that we could literally see every muscle of his six-pack. “I take care of my body and my health. No way I’m any kind of addict.”
I thought the jury was still out, but it wasn’t productive to push Antonio in a direction he wasn’t willing to go in at this point.
“Maybe you have mother issues?” This was Betty Mitchell, whose husband told her he’d never loved her. “That Oedipus thing?”
“Oh—yeah—or were you not loved enough as a child?” Sherman, who hadn’t yet shared about himself. “I read an article about that once.”
“Nah, are you kidding?” Antonio grinned, spreading his arms out again. He liked to take up space. “Look at this. What mother couldn’t love this? But not in a weird way,” he hastened to add, looking at Betty.
“Okay, let’s not get off-track here,” I tried. “Let’s let Antonio—”
“Oh, I know!” Elisa jumped in. “You have to be in control. You cheat to feel powerful. Like my asshole ex-girlfriend.”
“Or is your wife frigid?” Dina asked bluntly. “If you’re not getting it at home then I can see why—”
“Okay, hang on a second, everyone.”
I stood up to get their attention—the group was fast spiraling into chaos as everyone put in their pop psychology theories. The Internet had made everybody an expert in everything—but this kind of “pick a card, any card” snap diagnosis wasn’t going to help Antonio see and evaluate his own behavior.
“Maybe he’s overcompensating for something,” Dina plowed on deliberately, looking at me.
“Dina, let’s let Antonio talk without—”
She moved her gaze to Antonio. “Is that it? Do you have a tiny penis?”
“Dina, Antonio has the claw.” It was all I could do not to shout it at her. “We need to not interrupt when someone is sharing. And it’s not helpful to try to diagnose. We’re here to talk about our own situations and hopefully reach some useful conclusions for ourselves.”
“Then what do we need you for?” Dina muttered.
I pretended not to have heard her.
“Go on, Antonio.”
He sat back. “Nah, that’s it—I’m done. I’d rather everyone just tell me what’s wrong with me, anyway—sounds a lot easier!”
“Told you.” Dina smirked.
Ignoring her wasn’t working—she’d just work harder and harder to get my attention.
So if that was what she wanted, that’s what I’d give her.
“Dina, it’s great that you take an interest in other people’s stories,” I began, standing to take the claw from Antonio. Plus I wanted the height advantage. “But there’s a reason I brought the claw in, and that we try to honor each person when they’re sharing. It’s hard to do sometimes—to talk about these vulnerabilities, our pain. It’s important that we respect one another’s time to talk. Can you try to hold on to your feedback until someone has finished sharing?”
She leaned back in her chair, staring up at me with her chin tipped down and her eyes angling up in an insolent stare. “What? You heard him—he was finished.”
I forced a smile onto my face. “Okay. I’ll tell you what, Dina. Since you have a lot to say right now, we’d love to hear your story. You haven’t shared with the group yet.” I advanced on her, making sure to hold the claw nonthreateningly, prongs-in, though every primal instinct I had screamed to flip them around to bristle at her. “You’ve got the claw.”
Her elbows were propped negligently on the chair back
behind her, and she lazily lifted one hand to wave me off. “Nah, I’m not ready yet.”
Next to her, Carolyn Hendry was staring back and forth between the two of us as if watching a Mexican standoff. I felt every other eye fixed on our face-off too, but the room stayed deadly silent.
“I think it’s a good idea for you to share your story with us,” I said implacably, holding the claw just above her inert hands in her lap.
Dina smirked at me, and I wanted to scrape the expression off with the cultivator. “I don’t think so, thanks. You said we didn’t have to share until we were ready. I’m just not ready.”
“I can certainly understand that.” I held my smile firmly in place. “We want this to be a safe place where we all can talk about these intimate things. Where we can take the time we need to gather our thoughts and know that we can reveal some difficult things if we need to, because we’re all in this together. So I’d like you to take the lead here, if you would, and let us in on your situation.”
Dina was starting to look uncomfortable. This confrontation had clearly gone on longer than she expected, and I wasn’t backing down. So neither was she—she was holding her awkward position so stiffly I knew her neck and arms must be aching. But I suspected she had no intention of “losing,” and she proved me right when she shook her head. “No, I’m going to skip it for now, Brook, but thanks,” she added sarcastically.
But Dina didn’t realize I was holding the trump card.
“If you can’t share with the group, Dina, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
No one moved. There wasn’t even a rustle in the room.
Dina shot up in her chair, eyes narrowing at me. “That’s not fair! I don’t have to share until I’m ready—that was your rule!”
I said nothing, just stood in front of her with the claw like the original immovable object.
“That girl hasn’t shared!” Dina blurted, pointing across the circle at Sheila, who—as usual—dipped her head so her long bangs covered her eyes. “And you’re not kicking her out!”
“That girl’s name is Sheila, and you’re illustrating my point,” I said calmly. “If you don’t take the trouble to learn anyone’s name, why would they feel safe sharing their vulnerabilities in front of you?”
Dina shrugged nonchalantly, but I could see color flood her face. “Whatever. Sheila. You still don’t make her share.”
“Sheila will share when she’s ready, I’m sure.” I turned slightly to offer the other girl a reassuring smile, but Sheila was curled in on herself, head down, as if trying to be absorbed into the chair. I hoped Dina’s turning the spotlight on the poor girl didn’t scare her out of the group. I looked back at Dina. “But she isn’t jumping in on everyone else’s time either. You are. So what’ll it be, Dina? Are you going to give everyone the same opportunity to hear your story? Or would you prefer not to be part of the group?” I held out the claw like an ultimatum.
Dina glared at me so hard, I began to reconsider whether offering her a weapon was really a good idea.
