Caught!

Dr. Theresa Robins, licensed therapist

Jon felt awkward. He knew he needed to talk with a therapist, but he also had a good idea of what she would want to talk about. Thinking about it made him feel tired.

"What brings you here today, Mr. Major?" Dr. Robins asked.

"I've had exactly one successful relationship," Jon said. "All the others have been disasters. I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong."

"Ok, let's dig in," she said. "How many relationships have you had?"

"Uh . . . I'm not sure. I'd have to count them up. I've had a lot because they always blow up in my face and I have to start over with someone new."

"More than a dozen?"

"Definitely more than a dozen."

That was a lot, Robins thought. Jon looked normal enough. Nice clothes. Nice haircut. Handsome enough. Late 30s. So what was the problem?

"Are you in a relationship now?"

"Well, it's kind of complicated. It's the reason I'm here."

"What's so complicated?"

"My current girlfriend lost her job, so I hired her to work at my company, and she embezzled $110,000 from me."

That was different. Robins had never heard anything like that before. "That seems like a lot of money. How did she get away with taking so much?"

"She didn't get away with anything. Her boss caught it immediately. I took a few days to decide how to handle it, but my people figured out what she'd done and let me know on the same day she did it."

Robins didn't quite understand. "Explain this to me. You own a company?"

"I am the CEO of Major Fasteners Corp. My grandfather founded the company, my father ran it for a long time, and now it's my turn. I'm guessing you don't know what fasteners are, right?"

Robins smiled. "Sorry."

"Don't be sorry. I don't meet many people outside of the industry who know what fasteners are. We make nuts and bolts. We have some other products, like rivets, but we mainly produce nuts and bolts. We make a lot of them. Your car is probably held together with nuts and bolts from my company."

"Is it a big company?"

"Oh yes. Fortune 500. I think this is a good time for me to tell you that I'm a billionaire. I was a billionaire on the day I was born. I'm sure that the way I look at the world is a bit different because of that. Maybe it explains why I suck at relationships."

A billionaire with a girlfriend who's an embezzler? He must be right when he says he's bad with relationships.

"I'm trying to imagine what happened when you caught her."

"I fired her, of course. You can't have embezzlers working in accounting. I had my chief financial officer put together documentation that proved exactly what she'd done. I showed her the documents and explained that she'd go to prison if I turned her in. She's got prior convictions, so she'll go away for a long time if that happens."

Prior convictions? A billionaire with a girlfriend who's a convicted felon?

Jon leaned forward. "I can tell that we're getting to the part where you want to know how I met this woman and what our relationship is like. I'm happy to describe that whole nightmare, but you need to know that it's a long, long story. My hour will be over before I'm half way through. It's your call. Is there anything else you'd rather know first?"

Smart. Efficient. "Yes. Tell me about your childhood. How was that?"

"I had a great childhood. I loved my parents and they loved me. The fact that my family was rich meant I had a lot of advantages when I was growing up. My older brother has been an alcoholic since he was a teenager, and that caused a lot of turmoil for everybody, but I was pretty happy with my life. I felt like I needed to be the good son because my brother was such a pain in my parents' ass."

"Your parents. Were they happy?"

"Well, their relationship was a bit odd, but they loved each other. Still do. They're getting old, but they still act like teenagers in love. You are about to ask me some questions that have some very weird answers."

Robins smiled. "I like the way you do my job for me. OK, don't keep me in suspense. What are the weird answers?"

"First, my parents had an open marriage. They never talked about it with me, and it took me a long time to figure out, but they both had lovers. My Dad would pretend he had a weekly date to play poker with some buddies, and that he'd spend the night, but he was really visiting his girlfriend. He traveled a lot for 'business' and I'm sure she went on a lot of these trips. This was perfectly fine with my mother. She loved him anyway, and he was fine with her having a lover herself."

"Well, that's not so unusual. A lot of people have open marriages. So your mother had a boyfriend?"

