TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: . . . uncomfortable but I haven't met anyone who has said that it's not worked for them, so [ ] (inaudible at 00:00:08).

CLIENT 1: It works for us. I'll have conversations in coffee shops with friends that I don't care who overhears.

CLIENT 2: I studied anthropology in college, so I like (chuckles) information to be shared.

THERAPIST: So how are you guys doing?

CLIENT 1: Better. We haven't had any fights and we've been able to talk a little bit about Graham's sister-in-law without fighting. We went out to dinner with Graham's dad, just the three of us, and it came up. He was really supportive. We are about to go away in August for a week, the whole family, and I'm feeling anxious about it. But not only is she only going to be there for half the time, apparently Graham's family has a rule that if it's somebody's first week up there on the family vacation everyone has to behave so that the new person has fun, which is great because I'm not nervous about that anymore. [00:01:16] I figure that before we go up to Maine I sort of want to work out how we want to proceed with Graham's sister-in-law, Candace, and how we might be able to talk to his brother about it and how I can handle her without causing more drama than necessary but without sacrificing my own comfort and feelings. Graham has correctly pointed out that we're both really stressed with our professional lives right now and how that might be making more of our stress worse, but that's my own fault for procrastinating on my work. [00:02:12] I'm supposed to be writing my exam proposal and I keep putting it off. I've been losing a lot of sleep over it because I'll stay up late working on it, so that's been very stressful. It won't be a factor up in Maine because it will be completed by then. I'll have a week to not think about it and a week to enjoy having Candace come up.

CLIENT 2: Well the other thing that we learned that may help is that she's only coming up for three or four days. I think it's Wednesday that she comes up. I guess she just got a new job and there are some things that she has to work out, so she's actually going to fly up separately from everyone else. I don't think she'll spend a lot of time in the house with us, so I don't think we'll actually be in closed quarters with her too often, which may help. [00:03:11]

CLIENT 1: Graham's father is awesome and was trying to reassure me that if she starts to start anything we'll handle her. We'll cut a signal and get her out of there. I'm more worried that I'm going to say something like, "Wow, that's really rude," or just completely lose my patience with her and cause a lot of discomfort with the family just because you guys have been dealing with her for so long you just ignore her when she gets like that. I don't know if I can keep ignoring her when she gets like that. I'm just worried that they're going to be trying to keep her from being rude, but they're not really prepared for if I react not that I even know how I would react. [00:04:08] So far it's sort of been like, "Did that really happen?" Like a few minutes later, "Did that actually happen?" I don't want to seek her out and be like, "Hey, this thing you did ten minutes ago [ ] (inaudible at 00:04:18)

CLIENT 2: I think I'm less concerned about Maine in particular because I think at some point it's okay if you have to say to her "you're being rude," because I think all of us have done that at some point. But there does come a point where we have to pick our battles with her and all of us have to do it, so it's more about how consistently that happens than if it happens.

CLIENT 1: At this point I haven't said anything to her about her behavior. Of course, she doesn't talk to me so that adds to that, but if she's going to keep treating me like this I don't set some boundaries and say, "That's not okay to say to me," and then maintain the boundaries. It might not seem like I'm picking my battles; I'm picking all of them. If she's going to treat me this way then I don't want her in my apartment. I don't want to be her hostess, which might seem sort of drastic, but it's easier for me than putting up with whether she might being rude or not. I know that in Graham's family she's approached his dad and his other brother and sister-in-law about whether we should talk to Carl, the brother, and they've all said no. [00:05:58]

CLIENT 2: It doesn't help.

CLIENT 1: It would make me feel better to know that . . .

CLIENT 2: Right, but I think if Candace has set up a situation where it's kind of us versus her and Carl was forced to make a choice there, then whenever we do that it sort of validates that for her. Instead of it actually becoming a discussion it kind of pushes him away.

