TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:
THERAPIST: Alright. (PAUSE) Actually, I'm going to grab something.
CLIENT: (LAUGHTER)
THERAPIST: Hey, if you want me to close out, I'm happy to.
CLIENT: Thanks. It's good for now. I might get cold and I'll close it then...
THERAPIST: Okay.
CLIENT: ...if that's alright.
THERAPIST: Yeah. Sure.
(PAUSE)
CLIENT: I've been eating a lot. Like earlier I was saying I was focusing on not eating a lot. Like I've had very good meals. [00:01:05]
I don't do very much else, I mean, besides nothing.
THERAPIST: Yeah. You said on Tuesday you had a lot going on.
CLIENT: Yeah. That day I did. I was showing the apartment to a new roommate and I got a lunch date too. (PAUSE) Yeah. So I got a new roommate.
THERAPIST: You did.
CLIENT: Right. I also found out that the, the whole thing about my other two roommates having sex was inaccurate. Like that was my imagination.
THERAPIST: It was? Okay. [00:01:57]
CLIENT: And I still like... Even after I figured out, like now, it's been the space of like, you know, three days since I talked to one of them and basically ascertained that it was just all in my head and so, even now, I'm starting to creep back and go back to language she said like, you know, one of those nights, the night I'm certain it happened, he said something like, "Yeah, I mean, it was... We were talking. We were fucking around a little bit. You know, nothing happened." But he said, "Fucking around," so like, you know, that could mean fucking around.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: Also, a friend pointed out to me that like, you know, since they had already had sex, it's not that unusual to suspect they'd have sex again. You know?
THERAPIST: No.
CLIENT: Not really. But then, I mean, like when I talked to Edgar, I was heading over to the airport and I was convinced it was just in my head. So, enter me, I haven't talked to Cleo (ph) for like two weeks. [00:03:01]
It sort of raises questions, I guess, about what I, if I'm not trying to achieve something, what that affects to achieve. You know? Sort of shutting someone down before they get too close. I sort of felt I jumped back to a period of the girl where I really had done very well for her that one night when she was in trouble. It was the magical night I had described where I sort of felt like King Oliver (ph) because I didn't take advantage of her or anything. I just showed her that kindness could be given freely. After that, I was sort of scheming on her behalf. I was getting her a job in like a good or, you know, talking with my friend in a coffee shop I frequented, saying, "This girl, she doesn't have papers. What should we do?" [00:04:07]
He had been like an English language teacher. Whatever. I was kind of getting her a job and, you know, while I was doing that, during that time, for whatever reason, I thought my calling was the reporter. There was the Occupy thing and I interviewed one of the candidates, whatever race was going on then, because I just bumped into him on the street while I was doing my legal career job. So I was thinking I was doing that. So to set the stage, I mean, I just sat to rest in one of the government buildings and good old Michael (ph) was there. I was like, "Wow. Good old Michael," when I asked him about Occupy Wall Street. It was really interesting to see them... I don't know if it's always like this. But it was almost as if there was a beacon on him. He was like standing erect and walking to the statehouse I presume. [00:05:03]
THERAPIST: Yeah. Okay.
CLIENT: But he was up there. He was... So I saw him and I was like, "Oh. Maybe I can get him an interview. That would really be a big break for me because if I could quote Michael in this story, that's something." So I was... I had my business suit. I was tired and like, you know, pretty cool clothes, like a jacket and my hat and my scarf. It was February or something. Anyway, I was walking with purpose, in a good way, and then I saw the girl who too, I had previously shown around, you know, and taken her out when she was in trouble. She was with another guy and my instant reaction was just betrayed. Like I...
THERAPIST: Yes. [00:06:05]
CLIENT: She smiled at me. She even beckoned me over. But there was just no possibility besides that they had sex or like somehow dishonored me or mistreated me in some very perfidious way. With her, it wasn't entirely out of the question that she would do something like that. I mean, but...
