It doesn’t matter what you say. I need to gain at least one valuable lesson or insight from everything I go through.
There are many potential lessons I can learn from my bad therapy ending. Here are a few:
I shouldn’t go to a male therapist who I can imagine as a shirtless nineties Calvin Klein or Abercrombie model. I thought it was funny at first. Joke is on me. Aaron’s level of sexuality is dangerous. I’ve had hot men, and I can’t explain what makes him different, but he is. I will work on thinking he’s ugly or too dorky and awkward to be fuckable. That’s a new project for me.
Men always leave me and always will. When I joked to Aaron that I can’t even pay a man (meaning him as a therapist) to stay, he laughed exactly the way that Tim Irving later laughed when I mentioned I was thinking of starting a blog. Humor usually has truth in it.
I’m a failure at therapy. Maybe it’s because I prefer real relationships, but for whatever the reason, I failed therapy and should never try it again.
I can’t tell if a man likes me. I thought I could, and I thought Aaron liked me. I don’t think he’d end things that way with a client he likes though, which means I’m bad at telling when a man likes me.
I’m a hopeless case. This ties in with failing at therapy, except this is deeper because it means I’m so messed up that therapy can do nothing with me.
I give Other Woman vibes. This has really surprised me because I’ve never thought of sleeping around with marrieds as any kind of accomplishment. It always sounds like big work for little reward and doesn’t interest me. But this isn’t the first time wives have gotten upset with me and I haven’t done anything with the men they think they own. These are all women whose leftovers I really don’t want. Do I want to be the woman who Aaron Gleaves has sex with because his wife is too busy or because he’s bored? No that’s a massive turnoff, way more massive than his dick is or any dick, so no, I’d rather have a man who was interested in me and could be with me without hiding and sneaking. Yet the wives get jumpy and upset like they’re tied horses and I’m a she-wolf prowling around at night, so I must be doing something subconsciously. Sure, I could have fun meaningless sex with their husbands, and have my husband at home to do the real things with, but anyone can do that. It’s not a me thing.
Therapists are no more trustworthy than anyone else. Some are, but there’s a popular misconception that therapists don’t talk about their clients. I think believing that is naive.
Male therapists punish their female clients if the relationship gets too close or too complicated for them. Exactly like men who aren’t therapists tend to do. The difference is you don’t ever expect it from your therapist. But when you argue you don’t get to hug your therapist or fuck his brains out later and reassure him that you aren’t mad at him. You just get the fighting part and then he leaves you. It sucks more than any other kind of relationship on the planet. If you upset your therapist and you can tell that talking has stopped working, you are dead in the water. When Aaron was frustrated and thought I was mad at him, I was frustrated about some of what I’d been talking about. And as I tried talking more I could feel it not working and it was hell. I felt like I couldn’t give him the session and mostly I wanted to stop with the fucking stupid talking already. I just wanted to hug him and tell him how much I appreciated him being there for me even when I was challenging to be with and reassure him that I wasn’t mad or disappointed, I was just confused and we could work it out later, no pressure to push through and figure everything out right now. But no, fuck the fucking talking. I fucking hate talk therapy because when talking breaks down, which it does sometimes in any relationship, you and your therapist are totally fucked. I hate it so fucking much that I just hijacked my own fucking post to rant about it. Fuck talking when talking has stopped working. Only therapy makes you keep trying that.
Everybody has a weakness, especially a person who is their weakness. I never expected a beautiful man like Aaron Gleaves would be mine because it seems to cliche and obvious. But he is. I’ve felt very embarrassed about it. I’d have chosen someone different as a weakness, but we don’t get to choose. I have to put in effort to dislike that man, lots of effort even though he clearly hates my fucking guts. If he told me something, I’d stop and actually consider it, even knowing he is disgusted by me. It’s kind of funny, but horrible. The only thing that brings me comfort is knowing that he has a weakness out there somewhere who will hurt him. I just want him to know what it feels like. Years later maybe he’ll call me and tell me how a woman broke him and he wanted to hate her but he still loved her even though it makes zero sense and I’ll be the most understanding listener to him ever, because guy, I know exactly what you mean. You are that to me! And after bonding over similar relationship drama, we’ll finally be friends.
People will get mad at you for talking about what happened, but you’ll be more angry with yourself if you stay silent.
I’m more powerful than I think. I can defend myself even when I have to do it alone.
And finally, a big potential lesson is that there are some answers I might not get.
But that doesn’t stop me from trying to get them anyway.