Or whether this whole confrontation was. I’d introduced a combative energy into the group that might make me to blame for removing the sense of safety I hoped everyone would feel in here. If Dina kept at it, or even if she left, too prideful to come around, then it might alter the energy of the group irrevocably. And that would be my fault for forcing this issue. I’d given her no way to save face—and I realized belatedly that she wouldn’t so much as bend without that.
And then Betty Mitchell rode to my rescue.
She was staring directly at Dina from her position immediately beside her. “I’ve been sitting here too chickenshit to talk,” she broke the room’s tense silence in her hale, blunt manner. “Watching you and thinking, ‘Now, that girl’s got a set of nuts’—excuse the French.” A few others tittered with nervous laughter. “You ain’t afraid to talk, and I’ve been sitting here trying to screw up as much chutzpah as you have. Share your story with us, Dina,” she said, patting Dina’s leg. “If you don’t get the ball rolling, there’s pretty much no chance I’m gonna find my own backbone.”
Was Dina softening? I couldn’t tell. She just stared at the other woman for a long, awkward beat.
And then after a moment Dina smiled. A real smile. And damned if that girl wasn’t gorgeous when she wasn’t wearing the butt face she usually sported in here.
“You’re Barbara, right?” she said to her.
The other woman grinned. “Betty. Close enough.”
“Sorry. Heck, yeah, Betty, I’ve got a story for you guys.” She turned her face but not her eyes in my direction and snatched the claw from my hand. “I’ve got the claw, folks! Buckle up. Wait’ll you hear this.”
I could practically feel the group relax as the heavy tension was defused. I shot Betty a grateful glance, and her grin broadened.
And then I turned around and went back to my seat, ready with everyone else to listen to Dina’s story.
Dina’s tale actually filled me with compassion I wasn’t sure I could feel for her. It was painfully similar to my own: a month before her wedding, her groom abruptly—and with no explanation—called it off.
In that way, I could empathize with her. The pain of a broken engagement was bad enough, but it increased exponentially the closer you were to the wedding, in my experience. When Michael got cold feet weeks before ours, it had been a blow that took me to my knees.
If I were honest, I still wasn’t sure I was over it. Michael yes—I thought so. But the pain of someone you loved, someone you planned to spend the rest of your life with, telling you at the eleventh hour that they’d changed their mind...that was a wound that took a long time to close.
I could almost understand why Dina was so disagreeable.
I hadn’t been too off the mark in my original assessment of her. Dina and Luke met in college in Gainesville, at a Greek mixer for their respective houses. He wasn’t quite the quarterback—he was a defensive end—and she wasn’t exactly a cheerleader—she’d headed the sorority—but I was close. They were the golden couple all through school—Dina’s words—and had their future mapped out: They’d marry, move near her family in Captiva, and she’d stay home so they could start their family while he went to work.
“The thing is,” she said, addressing the group as a whole, “I could understand it if he met someone—if he was fooling around on me. I mean, he’d be an idiot, but guys think with the little head, right?” She lifted her eyebrows in Antonio’s direction, and I could see it took all he had not to pipe up. Instead he nodded furiously. Dina went on. “But he didn’t. And trust me—I would have found out. No one keeps secrets from me.” She trailed off, spinning the claw in her lap, not sure where to go, I thought, without verbal validation from the group.
After a moment or two of silence, I said, “Anything else you want to add, Dina, before we open it up?”
She shot a glance over at me—fleeting, but minus the raging hostility I was used to. Telling her story seemed to have lowered her defenses just a little.
“Yeah, that’s it for now, I guess. It sucked. But he blew it. I’ll never take him back. I hope he’s miserable forever.”
I stood and walked to her, holding out a hand for the claw, which she proffered—handle-first, surprisingly. I stayed facing her directly for another moment. “Thanks for sharing,” I said. “I’m sorry you had to go through something like that. It must have been horribly painful, and embarrassing. And it’s much worse when you don’t know why.”
Dina nearly did a double take. “Yeah,” she said in a surprised tone. “It is.”
“It passes,” I said quietly. “Eventually.” I leaned over to touch her briefly on the shoulder, then turned to walk back to my chair, not sure I wanted to see her reaction. “Okay...guys?” I said, panning my gaze around the group. “Anyone have th
oughts for Dina?”
Antonio’s hand was in the air before I’d finished speaking, and I nodded toward him.
“Okay, first off, I gotta say that guy’s a moron. You’re hot as Satan’s ball sac, honey.”
It wasn’t entirely appropriate, but the room bubbled into laughter, and Dina gave a real smile. I wondered if she knew how much of her prettiness she sacrificed with her habitual smirk.
“Thanks, Anthony. You’re not so bad yourself,” she said.
“Antonio—but you can call me whatever you want, sweetheart.”
“Okay,” I said into the fresh wave of laughter, holding up my hand with a smile. “Let’s try to keep it more constructive.”
“Sorry—Antonio. I sort of suck at names,” Dina said. “But I’ll work on it,” she added, sending an apologetic glance to Betty.
That was as positive a sign as I’d seen for Dina’s growth, and for the first time I thought she might get something out of being in here.
“Okay, hang on, I had a real therapy thought too, though,” Antonio went on. “This guy—we’ll call him Shithead”—more laughter, but I let it go. Antonio was great for group morale—“he bailed on you because he’s a jerk. He’s the one with problems, not you.”
“Exactly!” Dina said, nodding.
“Hang on.” Holding a hand up again, I looked around the room. “Yes, people’s behavior is because of their own issues, that’s true. But it’s not healthy, or productive, to assign blanket blame to one party in a breakup.” I was thinking of Michael again, and my role in the rift that developed between us without my realizing.
Dina’s hot glare was back, fixed on me. “Are you saying it’s my fault? That I made him walk out on me right before our wedding?” Her tone was razor-edged.