The Seducer

by Claudia Moscovici

  “It seems to me that Rob’s bringing up another good point. Michael treated you well in a manner of speaking,” the psychiatrist qualified. “Because people like him push the envelope. The more you give in, the more they claim as rightfully theirs. Apparently, when you disagreed with him, Michael withdrew his approval. It was a form of Pavlovian conditioning. The carrot and stick.”

  “Except for the fact that, for the most part, the stick was merely the absence of the carrot and the carrot was always so sweet,” Ana reworked the analogy, to give it a more positive spin. “Rob called Michael domineering. But, actually, up until our last days together, he never behaved that way with me.”

  “Michael’s carrot was covered in shit,” Rob encapsulated his personal opinion of his rival. “But you were so smitten with this guy, and he filled your head with so many lies and empty promises, that when he told you it was candy, you believed him and even thought it tasted sweet.”

  Dr. Emmert smiled, appreciating the Freudian slip. He decided to lead Ana to this unpalatable conclusion more gently, however, by reexamining her own experiences. “You keep on saying, ‘until the last days,’ or ‘up until the end,’” he observed. “Did Michael change his pattern of behavior with you?”

  “Yes. During our last few weeks together, right after we told our partners about the affair,” she recounted, “he become much colder and bossy with me. But that’s in part because I also became moody, since it hurt me to hurt my family. We all went through a difficult time during those last few weeks, for obvious reasons,” she didn’t want to target her lover in particular.

  “The reasons are obvious!” Rob concurred. “When real life hit you, your boyfriend showed his true colors.”

  “I’m sure that the difficulties you experienced with your family affected Michael’s change of attitude towards you,” Dr. Emmert commented, attempting to steer a middle course despite his sympathy for Rob, as the wronged spouse. “But I suspect that was only an accelerant.” Ana stared at him blankly. “By that I mean that the stick would have probably come in due time, once you were more fully under his control. Because manipulative and controlling behavior, which is what you’ve described so far, tends to increase in severity over time.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to explain to her,” Rob responded. “The guy’s a bully.”

  Ana reflex was to refute his claim. But, this time, she resisted that instinct. “Possibly,” she breathed out, more of a sigh than a statement. “I know that if I had continued to refuse to marry him, I feared that Michael would leave me. He often told me that I was irreplaceable to him and that our love was special. But I still felt like if I did something that displeased him, the punishment would be disproportionate to the crime, so to speak.”

  “This sense of entitlement is the foundation of emotional abuse,” Dr. Emmert said, jotting down some notes. “Controlling individuals always want to be the ones in charge. Their demands are sometimes disguised as polite requests. But, ultimately, they aren’t requests, because when you don’t do what they ask, they retaliate.” He paused for a moment then added, to jog Ana’s memory, “By lying, cheating on you, or doing something else to hurt you.”

  “Not that you’re incapable of behaving that way yourself,” Rob turned the tables on his wife.

  “I realize that I’m no angel either,” she readily conceded. “But what I’m trying to describe is somewhat different and ...” she looked to the side, searching for the right word, “... more general.” The therapist’s explanation made perfect sense to her. “As Dr. Emmert said, Michael had a sense of entitlement towards everyone and everything. He lived life according to his own rules, which he made up as he went along,” she imperceptibly began to switch sides. She paused to glance out the window, at the light gray haze of that overcast spring day, which seemed to capture the nebulous nature of her misgivings, then turned back to the psychiatrist: “Even in the beginning, when he acted so nice to me, something about Michael’s behavior led me to believe that his affection was entirely conditional.”

  “... upon you doing everything he wanted,” her husband completed her sentence.

  “Or nearly,” Ana cautiously agreed. “He definitely wanted to get his way on pretty much everything. He even tried to prescribe the clothes I wore around him. It always had to be short skirts or mini-dresses. Never pants or jeans, not even when it was cold outside.” Ana felt ashamed, as soon as she voiced the idea out loud, that a grown woman would take instructions on what to wear from a man. But during the months when Michael was wooing her, she recalled, she rarely felt like she was being pressured to do anything against her will. She felt like a spoiled girlfriend indulging her lover with little favors intended to please and excite them both.

