Chapter 9

In the beginning, I'm not sure we needed a marriage counselor so much as a referee to break us apart in the clinches. We had so much anger there wasn't room for much else.

By the third session we were able to listen without attacking, though the anger bubbled just below the surface.

Andrea played a short film for us about nothing that had to do with us or our relationship. Then she gave us each a pad and pencil and asked us to write down ten facts about what we'd seen in the film.

It was easier for me. I was trained. When we finished, I read my list.

"That's amazing," said Andrea. "I've never seen anyone do that so well. Your first six were facts, then a conclusion citing the facts, two more facts and a final conclusion. Let's see what you have, Betty."

Somewhere in the middle Betty stumbled onto a fact, an observation of what we had seen. As we went over her list, Andrea explained.

"Most of what you wrote was an interpretation of what you saw based not only on the facts, but on your view of how things work in the world. To put it in terms of the experience in your marriage, you noticed you weren't getting pregnant and concluded something was wrong. When you checked it out, it had to be Randy.

"There didn't have to be anything wrong, that's an interpretation of the fact of not getting pregnant. Then you may have concluded that since everything you were thinking about this was facts, Randy not noticing and not doing something about it showed he didn't care.

"That's an interpretation based on an interpretation based on an interpretation. You can see how easy it is to get to the wrong conclusion when you're doing that. And the further you went, the more interpretations and assumptions you piled on, the easier it became for you to get to the ultimate 'fact': that Randy was a pathetic loser."

Betty groaned. "God, it's painful to hear that phrase. If anything, it describes how I was treating him."

"You did some of that too, Randy. You saw confusing, suspicious behavior and chose to interpret it as this is the same wife I married; it doesn't mean a thing; she's just under stress.

"Had you been able to look at the facts of her behavior, you might have been able to ask yourself: do we have a problem."

I sat up to start to defend myself, but she continued.

"I know, Randy. When you got less ambiguous facts, you recognized them, analyzed them and came up with a plan."

"A pretty stupid plan," I said.

"It does seem to have had its flaws."

That was a tension breaker.

"I think it would be useful if you both went home and considered how your understanding of what we talked about affects how you feel about each other."

"Do you want to kiss and make up, honey?" asked Betty, with a smile, fluttering her lashes.

As I said, the anger had eased, but not that much. I'd rather die, I thought.

But I said, "I don't think I'm ready for that," with flat affect.

I had enough anger left that I couldn't acknowledge the humor in something that was objectively amusing.

We didn't part friends, but I didn't want to rip out her jugular at the moment.

I reported on the session to Karen.

She asked, "Do you think you two will wind up together?"

Everyone's a damn comedian.