Maybe You Should Talk to Someon - Lori Gottlieb Page 0,60

job and we’ll have a roof over our heads.” He yells “I’ll just be a minute!” to someone I can’t see and then continues. “And you know what she does when I say this? She says, all Oprah-like”—here he does a dead-on impression of Oprah—“‘I know you do a lot, and I appreciate that, but I also miss you even when you’re here.’”

I try to speak but John plows on. I haven’t seen him this stirred up before.

“So for a second I’m relieved, because normally she’d yell at this point, but then I realize what’s going on. This sounds nothing like Margo. She’s up to something! And sure enough, she says, ‘I really need you to hear this.’ And I say, ‘I hear it, okay? I’m not deaf. I’ll try to come to bed earlier but I have to get my work done first.’ But then she gets this sad look on her face, like she’s about to cry, and it kills me when she gets that look, because I don’t want to make her sad. The last thing I want to do is disappoint her. But before I can say anything, she says, ‘I need you to hear how much I miss you because if you don’t hear it, I don’t know how much longer I can keep telling you.’ So I say, ‘We’re threatening each other now?’ and she says, ‘It’s not a threat, it’s the truth.’” John’s eyes become saucers and his free hand juts into the air, palm up, as if to say, Can you believe this shit?

“I don’t think she’d actually do it,” he goes on, “but it shocked me because neither of us has ever threatened to leave before. When we got married we always said that no matter how angry we got, we would never threaten to leave, and in twelve years, we haven’t.” He looks to his right. “Okay, Tommy, let me take a look—”

John stops talking and suddenly I’m staring at his sneakers again. When he finishes with Tommy, he starts walking somewhere. A minute later his face pops up; he’s in front of another wall.

“John,” I say. “Let’s take a step back. First, I know you’re upset by what Margo said—”

“What Margo said? It’s not even her! It’s her idiot therapist acting as her ventriloquist! She loves this guy. She quotes him all the time, like he’s her fucking guru. He probably serves Kool-Aid in the waiting room, and women all over the city are divorcing their husbands because they’re drinking this guy’s bullshit! I looked him up just to see what his credentials are and, sure enough, some moron therapy board gave him a license. Wendell Bronson, P-h-fucking-D.”

Wait.

Wendell Bronson?

!

!!

!!!!

!!!!!!!

Margo is seeing my Wendell? The “idiot therapist” is Wendell? My mind explodes. I wonder where on the couch Margo chose to sit on her first day. I wonder if Wendell tosses her tissue boxes or if she sits close enough to reach them herself. I wonder if we’ve ever passed each other on the way in or out (the pretty crying woman from the waiting room?). I wonder if she’s ever mentioned my name in her own therapy—“John has this awful therapist, Lori Gottlieb, who said . . .” But then I remember that John is keeping his therapy a secret from Margo—I’m the “hooker” he pays in cash—and right now, I’m tremendously grateful for this circumstance. I don’t know what to do with this information, so I do what therapists are taught to do when we’re having a complicated reaction to something and need more time to understand it. I do nothing—for the moment. I’ll get consultation on this later.

“Let’s stay with Margo for a second,” I say, as much to myself as to John. “I think what she said was sweet. She must really love you.”

“Huh? She’s threatening to leave!”

“Well, let’s look at it another way,” I say. “We’ve talked before about how there’s a difference between a criticism and a complaint, how the former contains judgment while the latter contains a request. But a complaint can also be an unvoiced compliment. I know that what Margo says often feels like a series of complaints. And they are—but they’re sweet complaints because inside each complaint, she’s giving you a compliment. The presentation isn’t optimal, but she’s saying that she loves you. She wants more of you. She misses you. She’s asking you to come closer. And now she’s saying that the experience of wanting to be with you