"Girlfriend. We had a family friend named Emily, and she spent a lot of time with Mom. I thought they were just good friends. But one day my school closed early because there was some kind of electrical problem, and when I got home I saw Emily's car in the driveway. I went inside and couldn't find them, but we had a big house so I wasn't concerned. I went upstairs to my room and looked out the window down at the pool in our backyard. They were in the pool, naked, and making out like crazy. Seeing my Mom in the arms of another woman shocked me for a long, long time. But my parents seemed perfectly fine with all this, so I got used to it."

"Children should not see things like that."

"I completely agree. That image still burns in my memory."

"I gather that their marriage was pretty normal otherwise."

Jon laughed. "Not even slightly. My parents had a relationship that just baffled me for a long time. This is the point where I mention that my Dad used to spank my Mom. Not as a sex thing. For misbehaving."

"Spousal abuse can be very traumatic for a child."

"I don't think it was spousal abuse, but you're free to decide for yourself. Here's the way it worked. My Mom was a wonderful lady with many fine qualities, but she didn't have a lot of common sense, so my Dad made most of the serious decisions for the family. He decided where we'd live. She decided what color wallpaper we had. The thing is, she would get bitchy. Her pattern was that she would get bitchy, and bitchier, and bitchier, and finally one day Dad couldn't take it anymore.

"After my brother and I went to bed they'd start arguing so loud you could hear it all over the house. It would get louder, and louder, and finally my Dad would take Mom over his knee, pull out his belt, and spank her ass. She'd yell and scream, and he'd keep doing it until she shut up. Then they'd go into the bedroom and have sex so loud we could count Mom's orgasms. She usually had two. Sometimes three. Then it would get so quiet we figured they'd gone to sleep.

"The next morning everything would be fine. Mom would be all lovey-dovey with Dad, and he'd hug and kiss her so many times he'd be late for work. Things would be great for weeks. Marital bliss. But eventually Mom would start getting bitchy again, and we knew Dad would spank her again pretty soon."

Robins was surprised by the light hearted tone Jon used. "When you use a belt, it's called whipping. Not spanking."

"Whatever. This started before I was born. It was kind of scary at first. Hearing my parents screaming at each other was horrible when I was a little kid, and it got worse when I realized Dad was spanking Mom. But things were always so wonderful the next morning that I figured out pretty quickly that this was part of the way they related to each other. You had to know my Mom. In some ways, she was an amazing, competent woman. In other ways, she was a disobedient child who regularly needed to be punished. It made sense in a weird, fucked up way."

Robins knew that seemingly normal people often had private lives that featured elements no outsider would suspect. It seemed to her that Jon's childhood environment was more problematic than he acknowledged. "Mr. Major, have you ever wondered if your problems with relationships stem from the unusual nature of your parents' marriage?"

Jon laughed. "Oh, I've asked myself that question maybe one or two million times. I don't know. My parents have always seemed to be very happy with each other. And call me Jon. My employees call me Mr. Major. It gets tiresome."

"Certainly, Jon. This has been interesting. I'd like you to do some homework before next week. Make a list of the names of every person you'd had a relationship with. You mentioned that you've only had one successful relationship. Let's talk about that next time," Robins said.

"I can do that," Jon said. "It's a long, sordid tale of woe."

"I'm sure it's not that bad," Robins said.

"I'm pretty sure it is," Jon said.

After Jon left her office, Robins went to her coffee maker for a fresh cup. Through her window, she saw him walk across the parking lot to his car. He drove a Maserati. That made sense. It was the kind of car a billionaire would own. Robins drove a Maserati, too. Jon's car was a bigger, fancier, more expensive version, but Robins owned a sportier model. Jon's was black. Hers was red.

This was a very unusual first session. It didn't usually take long for Robins to understand the nature of her clients' problems, but she was almost clueless about what was troubling Jon. She'd understand more after another session.