The middle part of the hour was the worst part. That's when we both cried. After that I tuned out a little bit, trying not to engage with the therapist's questions more than I had too. When I came back from my daydream she was asking us about sex.
Sex was almost as bad. The stories and the emotions of the last two years came back. Her not wanting to, me not wanting to, the times we had fucked and regretted opening up to each other, fucked and regretted not opening up, argued and fucked, fucked and argued. A lot of it got dredged up but a lot of it we didn't even touch on.
The counsellor had a trick, I thought, of asking one of us a question, then giving the follow-up question to the other, and so on. We had been a lot of the details of what had been going wrong like this. Now she was asking us what we wanted from our sex life together.
What does anyone want from their sex life? I guess a combination of two things - a natural compatibility that means sexual communication is always a comforting presence without having to think or worry about it, and moments of such excitement and pleasure that they bleed into the rest of your life. Don't ask me if these two things are possible to achieve together or not. That's not what I said at the time, it's what I figured out later in tranquility. In the session I muttered something about wanting it to be a bit more like when we first got together, trying not to meeet either my wife's or the therapist's gaze.
I wasn't going to look at my watch for the whole hour. Just getting to this first session had meant a lot of arguments and negotiation. Making it obvious that I was counting down the time until we were finished wasn't going to help me. But it must be the last few minutes now since our 'facilitator' was summing up. She made a few observations about our problems, said that we weren't by any means a hopeless case, and then started going through some of the problems.
"For this process to work the two of you are going to have to take away homework each week and come back to me with a report of how you got on." Some stuff about how all the other hours we spent together were just as important as the hour of counselling. Various tasks, most of which entailed writing things down throughout the week and remembering various other things.
"As concerns sex." Me and Wendy competing through this to look like we're intensely paying attention. "I am going to ask you to go through a period of refraining from almost any form of sexual or intimate physical contact." A short explanation of why this would allow us to rebuild our attraction for, and closeness to each other. "No kissing, no sex, no touching or petting. No embracing beyond what you would do with a close friend or family member. No nudity in front of each other except if unavoidable."
It didn't seem like we were going to miss out on anything that we hadn't already stopped doing more than a year ago.
"One evening this week, not before Sunday, I would like you to do the following as part of your homework. Go to bed together, both wearing pyjamas. Make sure you have at least half an hour before the usual time you fall asleep."
"I would just like you to spend that time cuddling each other. Don't take anything off, don't put your hands underneath each other's pyjamas, don't focus on any erogenous zones. Just put your arms around each. If either of you feels uncomfortable at any time stop straightaway, and continue after a few minutes only if you both want to."
Not sure if this lady thought she was going to get us gasping to break her rules by the end of the half hour, or if it had some other point. The next couple of minutes are taken up with checking the arrangements for the next session, payment, and so on. Somehow all our voices have changed slightly, as if we need some way of indicating that we were playing a role, and are now out of character again.
As we walk home together our voices still have this lightness. Now it seems to me that we're putting on the extra politeness you pay to someone you hardly know, pretending that we haven't spent fifty minutes going through all the frustration and anger that we each associate with the other person.
I wait outside the shop on the corner while Wendy goes in to buy cigarettes. When she comes out she's putting something away in her purse. She's holding the cigarette packet in her other hand and -- could it be -- smiling?
The air is cleared, I think. She smokes, we walk home, no longer bothering to make conversation. I don't know if we feel better than when we started the session, but we definitely feel better than when we were halfway through it.
She stops in the hall, just after I've closed the door, and looks at me. Making sure my eyes are on her, she kneels to untie her shoe laces. I'm going to walk past her to open the door to the living room.
"Wait." She grabs my arm to stop me moving past, then drops it. I'm looking at her again. She takes her purse and pulls it open. She takes out of it a blue plastic cylinder, like a toothpaste tube, of sex lubricant.