  “Then you see,” Dr. Emmert responded, “This form of positive conditioning can be even more powerful than overt domination.”

  “I guess when his controlling behavior came in the form of niceness and affection, it was hard for me to recognize it as a form of abuse,” Ana replied.

  “Sure. But you did everything Michael wanted for as long as he acted nice to you,” the therapist pointed out. “And when you didn’t, I presume, you saw his true colors. The man behind the mask, so to speak.”

  “There was no mask!” Ana protested. “Michael was really in love with me.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” the therapist conceded. “In his own way....”

  Ana looked at him, intrigued by this qualifier, which she had been tempted to use herself on a number of occasions. “What do you mean?”

  Dr. Emmert leaned forward in his chair and gazed probingly into her eyes: “Have you ever wanted a piece of jewelry really badly?” he asked her. When Ana came in, he had noticed that she wore a diamond ring as well as a pair of aquamarine earrings and a matching pendant.

  “She wants jewelry all the time,” her husband commented. “For every special occasion—Christmas, her birthday, Valentine’s Day, our anniversary, you name it. She always asks for jewelry,” Rob observed, his hand moving defensively towards his wallet.

  “Guilty as charged!” Ana admitted with a smile. “What can I say? I know what I like.”

  “But if you like each piece of jewelry that much, then why do you keep on wanting more?” the psychiatrist pursued.

  “Because I like each new piece even better.”

  “Well, that’s exactly how Michael desires women. As possessions. His need to possess you was quite genuine but shallow. Without any real consideration for your wellbeing. In a few days, weeks or months after you moved in with him, he’d have become obsessed with someone new. Of course, since I don’t personally know this guy, I can’t make a firm diagnosis. But from what you, yourself, have told me about him, Michael seems to have emotional intensity without depth,” the psychiatrist observed.

  This explanation oversimplifies everything, Ana attempted to protect the integrity of her pleasant memories. “I’m not sure I entirely agree with your jewelry analogy. While we were together, Michael only had eyes for me. All of his attention was focused on our relationship.”

  Dr. Emmert smiled knowingly. “Sure. That fits with the psychological picture I was sketching. Or at least, it doesn’t contradict it. People like Michael have a kind of predatory hunger for what they want. Lately, that happened to be you. They have an uncanny ability to focus on that person or goal to the exclusion of everything and everyone else. And this powerful obsession generally lasts for as long as they don’t yet possess what they want. But once their target is within their grasp, they get bored. Once they lose interest they move on to someone—of something—else.”

  Ana considered his statement. She recalled that Michael acted like he loved her during the entire year together. He changed only after she too became more difficult. “I sometimes tell myself that if I hadn’t become so moody and impatient with Michael at the end, he’d also have behaved differently towards me,” she said, thinking out loud.

  “So you’re saying that you re
gret staying with me?” Rob asked her, stung.

  “Not at all,” Ana replied, obliged to go on the defensive again. It occurred to her that it was difficult to strike the right balance in this session. She couldn’t be completely honest with the therapist while also remaining tactful towards her husband. She opted for erring on the side of honesty. Without it, she sensed, the therapy would be meaningless. But antagonizing Rob didn’t help matters either. It defeated the whole purpose of couples’ counseling. “It’s just that Michael’s change in behavior towards the end really puzzled me. And sometimes I blame myself for it.”

  “Why so?” Dr. Emmert asked her.

  Ana shook her head, as if to dissipate the haze. “I feel guilty towards everyone. Rob, the kids and even Michael.”

  Rob couldn’t believe his ears. “Towards Michael? He’s the one that manipulated and hurt everyone, including you!”

  “I hate to say this so often, but in this case I think Rob’s right. I can understand why you’d feel guilty towards your family,” Dr. Emmert commented calmly, to diffuse the tension. “But it seems to me that feeling guilty towards Michael is a distortion of your conscience.”

