‘I need to make an emergency appointment for myself and WLG,’ Hot Danish said.
‘I have availability at 3pm tomorrow.’
‘I can’t leave work that early.’
‘I have a gap on Thursday…’
‘I’ll be in London for work.’
‘Friday?’
‘I’ll still be in London for work.’
‘Next Monday?’
‘I think she may have left me by then.’ Finally, the couple’s counsellor squeezed us in between appointments – when she would usually be having dinner. In his panic, HD had neither checked the location properly or whether the therapist spoke English.
Wine Writer sympathised with my relationship woes. ‘My former wife and I once took our daughter to see a child therapist because she was having bad dreams. However, it turned out that she was having nightmares because of her parents’ relationship so it was my then-wife and I who needed therapy.
We went to see the therapist every week for a year or longer and towards the end my ex became increasingly aggressive with her thinking that she was taking my side against her. In the end the therapist became so frustrated that she decided there was no help for us and sacked us.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said.
‘Frankly, there wasn’t any help for us. I ended up leaving (reluctantly because it meant leaving my daughter in the house with her) but I had found a new girlfriend by then and moved on.’
‘Chris wants us to have couple’s therapy,’ another friend exclaimed. ‘I’m really against it as I already think he’s the kind of person to absolve himself of responsibility to mend our issues ourselves; I think he doesn’t want to listen but just wants validation from an independent arbitrator; I think the experience will make him more socially incompetent when the therapist isn’t around. I could go on…’ she trailed off.
‘I’m dreading it because I went to one session with the Trustafarian and we promptly broke up afterwards,’ I agreed.
‘It seems to me that he really wants to make it work and his efforts are sincere. I wish I’d gone this route with my ex – things may have been very different,’ Monique said optimistically.
‘I’m trying to find a way to get pre-marital counseling for Mark and I because I would like to be sure that we go into this with our full understanding of what we’re taking on,’ another friend said.
And this was an emergency, so with a mixture of hope and trepidation HD and I went to our first session. ‘There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth,’ Charles Dickens once said. So we spoke the truth (or our perception of it), we were then asked to face each other and tell each other what first attracted each to the other and we were given some rules. As we were making our follow-up appointment, the therapist turned to HD and asked, ‘Are you likely to cancel at the last minute due to work commitments?’
