“Why is it up to you to save her? Can’t she save herself?”
“Yes, yes, but I’m the one that put her in this hell.”
“We’ve talked about you taking all the blame.”
He frowned. Bob had never allowed me to even suggest anything disparaging about his wife. She was above reproach. She was an angel. She was innocent.
“She’s not the one surfing the Internet, jerking off to pretty little girls who whisper dirty words to me in the middle of the afternoon. Maybe…” he said, and then stopped again. Outside my second-floor window a car horn honked.
“Yes?”
“Maybe I need to find another therapist.”
This didn’t come as a surprise. Often a frustrated patient imagines another doctor will be the solution.
“We can talk about that. But first, tell me what’s going on at home.”
“My wife is having…she’s gone into some sort of new crisis. It’s not just a depression anymore, it’s a meltdown. And it’s completely my fault. She’s erratic. Volatile. Angry one minute, crying the next. I can’t stand it. I’ll do anything to stop it. To make her happy.” He hesitated. “If I can. I’ll do anything I can.”
“I know you think it’s your fault, but-”
“I don’t think it is, Dr. Snow. I know it is.”
“Explain that to me.”
“Do I need to spell it out?”
Spelling it out was Bob’s code that he’d broken his fast and gone online again. Since he’d been seeing me, the longest he’d been able to go without a fix was five days, and he’d done that twice. The previous Wednesday, he said he was ready to try to quit again and had already abstained for two nights.
“No. You don’t have to spell it out if you don’t want to, but I’d like to hear what happened.”
“Bad boy that I am, I went online. I tried not to. I hadn’t for two days. Just like I told you last Wednesday morning. But Thursday…I don’t know…I was home, by myself. I went online to read my e-mail and…I clicked over…no big deal…just for a few minutes. Anyway, I didn’t hear her come home. I was so deep into the fantasy and the goddamn fucking pleasure that I didn’t hear her, and she walked in on me. She fucking saw me at the computer. I hadn’t heard her. I wasn’t paying attention.”
Bob stood up, walked to the window and put his hands against the glass, as if he might push it out and escape.
“Can anyone see in? Is this glass treated?”
“No, it’s not.”
Quickly, he turned around. For a second he looked as if he didn’t know what he was supposed to do next. Stand? Sit? Leave?
“Bob, you need to come sit back down, or lie down.”
He nodded and did as I’d asked.
Silently again on the couch, he clasped his hands in his lap and then stared at his white-gold wedding band.
“Bob, when you talk about going online, you refer to yourself as a bad boy. Tell me how it feels to be bad?”
“Horrible. Despicable. Out of control. How else would it feel?”
“Well, the expression on your face when you said it made me think being bad was exciting. Thrilling, maybe. Is that possible?”
He seemed startled. “No. That’s crazy. Why would I like breaking rules? Rules, laws, are what separate us from savages.”
He was disassociating. It wasn’t the first time. His posture had become more rigid. His hands relaxed. He spoke as if he were addressing a group of people, rather than just me, somewhere other than here in my office. I had to bring him back.
“How do you feel about your wife finding out about you going online?”
“I didn’t want her to know. I’m not a sadist. You know that, don’t you?” He looked directly at me, imploring me. This was when he reached me, when his childlike need to be acknowledged broke through the professional veneer.
“No, you’re not a sadist. But let’s get back to the question. Is that the only reason you didn’t want her to know?”
“Isn’t it enough?”
“Yes. But I’m not sure it’s the only reason. Think for a minute, Bob. Why didn’t you want her to know?”
“Why can’t you tell me? I don’t understand what would be so detrimental to the therapy for you to make a suggestion here and there. Use an example about another patient-without names, of course-to illustrate a point?”
This was something Bob often did, interrupting the therapy to try to understand the theory behind it. Occasionally it was a deadly tactic, but often I knew it was a deep-seated need to understand the precepts of the process. He was highly intelligent, and I’d found that if I answered him, he became more responsive.
“In this case I don’t have an answer. But something makes me think that even if you aren’t conscious of it, there’s another reason. I need you to find it.”
He sat. Thought. Seemed to accept my rationale.
“Okay. Now. Why didn’t you want your wife to know?”
His brow furrowed and then relaxed. He’d thought of something.
“Tell me.”
“Her knowing ruins everything.”
I nodded but didn’t speak. I waited. I knew there was more. After ten years of being a therapist you learn when the end of a sentence signals more to come, or when the patient has closed up again and you need to find another way in.
“It’s not mine anymore. Even if it’s hell, it’s been my hell. Something that she wasn’t part of. Now that she knows, she can lie in bed and imagine me watching my pathetic little Web-cam girls, with my dick in my hand and she can laugh at me and my dependency.”
“Why do you think she’d laugh at you? Has she laughed at you before?”
“No.” Sharp. Decisive.
“Then why now?”
He shook his head.
“Anything that comes to mind.”
He shook his head again. We’d get back to that. Or I’d find another way in.
“What happened after she saw what you were doing?”
“She smiled at me.” Now he shook his head as if he was trying to shake away the image. “It was crazy. A crazy smile. Like she’d really lost her mind for a second. She just kept smiling. It was horrible. But the worst part was that even though I wanted to get up and hold her and promise her that I’d never do it again, I didn’t. I just sat there.”
Something was happening to Bob. His eyes were not as intense. His muscles were relaxing into a professional mask again.
“It couldn’t be more ironic,” he said in a more imperious, less-emotional voice.
“What couldn’t be?”
“Me. Going online-” He stopped midsentence.
I gave him a few seconds to continue. Then a few seconds longer. We were at a critical juncture. I knew how careful I had to be to push but not too far.
“Did you say anything to her?”
“I tried to talk to her. I told her it was not a big deal. That I’d just stumbled on the Web site. I lied.”
There it was. That odd elation in his voice when he said he’d lied. I felt a rush of adrenaline. It doesn’t always happen that a set of circumstances occurs in your patient’s life at exactly the right time in his or her therapy to create an opening like this.
“Bob, how did you feel when you were lying?”
“Terrible.”
He didn’t. I knew he was lying. I could hear it in his voice, see it in the way he clasped his hands suddenly, hiding the wedding ring with the fingers of the other hand.
“Really? Terrible?”
“Yes. Lying is horrible. To lie to your wife…”
“Yes, but just because it’s horrible doesn’t mean it has to feel terrible.”
He was nodding. He knew. Was he going to tell me?
“It didn’t feel terrible, did it?”
He shook his head.
I lowered my voice. “How did it feel, Bob?”
He shut his eyes. He couldn’t do it. That didn’t matter. I knew he had consciously thought it. We’d get there. He was so close to understanding that he’d felt real pleasure.
“Did she believe you?”
“No. And she told me she didn’t. She asked me how often, and I lied again. I told her I mostly did it when she was out of town. I didn’t want to hurt her. It was killing me to hurt her. I love her.” It was a plea for me to stop, but I wouldn’t. Quickly now, before he could think about it, I asked again. “How did you feel lying to her?”