Life and Other Inconveniences(31)

“Dirk? Do you want to address that?” I asked after a beat.

“Maybe I’m not sincere because I’m tired of being treated like a whipped dog.”

That was the trick with marriage counseling and infidelity. One spouse had wronged the other—not in a vacuum most times—but to beat up the unfaithful spouse week after week made him less responsive to working things out.

Neither of them said anything, too busy clenching their sphincters. “A lot of couples come to marriage counseling to feel okay about getting a divorce,” I said. “And some come to try to save the marriage. Where would you say you stand? Amy? Want to go first?”

“It’s hard to want to stay married knowing he’s a cheating scumbag,” she said.

“Let’s try not to call names, okay?” I said. “Dirk was unfaithful, Amy. It happened, and you can’t change that. If you’re going to work on the marriage, you’re going to have to start letting that go.”

“So the burden is all on me. As usual.”

Dirk sighed, long and loud. “I said I was sorry. I said I wouldn’t do it again. It’s my fucking mantra. ‘I’m sorry, Amy, I’m sorry, Amy.’ How long are you going to punish me?”

“As long as I want, cheater. Asshole. Liar. Cliché. Dating a younger woman. Where’d you come up with that? In the middle-age-loser handbook?”

“Let’s try to reframe that without name-calling, Amy. It’s more helpful for you if you try to explain your feelings to Dirk. Maybe start a sentence with ‘I am really hurt when I think of . . . ’”

“I am really hurt when I think of you and that whore.”

Dirk stared into the computer screen and rolled his eyes, trying to win me over.

“Amy,” I said, “you’re going to have to move forward, either with Dirk or without him. But you do have to move forward.”

“Well, I wish I could move backward and be thirty again. Like Bailey, whose vagina is probably nice and tight because she didn’t give birth to Dirk’s two sons!”

I tried not to sigh. I felt for her, I really did. Amy had had a real problem with Bailey’s age. Even more than the infidelity was the insult, she said. She was forty-five; Bailey was thirty. “Fifteen years younger than me!” she’d sobbed in our first session. She talked constantly about Bailey’s figure—she stalked her online—her beauty, her skin, her hair, her half marathons.

The fact that Amy was fixated on Bailey showed her own insecurity and self-esteem issues. Those were harder issues than forgiveness for her.

One of the dogs—the biggest one, from the sound of it—clawed at my door and moaned.

“You okay?” Dirk said.

“You’re so concerned about everyone,” Amy snapped. “Except me.”

“Sorry, that’s my . . . my dog.” The less clients knew about my personal life, the better.

“What kind?” Dirk said. “I love dogs.”

“A mutt,” I said.

“You’re a mutt,” Amy said, looking at her husband. “You’re a nasty, filthy dog.”

“Amy. The name-calling isn’t making anything better,” I said. “Let’s change the focus here. What do you want from Dirk?

“Honesty. Decency.”

“And what does that look like in the day-to-day?”

She paused. “Not lying about where he is and who he’s with?”

“Dirk? What do you think about that?”

“Yeah. Fine. But then she can’t punish me for telling the truth.”

“And what would you like from Amy, Dirk?”

“I’d like some respect, that’s what. Home was like a black hole where I couldn’t do anything right. If I was there, I was in her way. If I was out, she was pissed because I wasn’t home. If I was working, she was pissed because I wasn’t making enough. If I worked more, she said I didn’t care about her. If I suggested we do something without the kids, she’d give me this martyred look and tell me why she was too exhausted to leave the house. If I didn’t, she’d ask why we never went out anywhere.”

“First, that is so skewed,” Amy said. “And second, now you being a cheating, lying scum is my fault because I was a shitty wife?”

He pretended to think. “Yeah.”

Her face went blotchy with rage. Outside the door, the dog barked and clawed harder, sort of like a direwolf, but senile and less cool.

I cleared my throat. “I think we have to address the atmosphere at home if we’re going to move forward,” I said.

Amy looked at me. “Are you taking his side?” she screeched. “Is he somehow the good guy here?”

“No, no,” I said calmly. “There’s no good guy here. You both did things wrong, and you need to take responsibility for that.”

Amy got off the couch and left my range of vision. Dirk raised an eyebrow and smirked. There was a smashing sound. A second later, she came back.

“I did nothing wrong,” Amy said. “I mean, seriously, what else was I supposed to do, raising the kids when you were out being a big-shot lawyer?”

“Supporting our family, you mean? But since you asked, maybe you could’ve put out once in a while,” Dirk suggested.