Untamed

My husband and I began working with a therapist after he admitted that he had been sleeping with other women. Now we save up our problems throughout the week and take them to her on Tuesday evenings. When friends ask me if she’s any good, I say, “I guess so. I mean, we’re still married.”

Today I’ve asked to see her alone. I’m tired and jittery because I spent all night silently rehearsing how to tell her what I’m about to tell her.

I sit quietly in my chair, hands folded in my lap. She sits upright in the chair across from me. She wears a crisp white pantsuit, sensible heels, no makeup. A wooden bookshelf crowded with textbooks and framed degrees climbs the wall behind her like a bean stalk. Her pen is poised above a leather notebook in her lap, ready to pin me down in black and white. I remind myself: Speak calmly and confidently, Glennon, like a grown-up.

“I have something important to tell you. I’ve fallen in love. I am wildly in love. Her name is Abby.”

My therapist’s mouth falls open, just enough for me to notice it. She says nothing for an eternal moment. Then she breathes very deeply and says, “Okay.”

She pauses, starts again. “Glennon, you know that whatever this is—it’s not real. These feelings are not real. Whatever future you’re imagining here: That’s not real, either. This is nothing but a dangerous distraction. It won’t end well. It has to stop.”

I start to say, “You don’t understand. This is different.” But then I think about all the people who have sat in this chair and insisted: This is different.

If she won’t let me have Abby, I need to make my case, at least, for never again having my husband.

“I cannot sleep with him again,” I say. “You know how hard I’ve tried. Sometimes I think I’ve forgiven. But then he climbs on top of me, and I hate him again. It’s been years and I don’t want to be difficult, so I close my eyes and try to float away until it’s over. But then I accidentally land back inside my body, and what I land in is white-hot fiery rage. It’s like: I try to go dead inside but there is always a little life left in me, and that life makes sex unbearable. I can’t be alive during sex, but I can’t get dead enough, either, so there’s no solution. I just—I don’t want to do it anymore.”

I am furious that tears come, but they do. I am begging now. Mercy, please.

Two women. One white suit. Six framed degrees. One open notebook. One pen, poised.

Then: “Glennon, have you tried just giving him blow jobs instead? Many women find blow jobs to be less intimate.”