February Sucks - Sessions

I remembered. It had been a hard couple of months for us, since the supply chain for spare parts was so messed up. One car for a while, having to tighten our belts, her guilt, my frustration, all of it. It was the closest we'd come to actually fighting again, raised voices and slammed doors fighting, in years. Until Asshole.

"I assume you'd give similar answers to questions related to cooking, money management, basically all of the things you'd do on any given day to get through life? That you're capable enough to do the everyday things, but bring in a professional or a specialist when necessary?"

I could see where this was going, and I didn't like it. "If you're saying-- "

She begged forbearance. "Please, it will all make sense if you let me explain. Or, at least, you'll understand Linda's thought processes." I closed my mouth and nodded grumpily.

"For such a beautiful woman, Linda is very insecure. About her appearance, yes, but also about her status in the world. She surrounded herself with people that always told the two of you that your relationship was the best of any of theirs, couples she could feel superior to. But that was damning with faint praise, especially when you consider that all of them would gaslight you and try to keep you from stopping her, and that at least one wife freely admitted she'd cheat on her husband if given the same opportunity Linda had received.

"Linda tried to force you through the recovery process in order to reclaim her sense of self; it was important to her to believe that she was a good person, and when you finally got through to her that, no, nothing that she'd done were the actions of a 'good' person, she had a meltdown. A meltdown that you had to help her recover from, that she tried to make you feel guilty about her having in the first place. And once she learned that Ellen was a prostitute, she started taking digs at you to keep you 'in your place,' which she saw as at her side; well, at her side, but lower in the pecking order. She kept intentionally doing things to you that hurt you in order to reconcile who she actually was with who she thought she was."

I nodded slowly. That all sounded about right.

"From everything she said, you have been a very good husband. You tried to not deny her anything, and if you did, it was only when your family couldn't afford it. Or if you needed to do something to take care of the kids that would prevent it. You were a giving lover, a great parent, and a loyal companion. You made her feel safe and loved. Well cared for."

I ground my teeth in frustration, and Liz took on a sympathetic tone. "Please don't misunderstand, Jim. Those are all good things. They're things a husband should be willing to do for his wife. But they're also things a wife should be willing to do for her husband, and somewhere along the way, Linda lost sight of that.

"As part of that, as part of being a good husband, if there were things you couldn't do for her, you still made sure they got done. You're not the best cook, so you took her out to dinner on special occasions. You have a brown thumb, so you hired a landscaper to help get her flower garden going."

I scoffed. "So because I wasn't the best fuck, I was supposed to let her sleep with Asshole?"

Liz got a sour look; she didn't like profanity when it could be avoided. "Not precisely, but I'm getting there. You're a good dancer, but Marc was excellent. He could have been a teacher. You're a handsome man, but he's got movie star looks. She knew that you wanted the best for her, would bring in a specialist to help out where necessary, so she..." Liz shook her head, as if she couldn't believe the idiocy of the Linda's ideas. "So she thought, at least subconsciously, that this was no different, at least at first. It was just a skilled dance with a handsome man; you might have been irritated, but no more than when you had to give up on fixing the sink and call a plumber."

I rubbed my temples. What the actual fuck.

"And then the seed is planted. Her husband wants her to have the best, will go to great lengths to make sure she has it; he's already let her dance with As..." She caught herself. "Marc, so why wouldn't he indulge her a little more? Oh, he might be upset, but no more so than when she got in that car accident that stressed your marriage for a couple of months. This was just another case of going to a specialist you couldn't really afford to supply something you couldn't give her on your own. You kept your temper under control for that accident, like you had for years, so why wouldn't you for this? She knew you forgave her and still loved her even after that mistake; she thought this would be the same.

"But then it wasn't. And you didn't. And her marriage started to fall apart. Linda got more desperate, had to convince both you and herself that she'd done nothing wrong. That it was you that was being unreasonable, because this was fundamentally the same thing as when she wrecked your car; only the details were a little different. And when that failed, she had to start getting digs in at you that this was your fault. Why didn't you stop her? You could have kept her from dancing; never mind that her friends stopped you. You could have kept her from leaving; just ignore that she did everything she could to prevent that. And so on and so on."

"Jesus." I hated to admit how much sense this made, from a certain twisted point of view. It fit with everything Linda had done. If I'd been a worse husband, she'd never have thought this was okay. If she was less insecure, she wouldn't have needed this kind of adulation from a stranger.

Liz nodded sympathetically. "Please don't misunderstand, Jim. I hope you find someone else again, and I hope you're able to give this much love to them. Don't take what happened with Linda as an indictment of you or of women in general." I nodded, bitterness still clearly visible in my expression.

"My job is to act as a neutral arbiter in order to establish effective communication. To help people find out if they can move past their problems, and then to help them work through them together. I try to find the good and the bad both in what each partner has done in order to facilitate that."

Her tone softened. "And I rarely say things like this, almost never: you didn't deserve, on any level, what she did to you. And she didn't deserve you."

"Thank you."

