Conversations With A Couch Potato

Jennifer has been avoiding me like the plague. If I'm in a room of the house she wants to go to, she waits until I've left it before she will go in. She's like a shadow. And she only speaks to me when she absolutely has to. The rest of the time she is completely silent. It hurts. Especially when I hear her talking on the phone all cheerful to one of the guys she works with at the coffee shop. She used to talk to me like that. Not anymore though. It's rough.

My first counselling session was last week. To my surprise I've discovered that talking with a therapist doesn't make me feel weak at all. It's like talking to a professional friend about what's bothering you. The advice she has given me so far is sensible. She likes to call herself a Couch Potato. Must have something to do with all the comfy couches she has shoved up against every wall in her office. The sessions with her are scheduled for just under an hour and she has accepted my medical coverage co-pay so it's only costing me thirty bucks per visit, which is outstanding.

I tried to be as honest and blunt as possible about everything negative I've done to Jennifer during the years we have been together. I was up front about my reason for seeing a therapist. All I wanted was to figure out how I got myself into this mess, and to help me prevent it from ever happening again. I wasn't interested in being hypnotized or exploring all the dark secrets hidden in my subconcious. Nor was I interested in having every aspect of my childhood dissected. I explained to the Couch Potato there was nothing I could do to save the relationship with Jennifer and I asked for her to help me deal with the feelings of guilt and regret I'm experiencing. To put everything in perspective I described the situation from the beginning. I talked about when Jennifer and I first met, why we seemed to like each other, what we did and didn't do together, and my overwhelming obsession with her. I also mentioned Jennifer's inability or lack of desire to have sex with me. Jennifer didn't like it when I touched her, or if I playfully tried to man-handle her. She never initiated having sex with me, I was always the one who wanted to be intimate. Jennifer would just lie there on her back like a dead person waiting for it to be overwith. It made me feel like trash.

The Couch Potato's response was she thought Jennifer must have been molested at some point during her childhood. In the back of my mind I figured something like that may have been the case. Hearing that from a professional was a big relief. I had a fear the sexual problems with Jennifer were all my fault. Coincidentally about a year ago my Mom said the same thing to me about Jennifer. One night when I was visiting with my Mom I complained to her about the lack of intimacy between Jennifer and I. I asked her what she thought about it. Mom had some insight into what was going on. I almost fell off my chair with what she told me that evening. She said that when she was a little girl, her stepfather molested her at a very young age. So she could relate, or see why Jennifer was acting strange towards me because she figured something similar must have happened to Jennifer. It was an odd moment for me because Mom never told me about this before and she has not brought it up again since that night.

For now, the Couch Potato's advice was for me to stop drinking coffee, to take the sleeping pills my doctor gave me, and to write more often in my journals. I'll see her again next week.