Your Second Life Begins When You Realize You Only Have One

by Raphaelle Giordano

  —Interesting! OK, Claude, I’ll think about it.

  I saw the little pencil icon wobbling, showing he was busy writing me a long reply. A ping told me he had finished:

  —I’m counting on you to not simply pay lip service to this. Each resolution has to count. Many people know what they’re supposed to do to lead a happy life but never really put it into practice. It’s not always easy to keep one’s promises. Laziness, tiredness, discouragement are all enemies lying in wait. But keep going: it will be worth it!

  I took his word for it.

  twelve

  When I left work that day I passed by a bookshop and remembered Claude’s advice. I thought the idea of a Positive Notebook was great. Why not give it a try? At the very least it would give me something to do in front of the TV. I went in and chose a pocket-sized one that would be easy to slip into my coat or purse, so that it would always be handy. My day had been so empty, it was exhausting. I couldn’t wait to get home and relax.

  But I’d forgotten what the atmosphere there was really like.

  No sooner had I crossed the threshold then icy tension hit me. Adrien was having one of his off days and barely said hello. The girl I employed to look after him and help with his homework didn’t seem to be in a much better mood. Glancing at the schoolbooks lined up in ranks on the living-room table, I guessed the reason for the chill. Charlotte never needed any encouragement to complain about my son’s lack of attention and motivation. He fidgeted the whole time, got up on any pretext—he wanted something to eat, to drink, or to blow his nose or go to the bathroom; he invented a stream of excuses to put off the moment when he really got down to work. She accompanied her diatribe with irritated blinking and a disapproving pursing of the lips. I thanked her for her lucid debriefing while at the same time sighing wearily at the prospect of taking over from her.

  A quarter of an hour later, I had already reached the end of my patience. Entrenched in his preteen logic, Adrien blamed Charlotte: she was useless at explaining things, and besides, he didn’t like her. Seeing that his arguments weren’t having any great effect, he changed tack and said that he just couldn’t manage it all—his teacher gave them far too much homework.

  I should have seen that the poor kid had had more than he could take, but I was feeling the same way, and so all I could think of was to punish him by not allowing him any time on his tablet. He ran off into his bedroom, slamming the door behind him. I had to use all my diplomatic skills to calm things down and get him to come back to his homework.

  When Sebastien arrived, I was trying to make dinner with one hand, holding a workbook open in the other, while getting Adrien to recite the wretched lesson. Sebastien gave me a peck on the cheek and asked if I’d had a good day without so much as looking at me. I think that if I’d replied, “No, it was dreadful actually, thanks for asking,” he wouldn’t have noticed.

  I could sense the pressure building but tried my best to ignore it. Adrien found it hard to learn things by heart—he picked things up quickly but was intuitive rather than methodical—and with every line he stumbled over, I could feel my calm evaporating. I was a perfectionist, and I found his sloppiness intolerable.

  Sebastien reappeared from the bedroom, his shirt open and half outside his trousers. He headed straight for the bathroom.

  “I don’t believe it! What on earth is this mess?” he shouted as soon as he went in. “Who did this?”

  “Not me!” retorted Adrien.

  A typical knee-jerk preteen response. I felt obliged to intervene.

  “Sorry, it must have been me, Seb. I was really running late this morning.”

  The growl of a bear in the depths of the apartment.

  Charming!

  He came back into the living room carrying his laptop and immediately flew off the handle again.

  “Why are there crumbs all over the sofa? Adrien! How many times have I told you not to have your snack there!”

  I abandoned my cooking pot and workbook and went to join Sebastien. I was fed up with him arriving stressed out and cross like this; it was becoming a habit. Nonetheless, I tried to calm things down.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll see to it,” I said.

  “No, I’LL do it,” he replied curtly.

  Here we go again . . .

  Sighing deeply, he brushed off the crumbs, then stretched out on the sofa with his computer.

  He had taken off his socks, and for some reason the sight of his toenails wiggling about on the coffee table under my nose irritated me still further. Or maybe it was his complete indifference to the domestic battle I was going to have to deal with before I had the chance to sit down. I usually let things go, but that evening it was all too much for me. I had to say something.

  “Are you OK? I’m not disturbing you, am I?”

  “What’s the matter now?” he snapped.

  “I can’t imagine . . . except that perhaps I might need a bit of help?”

  “What are you going at me for?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, I’m not going at you, I was simply asking you to pay me some attention!”

  “And now you’re shouting at me? Thanks, that’s really great at the end of a hard day’s work! Have you paid me any attention since I got here?”

  “Well, that’s just the goddamn limit! You’re going at me for looking after your son?”

  “There you go again, shouting at me!”

  Seeing a storm brewing, Adrien slipped away into his room, delighted at avoiding his homework.

  “Right, that’s it. I’ve had enough of doing everything myself!”

  “Oh, I see. You’re having one of your usual little hissy fits.”

  “What? You swan in here, ignore me and Adrien, start pissing around on the computer with your little virtual friends . . .”

  “Do you really think I had such a great time today? I’ve been working like a dog, I had three meetings back-to-back, I—”

  “You mean I haven’t been working?”