CLIENT 1: Right, but when I said that if that's not the case if we're not going to talk to them, then I don't want to spend as much time with them. I don't feel like you feel that either one of those is a good option and that leaves me with just status quo. Just being told to pick my battles isn't very effective because I haven't picked any battles at this point. I'm just frustrated and I feel like I can't say anything. [00:06:57] Or if I do decide to speak up at any point, then I'm picking the wrong battle. At this point, to be fair, everything she says irritates me. (snickers)

CLIENT 2: Well, that's the other problem, though. I think it takes a little while to get past that and realize that, honestly, a lot of it is just that she's got some major anxiety issues that she has worked on. I don't know how and that's not any of my business, but she is trying to work on some of them. So when she flips out about something like the bird in our house and says, "I'm going to leave if it comes out of the cage," she doesn't mean to be offensive, she's just actually reacting and exploding about it. It's hard to figure out how much of those are her actually being a little spiteful because she is a little spiteful and how much of it is that she just has some issues. [00:08:01]

CLIENT 1: I know. I'm just not happy with how she's treating me and I feel like I'm being told just to suck it up, this is how she is, because I can't decide that I don't want to spend time with her because that upsets you. So I feel like I'm sort of trapped. I either have to put up with her as she is and a lot of times it's only after the fact that I know what she did, even if she has anxiety, was unacceptably rude and that can't happen anymore. It's after the fact. It doesn't feel easy with somebody like her to go up to her afterwards and say, "Hey, you said this thing last time we saw you that really upset me," especially because I keep getting told that talking to them about it is going to make it worse. [00:08:57] So I can't talk to them about it, I can't distance myself from her without hurting you, and it's hard to know which battles are appropriate to pick because things that I think are unacceptable and I want to talk to her about them, to your family are just how she is and I'm not going to talk to her about it.

CLIENT 2: Yeah, it's hard because all of us have, at some point, talked to her about it and we've sort of hit a wall with how much we can change her behavior towards us. But we don't want to lose ties with Carl.

CLIENT 1: Right, but I don't like spending time with her because she's mean. (chuckles) Stuff like it's hard to be her guest at her house because she's not a good hostess to me. She'll offer everybody else a drink and then she'll ignore me. It's happened a couple of times. [00:10:06] When we went over to their apartment after your grandmother died she offered everybody chili except me which, at the time, I didn't really mind because I was really sick and I actually couldn't eat chili and wasn't going to ask for any of it. But it was still kind of . . . I had kind of prepared how I was going to decline it, "No, thanks so much, but I'm okay." And then it never happened. So I don't want to be a guest at their house because it's uncomfortable and awkward and frustrating and I don't want to be her hostess because it's also uncomfortable, awkward and frustrating. I don't want to upset you or I don't want to make things worse; but I don't want to keep doing this because it makes me unhappy. [00:11:04]

CLIENT 2: I think the only issue is if we can't have them over and we can't be a guest at their house . . .

CLIENT 1: You can be.

CLIENT 2: . . . which is fine.

CLIENT 1: Everything seems to set up that I'm making you choose between you and your family and, at this point, I can't think of any options besides if nothing is going to change, I don't want to spend time around her.

CLIENT 2: I guess I don't know how far that extends. I think the last time we had a long conversation about this, that wasn't something you were willing to approach yet; but I don't know if that means we can't go to Maine any more.

CLIENT 1: You can always go to Maine. There are some years I might not be able to go for other reasons. [00:12:03]

CLIENT 2: Which is fine, but "some years I might not be able to go" and "I'm not going as a matter of course because Candace is there" is a very different thing. It makes me not know about holidays because Candace likes hosting things there and she tries to take over holidays. She sometimes hosts Mother's Day there. At some point they're going to want to host Thanksgiving, now that they own a house.

CLIENT 1: That's the point. If it gets to the point where she's still treating me like this and we're at the point where this is what we're doing, then you might have to talk to Carl, you know? I just wonder at what point is making him uncomfortable become the more attractive option than having me stay uncomfortable.

