by M. E. Carter
“I should have done it a long time ago when we first talked about it. It’s just one more thing none of us need to hang on to. Obviously, I’ll share the proceeds with you. Hell, you can have them all if you want.”
“No, no. That’s ok. We’re ok. We don’t need any more money from you.”
I smile at her, knowing she won’t be off the hook that easily. “We can work all that out later, I guess. I just think it’s best to start this new life with no more tainted memories for any of us, ya know?”
“Yeah.” She smiles timidly. “I do.”
We look at each other, neither of us speaking because what is there to say? Sometimes you have to endure a little more pain in order to heal, we both know that. To make sure the infection is completely gone and won’t rear its ugly head again.
Selling the house, quitting my career, I consider that the pain of healing. It’s not fun and it certainly isn’t the way I planned for things to go. But it’s necessary. And hopefully it’s finally the beginning of the rest of my life.
“I’m actually surprised to see you,” Justin announces, as he closes his office door and we make ourselves comfortable on the couches.
His office is pretty much how I pictured it: homey couch, a couple of chairs, bookshelf full of reference material. The only thing that kind of surprises me is that the chairs are recliners, but I can see how that would put some people at ease. It is a therapist’s office after all.
“I know Santos said you were going to come in, but it’s not that often that I see both the ex-husband and the ex-wife.”
I smile at him. I only met him a few minutes ago, but so far, I like him. He’s handsome in a guy-next-door way. He’s got a kind face and is dressed in jeans. It’s more like I’m talking to a friend than to a therapist. No wonder Santos likes him.
“I figured Santos and I have to co-parent for the next seventeen years, so we might as well use the same person and stay on the same page for the kids. I mean, that’s ok, right?” The thought crosses my mind that maybe it’s frowned upon to use the same therapist. Like it might put him in an unethical position. Suddenly, this doesn’t seem like the best idea.
But then he smiles kindly at me, and I feel better again. “It’s absolutely fine. In fact, I think it’s a smart idea. If you guys ever run into any issues with the kids, it’s easier to make family appointments if we all already know each other.”
“Oh. Ok good.” I look around the office again. Now that we’ve gotten the pleasantries out of the way, I’m not sure where to go from here.
“How are the kids?” he asks.
Of course that immediately makes me light up. “They’re doing good. Growing so fast, I can hardly keep up. Part of me is ready for them to be a little older so they can be a little more independent. The other part of me wants them to stay little forever.”
“That seems to be how most parents feel. My wife couldn’t wait for our youngest to finally sleep through the night. The first time she did, my wife cried the next morning that her baby didn’t need her anymore.”
I laugh. “I think I did the same thing.”
“I have no doubt. As a single mom, you don’t really have the luxury of as much rest as co-parents.”
“Yeah. Being a single mom is not as glamorous as you might think,” I say sarcastically. “I kind of… hate it, actually.”
“How come?”
I wring my hands together as I try to put my words together. “I think Santos sort of spoiled me in some ways. He was such an impressive dad. Well, I mean he still is an impressive dad. But he used to be really aware of when I needed a nap or the kids needed to get out and run around. He’s really hands on. But now that we’re on our own, I don’t have the luxury of passing them off to him anymore when I need a break.”
Justin nods in understanding. “Sounds like from a parenting standpoint, you couldn’t really ask for a better father to your kids.”
“Oh, absolutely not! He’s incredible with them. The hardest part of leaving was cutting them off from seeing him every day.” My heart sinks. “I guess that’s the consequence of divorce, right?”
I can feel Justin looking at me as I stare down at my hands. I’m committed to facing my fears and feelings head on, but I didn’t realize therapy would make me feel sad. But that’s what I am. Sad as I think about what I took away from my children, even though I know it had to be done.
“From here, it looks like you’re still really upset about the state of your relationship with Santos.”
“Is that weird?”
“Is what weird?”
“That I’m still so sad? I mean, he cheated on me. Not a little. A lot. From the very beginning. I should be able to just flip him the bird and walk away without feeling like this, right? I don’t really understand why I’m still so sad?”
“Mariana, you’re allowed to feel anything you want. You don’t have to feel happy or angry or even indifferent. You can feel sad. Before you realized what was going on, how was your relationship with him?”
I rub my eye with the heel of my hand. Why will this emotion never go away?
“It was so amazing. He is amazing. He’s my best friend in the whole world. We can practically read each other’s thoughts and finish each other’s sentences. We have the same sense of humor, and we were completely supportive of each other. He’s like… you read in romance novels about that insane kind of love. It’s almost magnetic. It’s really like you are half a person until you meet that other person, right? That’s the only way I can describe what he is to me. He’s my other half.” I find myself smiling as I think about him, but then the reality comes crashing down on me again. “I know I’ll never have another relationship like that again.”
“How come?”
My head snaps up. “What do you mean? Santos was the love of my life.”
“Sounds like he still is.”
“So what are you saying?”
He leans forward and intertwines his fingers. “Let me ask you a question… if Santos hadn’t been cheating on you, would you still be together?”