  “OK, yes, you do work,” he said condescendingly.

  “What are you implying? That working four days a week isn’t the same, or what?”

  “I never said that!”

  “You might as well have!” I cried. I was at the end of my tether. “I’ve had it. Let’s see how you get on without me. I’m taking off my apron. Handing in my notice.”

  “That’s it, quit, why don’t you? Why don’t we get divorced while we’re at it? It seems as though that’s what you want!”

  His words struck me like a boomerang in midflight. Sobbing, I picked up my coat and left the apartment, slamming the door behind me.

  thirteen

  Out in the street, I looked up at our windows and saw my son’s sad face. He drew a heart in the air aimed at me, as if he thought it was his fault Sebastien and I had quarreled. His gesture almost made me cry. I smiled back up at him, and then I set off for a walk: I needed to calm down.

  I was hoping I wouldn’t bump into any neighbors. I didn’t want anyone to see me like this. But that’s ridiculous, worrying about what other people think at a time like this. Still, I avoided looking any passersby in the eye; I was sure my distress was obvious in my face, and I didn’t want them to see. No witnesses to my depression, please.

  I walked to a small square and called Claude.

  “Claude? Camille here . . . Am I disturbing you?” I asked through my sniffles.

  I didn’t have to tell him I was in trouble: he guessed that straightaway.

  “It’s Sebastien; we’ve had a fight. I couldn’t take it anymore. It’s as if there’s a . . . a gulf between us.”

  I told him everything, and it did me good to sense that he was listening so closely to my woes. What luxury to have such a receptive ear.

  “He seems completely incapable of offering me anything I need.”

 
“And what do you need?” Claude shot back.

  “I don’t know . . . I need him to pay attention to me, to be kind and thoughtful. But instead of that, it’s like having a robot in the apartment. He does nothing but moan and then hide behind his computer, in his own little world. I even get jealous of his virtual friends! While he’s online, everything around him could collapse and he wouldn’t notice! And in the meantime I have to be everywhere, looking after Adrien, his homework, cooking dinner. It’s not fair!”

  “I understand, Camille . . .”

  “On top of that, he’s forever telling me I don’t listen to him. But that’s not true. He’s the one who won’t listen! I can’t get a word in; he brings everything back to himself.”

  I was pacing up and down the deserted square, my nerves still jangling.

  “Ah yes, the ‘he’s-the-one-who’ game. That’s not good! In fact, that’s why you can’t hear each other: it’s like two deaf people talking. If you’re listening unwillingly it means you’re not listening at all. To really listen, you have to be able to identify with what the other person is experiencing, to have empathy. You can’t imagine how rare it is to find someone who truly knows how to listen. I often tell myself that whoever knows that will be the king of this world. Camille, remember that in an argument not everything is as it seems: you have to learn to read between the lines to uncover the real emotions. Behind a criticism there may be fear; behind aggression there could be sadness or an unhealed wound.”

  As I listened to him, I drew my coat closer around me. I suddenly felt cold—all these swirling emotions . . .

  “But it’s so hard to listen sympathetically. You should see how he looks at me when we’re arguing. I get the dreadful feeling that . . . that he doesn’t love me!”

  “Mmm . . . That’s interesting. How about replacing that ‘he’ with ‘I’?”

  I was too taken aback to say a word.

  “Yes, you heard me correctly.”

  “I . . . You mean I don’t love myself?”

  “Yes, that’s it, Camille. You tend to interpret your partner’s behavior through the lens of your own negative thoughts. And that distorts everything. Right now you don’t love yourself very much, because you’ve got it into your head that you are less pretty with those few extra pounds and your first little wrinkles. You unconsciously project onto your husband your fear that you are no longer someone to be loved. And if you carry on like that, it’ll become a self-fulfilling prophecy! You’ll have confirmed your worst-case scenario: you’re no longer desirable, and so he doesn’t love you anymore.”

  His words slowly seeped into my mind, but the soothing effect they had was cut short by the arrival of two men in the park. They had hoods pulled up over their heads, and warily, I watched them approach. I had been so desperate to hear what Claude had to say that it had not occurred to me it might be unwise to hang around at night in this deserted square. I quickly made my way toward the exit, trying not to give the impression I was running away. All of a sudden I felt a hand on my shoulder. I cried out and swiveled to break free of his grasp. One of the two men leaned toward me. He was young and reeked of weed.

  “You’ve dropped something,” he said, holding out the scarf I usually tie round the strap of my bag.

  “Ah . . . thanks so much,” I stammered, almost snatching it from him. Then I rushed away.

  At the other end of the line, Claude was getting worried.

  “Hello, Camille? Hello, are you still there?”

  Swiftly back on the well-lit streets of my own neighborhood, I waited for my heart rate to subside before I answered him.

  “I’m sorry, Claude, just a little . . . incident. What were you saying?”

  In order to illustrate what was going on when we argued, he outlined the principle of the “dramatic triangle.” He explained how, in this negative scenario, each person in a relationship could successively play the role of victim, persecutor, and savior.