CLIENT 2: It's not a matter of making him or me uncomfortable because I know it's an uncomfortable conversation. That's not what bothers me. [00:13:07] It's that we've had these kinds of conversations before and we're not making any progress any more. We're at a limit as to what we can do to change Candace's behavior. So I can talk to him about it, I'm just skeptical that that will lead to any kind of substantive change in terms of how she treats anyone.

THERAPIST: This seems like such a delicate matter. It's almost like I think about a conversation "should we tell mom that she has cancer?" That's a horrible analogy, in that sense, but it's like what can we do with this very delicate matter? It has that sort of a weight to it.

CLIENT 1: We have very different views on advice columns, which is going to sound really awkward until I clarify it. [00:14:06] My friends and I are huge fans of an advice blog called Captain Awkward that has a few concepts that have become very popular. One of them is the Darth Vader boyfriend or girlfriend, where somebody is in a relationship where their partner sets up the same kind of situation as Candace has set up, where if somebody says to Carl, "You know, Candace is kind of rude," it's set up for them to be like, "They don't understand us. They always hated me." The person in the relationship, in this case Carl, says, "She's not all that bad. There's good in her." There is this really popular concept that has helped me keep in mind how things go when we're dealing with Carl and Candace. [00:15:04] For example, when they were getting married things were a mess. I remember asking Graham a million times, "Can you please find out from Carl and Candace what time you need to be there at the wedding so I can rent a Zip car and get you there on time?" Graham couldn't ask them and I didn't understand why, so I started asking. That's the last time she was even pretending to be nice to me. After that she would not talk to me after a couple of attempts to get that information myself.

THERAPIST: How did it become your job to do the car rental?

CLIENT 1: Graham doesn't have a driver's license.

CLIENT 2: I'm partially blind, so I largely try not to drive. [00:15:59]

CLIENT 1: We actually could have gotten a ride from his other brother or even I ended up not being able to rent the Zip car because we were moving the day before the wedding. I may have gotten into a Zip car accident and they wouldn't let me drive one for a while. But there was a time when we were going to rent a Zip car so that we could leave a little bit or I could even leave the reception a little bit early and start unpacking. Graham didn't want to ask because they were getting so upset both of them. If you asked them a question about the wedding they would start getting really upset about how everyone was harassing them.

CLIENT 2: I guess that's an example of how it becomes such a sensitive issue, was their wedding. I think initially they had no plans to ever get married. They wanted to just live as a couple. They just weren't interested in the institution of marriage. [00:17:02] I think both of the families kind of pushed them a little. They were going to have this tiny little ceremony that had only eight people. Candace's family didn't want that and they pushed her a little more to have a bigger ceremony and by the time it got to the point where . . . my mother wanted my grandmother to be there and there was a lot of subtle hinting at what they could and could not do at their wedding that probably shouldn't have been done. It got to the point where if you even asked them a question it was like it was some kind of hostility. I had to ask Carl six or seven times what I should have been wearing to his wedding because it was this outdoor wedding.

CLIENT 1: No, no. It wasn't outdoors. I don't know why you think it was outdoors. That was such a big thing. They were angry because people thought it was an outdoor wedding.

CLIENT 2: Which it was.

