Conservative... that's how they describe me. Conservative in politics, conservative in my work, conservative in the way I raise my children, conservative in my respect for my marriage vows. So what transpired with you... well, I'm still processing it. It aroused something in me I did not think was possible. Something far from conservative.
I'm a counselor. I've spent my life helping people. It's such a thrill to be invited into the secret parts of people's lives to uncover their hidden motivations and fears. I do this well. But no counselor is without his own demons and fears. We are taught from early days of school to seek full awareness of these weaknesses, for if unexamined, they can twist and distort the counsel we provide, often without any conscious awareness of this fact.
I'm aware of these shortcomings. But it was one particular shortcoming that led me to you.
I am strongly attracted to the opposite sex. Most men do, I realize. But my ferocious appetite often goes unfulfilled. This can be troublesome, and often torturous, for women are usually the first to seek my counsel. A suffocating marriage or a neglectful husband... these are usually the circumstances that draw us into the counseling room. It's not uncommon for these women to dress in a slightly more provocative way than they usually do. Their husbands have bruised their spirits, damaged their confidence, or driven them some level of sexual dysfunction.
Hence the problem. It's called "projection." The client projects either their bitterness and anger (on the negative side) or their hopes and dreams (on the positive side) upon their counselor. Many a time, I've been treated as if I'm the abusive father the woman once feared or "just another lousy man" like the man they married. That happens, but more often than that, the counselor – draped in the appearance of wisdom and the adornment of degrees – is treated as king, as the ideal man that the woman desires her husband to be. After all, they think, the counselor listens, but my husband does not. The counselor cares, but my husband does not. The counselor understands, but my husband does not.
Reverse projection happens too. The counselor can project onto the client something he wishes for himself. Such is what happened with you.
All of this is quite a rush. The attention and adoration paid to me by these women is intoxicating. In the office, with my white shirt and conservative tie, with legs crossed and a pose of concern on display, I become the man they always wanted.
But this can be dangerous. In a moment that first revealed this issue, I once bought into the manipulations of one woman who convinced me of some things about her marriage that, in hindsight, did not add up. Any decent counselor would have seen this. But she was incredibly beautiful. She had a short black skirt, perfectly toned legs that were crossed towards me in a way that makes me weak, and an amazing neckline that revealed enough to make me want so much more. Several times she spotted my gaze. The slight upward curve of her lips revealed her delight. She had me right where she wanted.
I was so disturbed by this failure... and even more disturbed wondering how many times I had fallen for this before... that I sought the counsel of my friend Jeff. Jeff and I had met in graduate school. We both had just married the summer before our first class together. Jeff and I were hardly the distinguished gentlemen we are now. Back then, we were immature after our time. We would skip class, cram for tests at the last minute, and party with our new brides on the weekend.
We had known each other on such an "unprofessional" level for all these years that the few times we had actually contacted each other for "professional" advice, it seemed quite awkward. We wondered if we could actually pull off a serious conversation, but we always did. We knew the seriousness of our profession, and we knew each other well enough that neither of us could bull shit the other. So why talk to anyone else?
Which is why I stopped by Jeff's office several months ago. My failure to rise above the attraction of women to give objective and meaningful advice was threatening my calling as a counselor. I needed to get this straight.
Meeting in Jeff's office was too formal for us, so we met over a couple of six inch subs and sandwiches at a local dive. We caught up quickly on our kids, our practices, and swapped a few client stories, as we often enjoyed trying to "one up" each other. After the small talk was over, Jeff entered into therapeutic conversation.
"Why did you want to see me?"
I spent several minutes skirting the issue, talking about how much I love my wife, how beautiful she is, and how I want to be with her the rest of my life. Jeff interrupted, not as a counselor, but as a friend.
"Are you fucking around on Kelly?"
"Hell no!" I said. I shook my head trying to collect my thoughts. "No, you're getting the wrong idea. I'm just...."
"Just say it, Colin."
"I'm losing my objectivity."
"Your objectivity?"
"With women," I say.
I begin telling Jeff the effect women have on my ability to give clear counsel, how a short skirt can melt my mind, how the scent of a women causes me to miss what the client is saying as fantasies replace the clear thoughts that once were there.
Jeff's response is quick, "That's easy. You masturbate."
I laugh, thinking we're back to the days of graduate school banter. But he's not laughing.
