The Good Therapist

"In spite of all that, it wasn't until a month later that it hit me. I was thinking of all the crap she'd put me through and then I remembered that day at The Crab Shack when she saw a friend from one of her meetings in the bar. I remembered the friend of unspoken gender that I was not allowed to meet. Son of a bitch! That was him! She ditched me to spend the afternoon with her fuck buddy. No wonder she came home sober. She wasn't drinking all afternoon; she was fucking him!

"Then about a week later I remembered that maybe three or four months before the Crab Shack incident she had told me that she was thinking about taking dance lessons. I told her, 'Great! I'd love to take dance lessons with you. We haven't danced in a long time, and I'd like to be better at it.' She never brought it up again and we never did it. That's when I realize she was trying to ditch me then as well and I'll bet you anything she was going to take dance lessons with her asshole fuck buddy or just use it as an excuse to spend time with him!

"All this has been running through my mind. I've had this churning, overturning knot in my gut and I finally realize she'd been lying to my face for over a year. And she's so good at it! She just lied right to my face every day, and I was too stupid to catch on. No wonder she doesn't respect me!"

"I want to stop you right there." My therapist was leaning forward in his chair to make the point. "There's no great trick to lying to someone who trusts you. That's the easiest thing in the world. It's why it's such a loathsome thing to do. When you give your trust to someone wholly and completely, you don't watch for deception. If you do, then you aren't trusting them. Don't kick yourself for that. The lies are on her; remember that."

I nodded in agreement. I knew at some level he was right, but when you've been blindsided like that it's a hard road back to self-respect.

"Once I finally realized that she'd been cheating on me, my attitude changed a lot. I was pissed, and I started protecting myself at the same time. After she told me about her cruise, and she told me the guy's name, I started seeing her psychiatrist's hand in all of it. She wouldn't have told me any of that if he hadn't convinced her to do it.

"The pieces kept falling into place. His name is Sean. About a year earlier she had been asking me questions about the Celtic folk music I listen to. I always thought she liked it, too, but I guess she was just humoring me. When I asked her why the sudden interest, she just mentioned that she had a friend in one of her meetings who was Irish, and she wanted to be able to talk with THEM about music. I remembered her saying "them", not "him" or "her". Her damn affair had been going on for at least a year.

"That's when I started thinking about my own life going forward. I realized that I was standing at the top of a very slippery slope, and I could fall so easily. I made some choices at that point that I suppose some people would think were strange. I knew his first name, I knew he was Irish, I knew he was a maintenance guy at a local apartment complex, and I knew he was a drinker. I decided that was all I ever wanted to know. If I knew his last name, I could learn where he lived. If I knew where he lived, I could check him out. I could wait behind a tree one night and crack him with a bat until he never walked right again."

"Would you really do that?"

"I don't know. I honestly don't know, and I don't want to find out. If all I ever know is what I know now, then I will be able to walk right past him on the street and not recognize him. I like that idea. If I can't recognize him, then he can't ruin another day of my life. He exists, but he has no power over me."

"That's an interesting way to think about it. Are you comfortable with that?"

"I'm a lot more comfortable with that than I would be having to resist the urge to kill him. It's not like I don't think of her at night and think of her being with him. Even now, there's that temptation to hunt him down and take back my manhood."

"Is he worth it?"

"Not a damn bit. He's dirt under my shoe. He's lower than the dog crap I scrape off the bottom of my boot. He's just a drunk who fucks another man's wife behind his back. He's a coward."

"Let's put that on the list of things worth talking about, okay?"

"Sure, as long as you don't try to convince me of his inherent worth as a human being."

The therapist was smiling now. "Don't worry. I'm not that good a salesman. So, what is it you want to work on?"

"I don't know. I'm working through the rejection, and I still don't understand why she did it? I'm trying to understand what happened and figure out what I could have done better. Fourteen years leaves a big thud when you drop it off alongside the road."

"I think we have plenty to work with here and we're off to a good start. Our time is about up today, but I want to leave you with one thought. I want you to consider the possibility that when people we love and trust do bad things that hurt us deeply, it isn't always our fault."

"Yeah. I know the words. It's the reality I'm struggling with."

"Do you have friends and family in the area you can talk with?"

"Yeah. I wouldn't have made it this far without them. I've been fairly open with a few friends I can trust. Until recently, I worried about slandering her and ruining her reputation. I can't honestly say I'm worried about that any longer." I had to chuckle quietly as I said that. "The hardest thing was telling my family. They loved her. They opened their hearts to her and took her in as a new daughter and sister. I finally decided I'd had enough, and I just dumped it all in the middle of the living room. They felt as much betrayed by her as I did. They were stunned, but they closed ranks and supported me."

"You're going to get through this. I'm not going to worry about you. We'll get together and talk; we'll work through it. Does this time next week work for you?"

"Yeah."

"Good. I'll see you then. In the meantime, go visit your family, drink a beer with your friends, and keep resisting the urge to go after him with a baseball bat. You don't deserve those kinds of problems."

He finally had me smiling. "I don't even own a bat, but I do know where to get one if I need it."

"Don't, and I'll see you next week."

That was how it started. I met him weekly for a time and then every other week until we tapered off. All told, we met for about a year. He saw me through the pain of my divorce, helped me make peace with the betrayal, and kept seeing me once a month until my life seemed normal again. Looking back I see the pain and loss of my marriage, but I also see the support of friends and family and the rebuilding of a life that is better now than it was before. I think I came out of this feeling pretty good about myself and the time for looking back is over.

As for my ex-wife, what do you think? She hitched her wagon to a drunk who chases married women. They didn't need my revenge; they brought down their own pain and eventual demise. A drunk who sneaks behind the back of a married man to screw his wife and the wife he screws don't make for good life partners. I never did get answers to many of the questions that drove me to seek a therapist, questions like "Why?", but it no longer matters. I've moved on.

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I never met the other man or saw his face. Why would I want to? He was nothing in the greater scheme of things. He was just a coward who screwed other men's wives behind their back, and he would never be more than that. I knew he existed, I knew what they did, and I knew my future was elsewhere. I can't tell you how beating a man nearly to death eases the pain of betrayal because it doesn't, but I can tell you about the healing touch of family, how laughter and a beer with friends can change your life, and the way time heals all wounds. Sometimes the best revenge is just to walk away.