“Without a doubt.”
“Then what if you started a brand-new relationship with him? A do-over, if you will. Not fixing your last relationship, but starting over from the beginning. Courting, dating, building trust, the whole thing.”
“Because I can’t trust him.”
“That’s what courting is for. No one should trust someone when they first start dating. Trust is built over time. What if he could build your trust from the ground up, leave the past in the past and show you who he is today. Starting now.”
I open my mouth and shut it again. The thought had never crossed my mind. Once you’re divorced, that’s the end of it… right?
“Mariana, please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not encouraging you to go back to him. I’m just showing you that there are other options. Relationships aren’t black and white. There is a lot of gray in there. Not everything works in every relationship. But not everything doesn’t work either.”
My thoughts continue to swirl, as I take in this new perspective. More than anything, I want my best friend back. But is it really that simple? Is it really a matter of building back trust? I have a hard time believing it’s this easy, but part of me really wants to believe it’s possible.
However, there are still a lot of issues to push through. Still a lot of unresolved feelings. And still a lot of questions that need to be answered.
“Um… Santos was telling me I needed to ask you about sex addiction. He said something about him being like an alcoholic.”
I look at Justin, expecting him to explain away Santos’s indiscretions with an easy explanation. But he doesn’t.
“The analogy of the different kinds of alcoholics was to prove a point about the different kinds of sex addiction. But I don’t think he’s a sex addict.”
“You don’t?”
“No. I think he needs to be careful so he doesn’t turn into one. But right now? No, I don�
��t think he’s a sex addict.”
“So he’s just a cheater.”
“I wouldn’t say it’s as simple as that. Let me see if I can help you understand what I think is happening here. Has Santos given you any background on his sexual history? Like how old he was when he lost his virginity?”
“Yeah, of course,” I shrug. “He was about fourteen.”
“Right. Think about this. He was fourteen years old when he first discovered sex. His brain hadn’t stopped growing. His body hadn’t stopped growing. His hormones were still in overdrive. So at that young of an age, his brain was already being wired to want that release. Does that make sense so far?”
I nod.
“Very quickly, he discovers that being a soccer star means he can pretty much find a willing partner anywhere. It might only be one or two girls in any given high school who are having sex with him, but that’s still a lot more than most high school boys.
He leans back in his chair and rests his ankle on his knee before continuing.
“Now let’s switch gears for a minute. Does Santos have any superstitious type routines he goes through on game days? Like hockey players do with No Shave November?”
“Yeah. He has some lucky socks. They only get washed once a year so I always made him keep them at the stadium. They smell awful.”
Justin laughs. “I’m sure. Ok, so just like most professional athletes, he has his own superstitions and swaying from that routine makes him really uncomfortable.”
I shrug. “I guess. I don’t really see what you’re getting at, though.”
“One more thing I want to mention, and then I’ll put it all together. From what he’s told me, I think Santos has legitimate medical issue with his adrenal glands.”
I look at him with confusion. “What? Why would you think that?”
“He’s mentioned several times that after games, he can’t seem to come down off the ‘high’. And that it’s only after sex that he can calm down. From everything I’ve read and researched, one of the chemicals that can help stabilize adrenaline is cortisol, which is one of the many hormones released into the brain during an orgasm.”
“Ok. But I’m still not understanding how this all fits together.”
“I think that at a very young age, Santos was already having problems with his adrenal glands. Coincidentally, by the time the symptoms of a real medical problem would have shown up, he was already extremely sexually active, so without knowing it, he was keeping it under control. As he became more and more active in soccer, his superstitious routines were developed and before you know it, he wasn’t having sex after games just because of the medical issue. It also turned into a very significant pattern.
“Disrupting that pattern, for an athlete, is hard enough. It feels uncomfortable and like it’s jinxing his abilities. Add onto it, without that release, he is very much thrown into an adrenal gland crisis. Individually, all these things are manageable, even if a bit uncomfortable. But put it all together, and he was almost doomed from the start.”
“Wait.” I rub my temples as I try to make sense of it all. “You’re saying Santos cheated on me for all those years because he might have a medical condition that exacerbates his stupid superstitions?”
“In a very basic nutshell, yes.”
I stare at him, mouth open. I want to hear what Justin is saying and having it all make sense… make it all this easy. Instead, it makes me mad. “I call bullshit.”
“Why?”
“Why?” I laugh, humorlessly. “Because we were married for ten years. He could have easily come home and gotten his ‘medical condition,’” I sarcastically use air quotes, “… under control with me. But he didn’t. He chose to go out and bang any groupie who was willing to spread her legs for him. No way. He made a choice. Every time.”
“I agree with you.”
“Good. Because there is no way I’m accepting that as an excuse.”
“I’m not asking you to. And I’m not making excuses for him. Regardless of how difficult the situation was, he had choices and he knew what he was doing.”
I nod and feel my anger deflate. Now I just feel sad again and I hate it.