CLIENT 1: It was at a community center. It was actually beautiful. If you hadn't know how much stress and family conflict went into this wedding, you might not have known at the wedding itself. [00:18:06] If the wedding was nice they were going to have the wedding outdoors and they were going to have lawn games and they were going to have some outdoor tables. If the wedding wasn't nice everything was going to be inside which, to me, the basic, straightforward answer that's what happened to my brother's wedding. It was going to be outside if there wasn't rain and inside if there was, and the whole reception was inside. That was what they told me easy. But they wouldn't tell us if it was inside or outside. They would get angry if people thought it was outdoors, which it was. I asked what to wear and Candace said, "It's not a traditional wedding, so there isn't something you're supposed to wear," which isn't helpful. So I ended up having to ask somebody else what they were wearing so I wouldn't look out of place. She wouldn't tell me what time the reception ended, so I didn't know when to end the Zip car reservation. [00:18:59] After that she stopped replying to my messages, even when they were things like, "Hey, I wanted to thank you again for the Christmas gift you got me and Graham. We've already made a bunch of waffles with the lovely waffle iron you got us." No response. That was sort of the beginning of the radio silence. And even in person, she would just walk away and make conversation; like as soon as there was even the tiniest possibility of an out, she would just walk away. I don't want to say "I don't believe you" that I thought that part of it was your OCD and anxiety and that I wasn't afraid to approach her myself about it, and now I'm like well, I guess even I'm going to accidentally upset somebody. This is much more delicate than I thought. Since then she has not even been a little bit nice to me. [00:20:08] Before that, she was kind of almost like "Welcome to the family. I was an outsider, too. I'll show you the ropes." And then she didn't really, but she kept that up for a couple of months.

CLIENT 2: It's because you're not an outsider any more. I think that's just the difficulty with the situation, is that, frankly, we don't like her and she knows that we don't like her, but we want to spend time with Carl. She doesn't want to relinquish her time with him, understandably, especially if she feels like he's going into a situation where . . .

CLIENT 1: . . . they're going to tell him to dump her.

CLIENT 2: Which we would never do.

CLIENT 1: I know. It's really funny. Divorce is like a swear word in your family.

CLIENT 2: Well, they're religious. [00:20:59]

CLIENT 1: My parents are divorced so I'm sitting there going like, "If he's really this unhappy, I hope that they get divorced." He doesn't seem terribly happy. If she's not nice to him, I hope that if he's really unhappy, one day he can have the courage to see that this is not how healthy relationships works.

CLIENT 2: But that's not our place to do for him.

CLIENT 1: You can't walk up to him and say, "I hope you get divorced?" Your family talks like, "Well, this is his wife, so we're just going to have to be nice to her forever."

CLIENT 2: But that's the difficulty because she's aware that there's hostility. Even when there isn't hostility it seems to her like there is and I'm sure the same is true on our side. I'm sure sometimes she's actually trying to be nice and because we're used to her doing things like . . .

CLIENT 1: The things that upset me about her behavior when she came over to dinner with Carl, there are some things that she said and did that I thought were annoying, but just who she was. [00:22:01] There were some things that she did that are things that are rude when you are a guest in somebody's home. It's not "that's just how she is" it's "hey, if this is how you're going to treat me when you're my guest, then you are not invited any more." I'm so tempted, if we go over there, to ask them to crate their dog, except I love dogs and would never ask them to crate their dog. Because I'm a nice guest and dogs are awesome and so are birds and I'm still offended.

THERAPIST: There is a reason that she's figuring so prominently in your relationship, I think, above and beyond the practicality of it. There's some meaning about her in your relationship maybe past experiences with your own families and how things are dealt with and it's kind of coming to a head around her because she seems to represent something that crystallizes everything. [00:23:05]

CLIENT 1: Yeah, I keep telling Graham that when people in my family aren't nice to me I spend less time with them. I'm estranged from my father because it was so stressful trying to have a relationship with him that I was having trouble functioning at work because he was such a bad person.

THERAPIST: What did he do?