"I want you to know that I'm going to try to continue working to try to get her to understand everything we've just talked about. I think that, without the short, sharp shock this divorce is going to give her, she'd never fully accept what she did was wrong. Or why it was so wrong. I know that she's not really your concern anymore-- "

I barked a short, angry laugh.

" -- But you are, even in this, doing the best thing you can for her. I don't know if that makes you feel better or worse; considering the type of man you seem to be, I think it's probably the former." Liz's eyes twinkled. "Even if that does really fucking piss you off." I chuckled. I guess she did have it in her after all.

She looked at the clock. "Well, I don't think we need to tell the court how long you were here. A session is a session, as far as I'm concerned. If you'd like to talk with me some more, I'm happy to stay, but I think you might want to digest this by yourself." I nodded, thanked her, and left.

Therapy with Tom, Session 59 - Middle of October

"You're looking well, Jim. How are the kids?"

I smiled. "They're doing really good. It was rough for them at first, but Linda's turned out to be a surprisingly good co-parent." I knew she loved the kids, that one night aside; after all, they were safe at a sitter's, and she thought I'd just get a little miffed and things would be fine. It's probably why she suggested full shared custody. That surprised the hell out of me.

"Liz has ended up being a really big help with the transition. The kids understand that what happened with their mom and me wasn't because of them, and it doesn't mean we love them any less." I sighed. "Honestly, they were better almost immediately; kids are smart. They knew something hadn't been right in our home for a long time. You're right. This is better for them. Even Linda has improved. She's apologized, really apologized for everything she did. Those sessions with Liz seem to really be helping her, too."

He grinned. "I'm glad to hear that. And how are you doing? All settled in?"

I shrugged. "Place is a little small, especially when the kids visit visit, but it'll do for now. I'm looking for another job; too many bad memories there, and I realized I have more marketable skills than I thought. Linda's need for stability above all else, at least when it came to me, really screwed me over."

I smiled at a pleasant memory. "And I'm still seeing Josie. It's early days yet, but she spent the night a few days ago, and we're planning for her to do so again soon. She understands me wanting to go slow; her divorce did a number on her, too."

Tom nodded happily at me. "Well, then. Can you think of anything specific you'd like to talk about today?"

I sat there, perplexed for a while. I... I couldn't. "You know? I can't think of a single thing right now." I grinned at our conversation from over a year ago.. "Maybe we really can just hang out today."

He laughed and stood up. "Well, if we're going to do that, I'm going to go get my jacket. We'll grab some lunch; you're buying." I opened my mouth to object. "It's still less expensive than my hourly fees." Fair point.

We left the office, and I realized this was probably it. I didn't see a need to come back and keep seeing Tom as my therapist. The things that had happened to me were in the past, and that was where I was going to leave them.

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I want to be clear: everything I say next is not, in any way, talking shit about February Sucks. GoergeAnderson's original story is one of the best, most divisive, and most emotionally evocative stories on this site. I only wish I could write something that sparked that much discussion.

This story, my ending to February Sucks, is the reason I got back into creative writing after decades away. The original story bored its way into my brain, like it did for a lot of folks. I've reread it multiple times trying to figure out why it sticks in our heads so well. And I think I finally hit on the reason: it's like a nightmare.

I don't mean that in a metaphorical sense. Yes, if it happened to you, it would be a nightmare, the worst month of your life, but that's not the point. It's got nightmare logic throughout. Not weird nightmares, with zombies and falling forever and vampires and the end of the world; it's a lot more subtle than that. It's the type of nightmare where you dream that your wife did something outlandishly bad to you. Then you wake up actually mad at them, and then stay that way for the rest of the day. Maybe the rest of the week. You know it's irrational, and what happened in the dream was too outlandish to actually ever happen, but it's how you feel.

Any two or three things that happen in the original story would be plausible together: A famous person sweeps your wife off her feet AND it's in public. Your wife cheats on you AND she doesn't seem sorry afterwards AND a family friend tells you to suck it up and stay together for the kids. Either of those works as a reasonably realistic story. But if you take all of those and then lump on the fifteen or twenty other things that happen in the original story, it starts to feel like a nightmare. All it's missing are having all of your teeth falling out and having to take your final exam naked after missing all your classes for the semester.

So I wanted to find a reason that all of those things could at least conceivably happen in a realistic way. And the answer to that, the one I came up with, was simple: 90% of the things in the story happen because one pivotal character is a delusional narcissist. The other 10% are either because one character is a meddling busybody with a superiority complex or another is a predatory asshole that hits on married women. The strings of ANDs get turned into two ANDs and a BECAUSE. "A football player beds a man's wife AND his life becomes miserable BECAUSE she's a narcissist that surrounds their family with enablers AND also because his only source of outside help beyond that circle is an old-fashioned busybody with a superiority complex."

As an aside, I'd argue that Linda's motivation in my version, and her journey to that motivation, work for a wide variety of Martian Slut Ray characters. This is particularly the case where the husband is supposed to be almost mythically good, generous, and tolerant of his wife's foibles. It's not necessarily realistic, but it has a certain verisimilitude. It was Susan's motivation in "I Know My Wife," for example.

Thanks again to GeorgeAnderson for the wonderful story and for getting me writing again. I hope y'all enjoyed it.