Yesterday was our 4th couples’ therapy session. Jeff, the therapist, explained early on that he has a template for the first few sessions. The first session is about why you are there, the second session is about how you met, the next couple of sessions are about what each of you brought to the relationship in terms of background (baggage), usually one session for each.
Last week, we addressed Sandy’s childhood, family expectations and disappointments, and to some extent, what he learned about couples/communication. We did not have time to get into Sandy’s relationship history, so we began yesterday’s session with that topic. Sandy took about 15-20 minutes to tell Jeff a bit about his relationship history.
Then Jeff turned to me. I wasn’t sure where to start, so I began by outlining the basic family structure, where folks lived, when my brothers joined the family, where we grew up, what my parents did for a living, and a little bit about where I went to school. You could see Jeff scribbling down furtively and getting ready to attach to something. Like my breast size, when I mentioned that I developed large breasts by late middle school. He wanted to dig into that a bit, but then when I mentioned the problems with one brother and the impact on the family, then that stood out. We haven’t even gotten to the fact that my brothers have RP or anything about my sexual history/background. We didn’t begin to address financial hardships.
I suggested he may want to talk to Madeline before our next session to get a rough sense of the landscape. He said he’d wait until after our next session. I’m not sure how to create a Clif’s notes version of my life.
This is not to say that Sandy’s story is a less abundant mine of information than my narrative. My inclination is to compare the stark, succinct classic American novella to the long, meandering, character-replete Russian novel: equally impactful in meaning – but one a wealth in words, situations and character studies.
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Addendum after Tuesday 11/3 couple’s session
Somehow we managed to cover with very broad strokes enough of my history in the 11/3 session for Jeff to feel confident that when we meet again on 11/23, we should be able to jump into contemporary issues. I am not sure how I feel about it. It felt too distilled. We left with Jeff providing one key summary insight:
Sandy was raised with complete order surrounding all he and his family did. I grew up amidst chaos.