“What I’m saying is that Santos understands now where the break down came in for himself. He recognizes that he has to modify his normal patterns if he’s going to ever fix his behavior. In this context, the alcoholic analogy kind of works. He needs to stay away from the adrenaline rush, he needs to stay away from the parties, and he needs to stay away from superstitious behavior.”
Suddenly, his resignation makes more sense. “That’s why he quit the team. Like an alcoholic or a drug addict, he has to cut ties with his old life if he’s going to make a new one.”
“It seems that way.”
“But… there’s something I still don’t understand. If that needed to be part of his routine, why didn’t he just come home to get that… from me?” I fight to hold back the tears as my old insecurities come flooding back. Was he revolted by my post-baby body? Was he just revolted by me?
“We’re still working on that when he comes in. But I suspect that has more to do with his own self-esteem issues than anything.”
“How so?”
“Well, I have yet to meet a client who was abandoned by their parents who doesn’t have very deep-seated feelings of inadequacy. Even children who are adopted at birth and have open adoptions struggle with wondering why they weren’t good enough.”
“But I never abandoned him.”
“No, but he talks about you in every session. He has you on a pedestal, Mariana. You are his ideal woman. I think he may have been afraid to share all of that side with you because he was afraid you wouldn’t like him if you knew some of the things he enjoys.”
I roll my eyes. “We had that conversation. He still doesn’t believe me that sometimes a woman just wants to be tossed on the bed and ravished.” I feel myself blush as I look up and realize I just spouted that off to my therapist. A male therapist that I just met.
He chuckles. “My wife and I have had that conversation a time or two.”
I relax a little when he says that.
“But I can tell you as a husband who is deeply, deeply in love with my wife, sometimes it’s hard to remember that she has me on a pedestal, too.”
I look out the window as I process through everything he’s said. There is so much information to consider. So much information to even try to understand. It’s a lot to take in at once.
“Mari,” he asserts, and I look over at him. “I’m not saying you need to get back together with Santos. What I am saying is, it’s ok if you do want to. No one can make the best decision for you except you. But you need all the information in order to do that. You need to know that this was his rock bottom. I’ve not seen a man this broken in a long time. But I’ve also not seen a man this determined to be different in a long time. He’s probably going to be in therapy for the rest of his life, and he’s willing to do that. Not just for you, but for himself. That’s a huge step.”
I nod and look back down at my hands. “I just… I feel like I forgave him. The other day, I had lost Theo and it was this big thing. But anyway, I realized I had been holding on to so much hate toward him. I don’t want to hate him anymore. But I just don’t know how I’m ever supposed to trust him.”
“You’re not,” he concurs with a shrug. “Like I said before, you shouldn’t trust someone when you first meet them. Trust must be developed over time. You haven’t had any time to do that yet. But you forgave him, and that’s a really good first step.”
We chat for a little longer about less difficult topics… mainly the kids and my newly kindled love of photography. We end on a happy note, and I walk out smiling.
But as soon as I get in the car, Justin’s words all flood back. There will never be an excuse for Santos betraying me the way he did, but now there are reasons behind it. That makes my heartache that much more confusing.
Does this mean there is hope for
us in the future? Do I even want to have hope for a future? I just don’t know the answers.
But like Justin said, I can only do one thing at a time. Forgiveness is a good first step. Even if I’m not ready to forget yet.
Applications. Essays. Transcripts. I am up to my eyeballs in paperwork.
I lean back in the chair and stretch my arms over my head, pretending not to notice Mari watching my shirt ride up showing a bit of my abs. I cover my smile by leaning my head back and stretching some more. It’s a good feeling, knowing she’s still attracted to me.
As the front legs of the chair land back on the ground, I start watching what the kids are doing. Really watching. I know they’ve been playing together, but I was so lost in the spider web of online applications that I wasn’t really paying attention to their game.
“What are they actually doing?” I ask Mari. She’s sitting next to me at the table on her own laptop, some of her pictures on the screen.
Without even looking up at them, she knows exactly what they’re doing. “Playing the world’s worst game of hide and seek.”
I focus my attention on the kids again and she’s right. It is, in fact, the world’s worst version of this game. I watch as Lina hides her eyes and begins to count. Being that she’s only three, she skips a few numbers and adds a few of her own. I’m not sure I know what “forty-teen” is or where exactly it falls on the number line, but it doesn’t seem to faze the others.
Myra finds a super hard hiding spot under a glass table. And Theo hides behind his hands. I don’t think we’ll be calling Mensa any time soon.
I snort a laugh as I watch Lina “find” Theo first and then the girls make him try and count. Instead, he ends up chasing them down the hall when they run to hide, giggling the whole way.
“I’m a little worried about them.”
“How come?” she asks, as she keeps clicking away on the computer.
“Have you watched them play hide and seek before?”
“Yeah. So?”
“We didn’t make the brightest kids, did we?”
She laughs. “Yeah, I’m assuming Theo will eventually realize he doesn’t actually become invisible when he hides behind his eyes. That could make it very embarrassing when he tries to sneak out someday.”