"I'm serious, Colin," Jeff says with a straight face. "You know how it is. We guys have two brains. It may not be in the psychology books that way, but you don't have to be a licensed psychologist to know it's true. When the downstairs brain is active, the upstairs brain is on hiatus! You know who you're hot clients are. We all do. Just schedule a fifteen minute break before they arrive, drain that damn thing, and put him to rest."
Jeff continues, "You know how it is when you have sex with Kelly. You're horned up all day long waiting to get her alone, and then one look at her drives you insane. You fuck her good – sorry, you 'make love' to her – and then once you come, that thing goes into sleep mode. That's you do your best thinking, right? Hell, I've solved many a client's issues 30 seconds after I've cum! That's your solution."
I hesitate. I look down and stare right through my food.
"What?" Jeff says. "That wasn't the greatest advice you ever heard?"
"Jeff." I paused for a minute waiting to say what I never thought I would verbalize. "Kelly and I don't have sex. Well, we haven't had sex in a long time, that is."
"What? What are you calling long time? Once a month? Once every six months?"
"Five years. We haven't had sex in five years. Not since Elizabeth was born."
Those words were so hard to say. A sexless marriage is a blow to a man's worth. It's a blow to his self-concept. How does a man call himself a man when the woman who claims to love him turns cold to his advances? How can one person chose to ignore this amazing, God given gift at the expense of the one she loves? How could she be content with having a sexless marriage? Didn't that bruise her ego in the slightest? It did mine. And the more I had thought about it, the more troubled I became. The less I could live with doing nothing about it.
And it was taking its toll on the marriage. Bitterness had begun to creep in. Kelly and I were virgins when we married. I had saved this gift for her. We had only imagined the best, but on that first night, our wedding night, things went far from the direction we had planned. There was pain. Serious pain. I did not realize how large I was. I had heard men brag about size before, only to hear women snicker behind their backs. I had resisted such claims. But on this night, I knew my size was a detriment to the passion we hoped to ignite.
After a week of heavy foreplay, we concluded a sexless honeymoon in search of answers. A doctor concluded that her vagina simply needed to be "dilated." With a few very expensive dilators (otherwise known as overpriced sex toys), Kelly began to prepare herself for sex. In the months ahead, we finally reached the point where I could enter her without her being in pain. But there was one barrier we never crossed. Sex had to be "delicate." One wrong move, and the pain returned. Sex was as simple and as plain as it could be.
But even though her vagina began to meet comfortably with my cock, the psychological damage had been done. As unthinkable as it was, Kelly had come to link sex with pain and displeasure. Her brain had been rewired to live comfortably without sex.
But not for me. I began to tell Jeff the thoughts going through my mind. I was in my early 40's and had begun to realize that after 18 years of marriage, the hope I carried of a robust and meaningful sex life with my wife was a false hope. Should I really expect that suddenly, Kelly should want to change this, when for 18 years, she had learned to live so comfortably without it? I began to despair. The waves of realization began sweeping over me. I may reach well beyond my prime without ever knowing what amazing sex feels like. I could die... without knowing what it was like to fuck for hours, to cum in a woman's mouth or to feel my cock push violently against a woman's wet pussy. The grief was serious.
"Man, Colin. Becca and I have had our occasional dry spells, but... what you describe is... unthinkable." Jeff didn't try to cover up the seriousness of this or throw out the statistics about the many happily married people living just fine without sex. He knew me well enough to know the depths of my pain.
"So, let me guess," Jeff offered. "You're thinking, 'if not her, then who?' You're seriously thinking about an affair, aren't you?"
Jeff's concern was not the morality of breaking the marriage vows. I knew Jeff well enough to know that he'd give me a pass if I strayed because of this. As a fellow counseling professional, I knew his true concern. The term is "dual relationship." In the counseling profession, this was the great taboo. Once a therapist established a counseling relationship, no other relationship with the client was allowed to form. No "becoming friends." No "let's have lunch sometime." And, most of all, no sexual contact whatsoever.
Rumors abound in the counseling profession about counselors crossing that line, but to get caught meant your license, your reputation, your business. Jeff knew I was on the edge. If not careful, my desire would overtake my sensibilities. I was flirting with danger.
"Colin, what I said about masturbation... that's a must. You cannot under any circumstances be alone in the room with a confused woman while your sexual juices are raging. You have to remove the bullets from your weapon, or you'll hurt someone.
"And Colin... you have to promise me something. You and Kelly must come see me or someone in my office about this problem. She needs counseling. She needs to know what landmines she's dropping into your marriage. She needs to know what's at stake."