  “He reproached me that I’m the one who bailed out on our relationship.”

  The therapist nodded. “And why did you?”

  “Because I love my family. And because I became frightened by Michael’s behavior,” she admitted more openly. “Ultimately, I couldn’t place my trust in him.”

  “What were you afraid of?”

  Ana gesticulated vaguely. “Towards the end, I became afraid of everything.” Thinking of how to describe that fear most succinctly, she recalled something her lover had told her early on in their relationship. “His first girlfriend called him a snake,” she said out loud, as if that epithet were particularly relevant.

  “She was quite perceptive,” Rob commented.

  “Michael told me that she’s the one who left him. Which made me wonder why she called him a snake ...”

  “Why do you think?” Dr. Emmert threw the question back at her.

  Ana looked out the window trying to think of a way of formulating her intuition. “Because what I’ve come to realize is that with Michael you never know when he’ll turn around and bite you.”

  “Then why do you blame yourself for leaving him? Especially given everything at stake for you and your family?” the therapist inquired.

  “I don’t know,” she sank once again into ambivalence.

  “The reason is clear,” Rob stated. “She was completely brainwashed by that guy.”

  “I’m nobody’s puppet,” Ana protested.

  “Do you feel that if you had behaved differently at the end, he’d have been good to you?” the therapist pursued, steering the dialogue away from mutual insults.

  “That’s what I hoped. I thought that if I treated Michael right, loved him with all my heart and did my best to make him happy, he’d never hurt me.”

  “Love can’t solve everything. Especially if it doesn’t exist in the first place,” Dr. Emmert commented. “But the metaphor you used is quite helpful. Just look at Michael as a pet snake. No matter how nice and loving you are to him, he won’t grow fur and become a puppy. Sooner or later, he’ll attack you.” He stole a glance at Rob, who from the very start had intuitively struck him as a decent fellow. “If you became Michael’s partner, you’d have seen the difference between the dominance bond he established with you and real love.”

  “His fiancée didn’t see it. She still loves him,” was the only defense Ana could muster.

  Dr. Emmert shrugged. “Women who stay with such men generally suffer from low self-esteem or have some kind of martyr complex.”

  “That’s Karen alright!” Ana whole-heartedly agreed. “She does everything she can to please him. Everything,” she emphasized.

  “And look how he nicely he’s rewarded her for her efforts,” Rob said.

  “But Rob, Karen’s not exactly perfect either,” Ana objected. She recalled Michael’s explanation, during one of their early encounters when they had confided in each another like old friends. He had told her that no matter how hard he worked on their relationship, Karen remained reserved towards him. “She’s cold and distant.”

  “Or so he claims ...” Dr. Emmert supplemented her sentence. “At the same time, you said that she does everything to please him,” he pointed out the contradiction.

  “That much is true,” Ana shrugged, as if there was nothing she could do to resolve this apparent paradox. “She does everything within her powers. But the fact remains, she’s not all that powerful. Like Michael said, Karen lacks the qualities to make him happy,” she concluded. “No matter how hard she tries, she’s not warm, sexy or interesting enough for him.”

  Rob shook his head. “When you say things like this, Ana, I don’t even recognize the smart woman I fell in love with. Most men who cheat say that about their wives to their lovers. It’s just words. Ready-made, cheap excuses.”

  Dr. Emmert smiled cynically. “To pursue Rob’s point in a slightly different direction, don’t you think that if you had become his partner you would have eventually run up against the same wall?” he asked Ana.

  “Maybe ...” she hesitated, instinctively placing her fingers to her forehead, to sort through a painful recollection. “Our relationship became so confusing and stressful at the end that I couldn’t tell who was to blame for what anymore,” she attempted to soften the picture.

  Seeing her stubbornness resurface, Dr. Emmert folded his hands. “Just out of curiosity. Why is it that you believed everything this man told you? Why did you accept his side of the story about Karen? Did Michael ever give you any compelling reason to trust him?” he reverted to the Socratic approach, which seemed to yield most progress.