  “And the problem is that there can never be any positive resolution, unless you quit the game altogether. In your case, here’s what happens: he is the persecutor, because he moans the whole time; you’re the savior when you offer to sweep up the crumbs, but then the victim when you complain he doesn’t help you. Next, you become the persecutor by criticizing him for his behavior, and it’s his turn to be the victim when he complains what a frightful day he’s had, and so on. Each of you swaps roles, unable to find any other way out than the inevitable full-blown argument! But there are ways of getting out of the triangle . . .”

  “What are they? Quick, tell me!”

  “First of all, you need to recognize what’s going on in order to put a stop to the game and wait for a calmer moment when you can renew the dialogue. Second, clearly identify your needs so that you can ask your partner directly and he can see without a decoder what it is you want. If it’s legitimate and reasonable, there’s no reason he shouldn’t agree.”

  “That’s interesting . . .”

  I pressed the mobile to my ear, trying to ignore the fact that my fingertips were freezing. I changed hands and thrust the free one as deep as I could into my coat pocket.

  “You’ll also have to set your limits and tell everyone around you what they are,” Claude went on. “You’re a people pleaser: that means you’re always trying to satisfy the other person’s wishes and you end up sacrificing your own. You’re full of empathy—and of course it’s a good thing to be concerned about someone else’s well-being. But don’t confuse ‘dry empathy’ with ‘wet empathy.’ In the latter, you take on board the other person’s drama; you absorb their negative emotions and end up in a bad way yourself. Dry empathy, on the other hand, means you manage to hear and share the problems of those around you but you don’t let yourself get contaminated by their dark thoughts. You put up a protective shield that stops you getting dragged down—which is very useful! Not to mention the fact that eventually, thanks to feeling that you have to be a ‘good egg’ all the time, you end up blowing a fuse. That’s what happened tonight, wasn’t it?”

  I agreed.

  “Don’t worry. You simply have to make adjustments. Stop being too nice; simply be true to your emotions. And another important thing: learn to ‘steam off stamps’ as you go along, rather than exploding like a pressure cooker, the way you did just now.”

  “Steam off stamps? What does that mean? You want me to write to him?”

  “No, not at all! Steaming off stamps is an expression that means you should show what you’re feeling as you go along. You need to tell your husband what’s upsetting you when it happens.”

  “OK . . .”

  “If you tell him nicely, there’s no reason for him not to listen. Then in the future, when you sense that things are coming to a boil, you can agree with him on a ‘red card.’”

  “A red card?”

  “Yes. You two need to find a signal to warn the other there’s a danger of things turning into an argument. My wife and I do that, and it works wonderfully. It’s like in a car when a red light comes on: you know there’s danger ahead. And if you’re both aware of it, then you can avoid an escalation into aggression.”

  A ping. Another call on my mobile. It must be Sebastien. Should I pick up or not? Not immediately. I sent a text:

  I’m on a call.

  “Camille, are you still there? I heard a ping.”

  “Yes, yes, it was another call. It’s not urgent. I’ll ring back.”

  “Was it your husband?”

  “Yes, but please, go on. This is such good stuff.”

  “OK, Camille. But I’ll be quick: you need to get home, and I have a good book waiting for me by my fire.”

  I hadn’t realized I had kept him on the phone for so long. I felt embarrassed.

  “One last thing that’s important, Camille: you have to learn to criticize without being aggressive. That means
you shouldn’t start your sentences with those ‘you’ accusations. They’re fatal. I call them ‘reproach machine guns’: they’re bound to make the other person blow a fuse. What you need to do is move your FEET.”

  “What’s this got to do with footwork?”

  “They’re initials: F, you remind him of the Facts that have upset you. E, you express your Emotions, what you felt at the time. E, you Encourage him, and T, you call a Truce. That way, it’s a win-win situation for both of you. If we take your argument tonight, it would mean something like: ‘When you hinted that I worked less than you (the Fact), I was upset because I felt you didn’t value me (the Emotion), when I really need you to support and feel proud of me, just as no doubt you do. I think we should give each other tokens of our appreciation more often so that we both feel valued for the contribution we make to the family (the Encouragement that’s constructive for both sides). That should help put a stop to difficulties and misunderstandings (the Truce). What do you think?”

  “Not bad. But people don’t really behave like that.”

  “What’s more important? Behaving naturally or avoiding a hideous fight?”

  I smiled to myself.

  “OK, Claude, I get the idea. But how am I going to sort things out right now? When I left him, he was in a rage. He even mentioned divorce!”

  “Bah, that was just his anger talking . . . I’m sure that if you offer him the hand of reconciliation he won’t refuse it. To take a step toward the other person seems so simple, and yet so few people do it. That’s why there are so many divorces. It’s such a shame! All that wasted love when with a little effort those relationships could be so successful. Although of course, in our hyperconsumerist society, we find it easier to throw things away than to repair them. ‘Great joys come from heaven, little joys from effort,’ as that Chinese proverb says.”

  “Oh, Claude, sometimes I get so sad. I feel as though the glass is always half empty.”

  “There you go again. Your mind keeps sending you negative images. But remember, you can decide it’s got to change!”