CLIENT 1: Uh, God. Everything from . . . the only time I've ever been grounded in my entire life was when I told my dad I wouldn't take out the compost because the smell of it made me so sick that I would start to vomit. Instead I offered to take the recycling out every week instead of rotating with my siblings. [00:24:00] He grounded me and told me that I had to take the compost out because it was my turn. I didn't because I had explained to him, I though very reasonably, and later on my mom said, "I'll do it," and he said, "No, she has to do it." He said he didn't care if I did any other chores. I just had to take out the compost because I had said I didn't want to. He once made me pull over on the side of the road to yell at me for having attitude when I was being taught how to drive. He told me that I was a terrible driver and that I shouldn't question his driving techniques or his teaching of me and, all this time, I was actually late for a $100-an-hour violin lesson that I ended up missing because of this. I ended up getting out of the car and walking down the highway. This wasn't like 95, but a side highway, and he called my mom to complain that I was behaving like this and she had to convince him to get in the driver's seat and follow me because he didn't care if I kept walking. [00:25:04]

CLIENT 2: The way he treated you at your graduation, I think I saw . . .

CLIENT 1: Less than two hours after I graduated with my degree, I was at lunch with him and some other family members and he made a ton of comments about how stupid the degree was and how the [ ] (inaudible at 00:25:19) other major was either gay or trying desperately to get laid. God, he would get mad at me if I asked for his help and then, if I asked for my mom's help first, he would get mad at me for not asking him for help. He told me that he didn't want to help me unless I put in more time with his family, with my dad's side of the family. A few weeks of reconnecting with him after an almost four-year estrangement, he told me that I had to meet his wife because she was my family now and I was being ungrateful by not meeting her after two weeks. He would complain that I didn't spend enough time with him right after the divorce; and then I would make time to see him and he would spend the entire time on the phone with his girlfriend. [00:26:07]

Oh, God. He is such a gross person. My siblings, unfortunately for me, are very upset that I don't have a relationship with him anymore. My sister won't let me talk. I'm not allowed to say "dad." I have to have every conversation with her as if I'm unrelated to him because she firmly believes that I don't understand what a good dad he is. She won't let me talk about him. My brother just gets really sad and tries to guilt trip me. "I put up with dad. You know, he's your dad." Because of that I've accepted that I'm not going to I'm closer to your siblings than I am my own because of this. [00:27:03] I've accepted that my paternal grandparents are, if we get married, probably not going to want to come to my wedding because my dad is not invited. It's just very sad, but I'm much healthier emotionally when I don't have to interact with him. He's 30 years older than me and I've just decided that, if he can't be an adult, I'm not going to manage this relationship for him. The problem, though, is that my reaction is that if my family doesn't treat me well, then I don't want to spend time with them, assuming that I've put in effort to fix things. I do try to. [00:27:55]

Knowing that I can't really rock the boat with Graham's family when there's somebody in it when there's somebody in it who doesn't treat me well makes me feel very miserable and trapped because I'm stressed every time we go to a family event. If she's going to be there I start to feel like I'm being petty if I don't want to invite her to something. I just had a violin concert on Sunday and if Graham's other brother had been in town I would have invited him and Graham's sister-in-law to the concert, but they were out of town. I would never have invited Carl and Candace to the concert because I wouldn't want her there. It's just stressful and it makes me feel better knowing that in Maine Graham's family is going to try and make everything great for me, but she's not going to try and make things great for me. There are going to be years where I'm such a part of the family that no one is going to be going out of their ways to protect me anymore. This is a one-year pass, which is great. It's a good way to get my first experience in really nicely. [00:29:14]

THERAPIST: Did your dad treat you worse than your siblings?

CLIENT 1: Oh, yeah.

THERAPIST: Do you know why?

CLIENT 1: No. He grew up with only brothers and my mother was a very traditional 50's mom. I was his first and oldest daughter and I'm very stubborn and often my siblings would say "I don't want" and I would just say "I won't," and then I wouldn't. He didn't know how to handle me at all. He would throw me in the basement. If I was having a temper tantrum, I would be put in the basement, which went on up through early middle school. One time I stopped crying because I had brought a book down with me, knowing I was being punished. [00:30:03] He heard me stop crying and he came down and took the book away. He said, "No, you're being punished and you can't read." He tore it away. I don't much like him. My brother was his oldest son. He went to the same college. He skis and my dad certainly loves to ski. My brother participates in all the family stuff. My little sister was the little princess and was appropriately spoiled as the youngest, not more than other youngest kids get spoiled; but I really feel like there were times when he was going out of his way to antagonize me. He would deliberately not answer questions that he thought I should know the answer to, even when I kept saying "I don't." I didn't really like that very much. [00:31:00]