  Ana leaned slightly forward in her chair. “It’s not just about what he said to me,” she explained. “It’s more about how he said it. He spoke in this calm, soothing voice and looked straight into my eyes. It was really hypnotic. At any rate, he seemed very sincere. There was no fidgeting, no looking away, no nervousness whatsoever, like when people lie to you.”

  “My point exactly! The fact this guy could lie as easily as normal people breathe should have made you run away from him as fast as possible,” Rob remarked.

  “It sounds to me like Michael’s slick style obscured your reason,” the psychiatrist concurred. “You were so distracted by this guy’s smooth manner that you didn’t pay enough attention to the content of his words. Because if he had, indeed, concluded that Karen wasn’t compatible with him and that he didn’t love her, then why didn’t he leave her?”

  “I asked him this very question on a number of occasions.”

  “And?”

  “He never really gave me a satisfactory answer.”

  “That’s because he couldn’t admit right off the bat that he wanted to string along both of you, plus several more women on the side,” Rob said, running out of patience with his wife’s inexplicable naiveté, which, he felt, bordered on stupidity. That’s not the Ana I knew, he thought, once again having the eerie sensation that his wife had become a different person, a stranger, as a result of this experience.

  “What did he tell you?” Dr. Emmert asked her.

  “He said that it’s because he didn’t want to be left all alone,” Ana replied mechanically, as if citing an answer in a foreign tongue that she didn’t fully comprehend.

  The therapist smiled knowingly. “I see. And, given that he already had you and thus wasn’t all alone, that explanation didn’t ring false to your ears?”

  “Sure it did,” Ana admitted. “I never quite understood why Michael wanted to hold on to a woman that he didn’t love anymore.”

  “Maybe that’s because he always needs to have someone to control and manipulate,” Dr. Emmert offered his own hypothesis. “Sexual conquests may not be sufficiently stimulating for him.”

  Ana considered his reply, then her eyes lit up with a recollection of a
more generous interpretation. Given how all of the therapist’s explanations were systematically unsympathetic towards her lover, she felt like she needed to point out the other side of the coin. “Early on, Michael gave me an answer that kind of made sense to me at the time. He said that he was a hopeless romantic, like me. That’s why he never lost hope on the relationship with Karen. I guess he was still trying to make it work,” she half-heartedly suggested, since this answer no longer rang convincing to her.

  “By cheating and lying to her?” Dr. Emmert asked, raising an eyebrow. “Did his answer seem even remotely plausible to you?”

  “It sure did, since that’s exactly how Ana worked on our relationship!” Rob sullenly interjected.

  Ana had no reply. She couldn’t defend Michael’s behavior. She couldn’t even defend her own, for that matter.

  Dr. Emmert sensed they had reached an impasse. “It seems to me like you’re engaged in a few denial strategies of your own,” the psychiatrist observed, gazing in passing at his watch. He needed to bring the session to a close in the few minutes they had left. “Unfortunately, for some reason, and only you can tell us why, you’re still struggling to hold on to an idealized image of Michael and of your relationship with him. This will make it practically impossible for you and your husband to work on your marriage in good faith.”

  “That’s what I’ve been telling her and why I persuaded her we needed therapy,” Rob commented. But the session hadn’t been as helpful as he had hoped. He felt ignored yet also validated during this therapy session, which had revolved around Ana and her former lover rather than their marriage.

  “For as long as you believe that Michael’s the perfect standard by which to judge all other men, including your husband,” Dr. Emmert pursued, “you can’t focus on improving your relationship with Rob.” The psychiatrist’s gaze passed back and forth from husband to wife. “So if you guys are interested in having another meeting with me, I’d like to suggest the following exercise: think about what was missing from your marriage that you’d like to accomplish together. Also,” he addressed Ana in particular, “ask yourself what was missing in Michael as a partner. In other words, continue to de-idealize this fantasy you’ve constructed of the perfect love story. Because, as you’re no doubt beginning to see, your relationship with him wasn’t nearly as perfect as you initially believed. In fact, in many respects it was the opposite of what it seemed to be.”