He and my mom have been separated for ten years now and they've finally agreed on an end point for alimony and she's beyond thrilled. She doesn't every want to talk to him again because he does the same stuff to her. He told her that if she dropped alimony he would pay off my sister's student loans. "So by making me pay alimony you're hurting our daughter." He does that kind of stuff. (sighs) Oh, God. He's . . . I'll write a book someday. It will be a best seller. You don't like him.

CLIENT 2: No, I don't. I haven't interacted with him that much. I've read some of his e-mails and I went to one family gathering for your sister's graduation where he happened to be there, but he does seem cruel. [00:31:58]

CLIENT 1: We did have family therapy. We tried not a very good therapist. She couldn't remember my name, which is like part of her job. She kept calling me Brittney. I'm like, "Who is she talking to?" We had one session altogether where things got really out of hand. My sister accused me of not knowing my dad at all. She said, "I don't know what you're talking about. Clearly you don't really know him." I'm like, "No, he treats us differently. Here is an example." He does treat both of my siblings similarly in terms of we have to do things for him or else he won't do things for us. We can only get his help when he offers or when we ask him the right way. But they love him and they want a relationship with him and they find ways to deal with him. I just said it's too much. [00:32:58] The way he treated me was just way too much to handle. After I cut things off, the first time it was tough because I was 17 and everyone kept saying, "You're so young. You need to give it a chance." And then when I did it again when I was 23 everyone said, "Okay." Since then it's been much easier. He's mad at me now so now he won't talk to me, either. The first time he was like, "Oh, my heart is broken. My daughter won't talk to me." Now he avoids me. My brother's wedding was really funny because he wouldn't even come near me and we had to stand next to each other for pictures.

THERAPIST: So your experience with him is that the only way to be in a relationship with him is to sort of submit to him.

CLIENT 1: Yeah, absolutely.

THERAPIST: You're worried that that will be recreated in your relationship with Graham?

CLIENT 1: It's more that I don't like being told that this is just how like if someone is treating me badly and I have to deal with it because, if we get married, she's my family, too. I don't put up with family members who don't treat me well. [00:34:05] I might not fight with them anymore. I don't fight with my siblings over it, but I just don't spend as much time with people. But I feel like that is punishing you or making you choose between me and your family. I can't really balance my own needs. If the price of having somebody in my family is letting them treat me poorly and I can't say anything without disrupting the family dynamic, then I don't like that.

CLIENT 2: I don't think it's a binary. I don't think it's a thing where we either have to cut Candace out of our lives or we have to submit to everything that she does to us.

CLIENT 1: And that's what I keep trying to tell you. [00:34:58] I don't know how to compromise on it. Seeing her less, not inviting her over to our apartment, maybe telling Carl, "I want to spend one-on-one time with you."

CLIENT 2: Right, and we've tried a lot of that. I think that's the difficulty here. When you came in there was already a lot of history and we went through a lot of those stages with Candace where all of us, at some point or another, had some kind of a knock-down, drag-out fight with her. At some point, all of us have pulled Carl aside and said, "Listen, you just have to talk to her about . . . " whatever it happened to be. We've tried to find ways to spend time with just him alone and I think that's become a little more difficult as time has gone on. [00:36:01]

CLIENT 1: Yeah, they're married and they have a house and everybody is more busy as far as wrapping up the 20s.

THERAPIST: Does Amber's reaction to Candace make you anxious?

CLIENT 2: I think the only thing that makes me anxious is how far it ends up going because there is a point where, if family holidays are hosted at their house, I'd like to be able to go there. Once in a while I'd like to be able to bring . . .

CLIENT 1: Yeah, I know. On the one hand, that will eventually become an issue. But right now, that's not something that's happening. This is the first time we've had them over in our apartment since our housewarming when all of our family members came over. [00:37:05] They don't come over very much. They're over here maybe once or twice a year.

CLIENT 2: In general, rather than having company because it's a hassle and I'm lazy that way, I'd rather visit them where they are or to go out somewhere else with them.

CLIENT 1: That's what Bill and Melanie Bill is the other brother and sister-in-law say. "We like to go out with them in a neutral place so we don't have to host them and have her threaten to kick their cats," and they don't have to be hosted by her.

CLIENT 2: So limiting the amount of time that we spend with them, that you have to spend with Candace, makes sense to me. [00:37:58] That Bill and I have managed to sometimes have Carl over to my brother's house and we play video games because we used to do that. Maybe once a month we can get him out.

THERAPIST: It sounds like jail, "get him out." (chuckles)

CLIENT 2: Yeah.

THERAPIST: He gets to leave jail once a month on a day pass, but then he has to go back.

CLIENT 2: And I don't mean to put it that way.

CLIENT 1: Well, a little bit.

CLIENT 2: I think he is happy with her. I don't know what the dynamic is, but his life with her is fine. But she doesn't like him spending time alone with us so it can be difficult to get her to spend time alone with us. So when we can manage to get him to spend time alone it's difficult; and I think it would be close to impossible to set up a situation where it was also with you and Melanie because, at that point, we're cutting Candace out.

CLIENT 1: What do you mean? Oh, I know.

CLIENT 2: If we arrange something that's like our video game. [00:39:02]

CLIENT 1: No, I know.

CLIENT 2: And I'm fine with that. If you have to spend less time with Carl, that's completely understandable. He's not your brother and you shouldn't have to put that kind of effort in. What bothers me is if Carl gets a new job or something and I want to have him over to celebrate it, it feels like this is a binary. That's what it feels like to me. It feels like we really cannot ever have them over at our house.

CLIENT 1: Well then I think of things like why don't you just call him up and say things like, "Do you want to go grab a beer, just the two of us?" and then I think things like why don't you say to him, "Look, Carl, I really want to have you guys over more often, but Amber is really uncomfortable with the way that Candace has been treating her." It's all very secretive like we can't explain to him why we're arranging things this way. [00:40:02]

CLIENT 2: Because that paints it as "us versus them" to him. And if we're painting it as us versus them, then she's what you called the Darth Vader significant other. She says, "Look, I was right. They're in a conspiracy against me." If it becomes a thing where he has to pick sides then he's, understandably, going to pick her side.

CLIENT 1: He's already picked sides. He's married to her.

CLIENT 2: That's what I mean.

THERAPIST: One thing I think about, and this is not true in all families, but when significant others are getting into conflict, I feel like they're expressing something that can't be expressed in the family, that they're somehow recruited, in a way. Recruited is in quotes. They're expressing something that the family is having a hard time managing. I don't know if that's the case in your situation. It's certainly not true across the board. But as I'm listening I'm thinking about that. [00:40:59]

CLIENT 1: I certainly feel that the way my family handles things is much different. [Part of nice thing about dating somebody who is not mean] (ph?) is that, like I said, I'm closer to a lot of Graham family members than I am to some of my own family members. I see his siblings more often than I see mine. I enjoy spending time with your siblings more than I do with my own. A lot of that is because of my dad, the dynamic with my siblings is very weird. Part of it is that my brother is turning out to be kind of a jerk. That's been true for a long time. At the same time, it's stuff like if Darlene, my sister-in-law, my brother's wife, if she were mean to you, I would just feel like I would just . . . I was about to kill Kevin for being mean to you. [00:41:55]

CLIENT 2: I think that's the difference in our situations. Kevin can be as mean to me as he wants. That would not want me to abstract myself from and I don't mean it's because you're being unreasonable. I think it's because . . .

CLIENT 1: We don't spend much time with Kevin.

CLIENT 2: But even if we did, it's because we're from . . . That's just something my family doesn't do and I think they have their reasons for not doing it. If it's a situation where someone is difficult to deal with, then we try and manage it rather than not that you didn't try and manage it.

CLIENT 1: No, there are things like my aunt's brother, who is super creepy he's really creepy and inappropriate. And because of that, whenever my aunt and uncle host something and I know this guy is going to be there, sometimes I'll back out because I don't want to have to be around him. But when I go I just deal with him and excuse myself from conversations. [00:43:00] But again, if I had an option never to spend time with him ever again, I would take it. So I see this as I want to be able to spend time with Carl and Candace. I want to not have conflict with your family, or at least conflict that's not frivolous manageable; like sometimes we watch movies with your family that I think are annoying. Sometimes Bill says stuff that I think are stupid. Regular family problems and not every time I see her, I'm just . . . I mean . . . it's . . . (sighs) I can't see any way to handle it at this point besides just not spending any time with her because I can't be around her. She's really rude and unpleasant and she's not nice to me. [00:44:02]

THERAPIST: I'm going to need to leave you guys on this note. I think one way I could really help you is, again, to sort of think about and it sounds like you already have some ideas about this but what Candace represents in your relationship and the compromises that you're worried about that she signifies. I feel like if I can help you guys have a conversation about these things with her name not being mentioned not because we can't mention it, but because she's sort of a symbol of something else, I think I can really help you guys work this out. Does that sound good?

CLIENT 1: Yeah.

THERAPIST: And now, I think I had mentioned to you that I have a couple of Thursdays where I'm going to be away. I'm actually very rarely away, so it happens that I just have a couple of conflicts with that; so I apologize for that. I like to get people on regular schedules. I leave Thursday afternoon for a little over a week, so I am here early next week and then I'm gone the full week after. [00:44:56] But I'm going to extend my Tuesday evening hours next week so that I can accommodate Thursday evening people. I'm happy to do that for you if you if you would like that.

CLIENT 1: Yeah, we can do Tuesday next week. Do you want to do that?

THERAPIST: Yeah, I think I have a 6:00 next Tuesday. Would that work for you?

CLIENT 1: Yeah, that would be perfect.

CLIENT 2: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Okay. Let's do that. What way are you away in Maine?

CLIENT 1: We leave on the 11th and we return on the night of the 19th.

CLIENT 2: It's the week of the 11th we're gone.

THERAPIST: The week after I'm away.

CLIENT 2: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Okay. How about this I'm going to put you in for the 30th at 6:00. And then it looks like we'll go a couple of weeks and then meet back up again. There is also a Thursday at the end of the month that I'm not going to be here. There are so many Thursdays.

CLIENT 2: (chuckles) It's okay.

THERAPIST: I apologize. Again, I like to have people have their regular times they can count on.

CLIENT 2: She's going to have to switch at some point.

CLIENT 1: Yeah because of school. [00:46:06]

THERAPIST: Okay. Just let me know as early as you know because these evening hours get booked.

CLIENT 1: I actually know exactly how late I'm working every evening so I could do 5:30, but only on Mondays and Fridays.

THERAPIST: We'll figure something out. If I get it in e-mail form, it's okay. I'll see you next week on Tuesday at 6:00 and we'll kind of take it from there.

CLIENT 1: And then in terms of payment for today . . .

THERAPIST: When it's a small co-pay, you can do it every time or you can do it monthly. Either way is fine with me.

CLIENT 1: Okay. Great.

THERAPIST: If you want to do it next time, it doesn't matter.

CLIENT 1: So maybe we'll do it next time for both today and next week.

THERAPIST: Sure. That works out just fine.

CLIENT 1: Hopefully it's not raining. Okay. Thanks so much.

THERAPIST: Absolutely. Bye-bye.

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