THERAPIST: No. Aside from what really happened or what didn't happen... Because who knows? Right? It could very well be the case but I think you're kind of getting at some really powerful... I mean, I guess I'd kind of refer to it almost as a fantasy really emerges in these situations that has a lot of meaning to you. You know, yeah, there's the stuff around exclusion, about... I mean, all these kind of themes that we've been talking about that kind of come together in these moments. [00:07:11]
I think when you start having that kind of sense of like, "She's probably..." Feeling very betrayed, it's almost like you're getting in contact with something really deep and important with your experience in the world, maybe in your life and I think Cleo and Edgar have the same kind of effect that it kind of like tapped into something really deep inside of you about... I don't know. It's something inside of you that you've known to be true or you've felt before.
(PAUSE) [00:08:00]
(PAUSE) [00:08:55]
CLIENT: I don't know what to say. You're probably right. (PAUSE) Yeah, I think I sort of almost, I guess it was a year ago? Yeah, probably a year ago... (PAUSE) Strange. It feels like longer ago. But it made me think on something you said where she doesn't... You were referring to Cleo but you said, she doesn't want to be in the vulnerable position. It seems true to me. I mean, I was in a place where I was thinking very unguardedly about helping another person and something about that and coming into contact with the possibility that someone else could take that in hand or use that in someway without reciprocating is like I can't be there. [00:10:15]
I think one strength is to allow yourself to be vulnerable. I mean, that's something that lets people come to you. I can sort of... I don't know how to put it. I can fillet or almost like you would display, you know, a plate of sirloin hors d'oeuvres. I can sort of put my own ability out like that. But, you know, I've prepared ahead of time. I... But I can't be... I don't know if I can be truly vulnerable...
(PAUSE) [00:11:00]
...in a relationship with another person. I mean, even here, you probably have enough experience to see that I don't, I don't really open up unreservedly. I mean, if things start going, trending in a certain direction where, maybe I might reveal more than I'm certain of or more than I can really put in a fashionable way, I might suddenly switch the table or something and it probably carries over which isn't to say I'm dishonest. I just...
THERAPIST: No. Yeah, yeah.
CLIENT: Something will not permit me to be...
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: ...underneath that. I can't do it and I... It's unusual but I guess it might be in some paradoxical way a handicap. I just can't be prone or whatever.
THERAPIST: Mm hmm. [00:12:05]
CLIENT: Which is also, like, a ridiculous statement because I know I spend my days with decent aspirations but less and less productively. I find that when I make contact with people I'm pretty productive. It's part of the shame of not talking to Cleo. I mean, I vowed never to talk to her again when I thought she and Edgar were sort of being intimate or something. But, I mean, I'm just in my room. She's constantly lonely, scared in her room, I don't know, not really doing anything. (LAUGHTER) I miss that. I mean, I had a meeting with an older gentleman who, at sixty five, he's had a very interesting life. [00:12:59]
I mean, he had some sort of success as a gambler, business owner during the seventies. I don't know what happened to him but he eventually came back and he's sort of religiously focused but he still has a very discriminating touch. I'm not someone who would use the word discrimination pejoratively but I mean to suggest here that he was very exacting standards and he can, almost like a top ten list, that guy where he would never to top ten lists but he would say, "Oh yes, this person. They said something very good," or, you know, "This person's good at this but not this," or, "Perhaps this piece or writing is..." He said, "There are only four authors in this genre that I would ever consider reading and this is one of them," that sort of thing and opposed to that sort of mindset is someone like Cleo who I didn't find terribly attractive and who didn't really didn't have any specific value for me, though I'd like to pretend I, you know, derived some sort of sexual, psychological, psychosexual exploitation. I mean, it's... [00:14:19]
THERAPIST: Or closeness, in that way.
CLIENT: Yeah.
THERAPIST: Sorry. You were...
CLIENT: Well, what do you mean closeness?
THERAPIST: Well, that you... I think I recall you kind of saying that there was something about being in bed with her...
CLIENT: Oh yeah.
THERAPIST: ...and getting physically close, naked, intimate, sexual.
CLIENT: Yeah.
THERAPIST: It's real. It seemed real to you.
CLIENT: Yeah. I'm not suggesting at all it wasn't valuable. I'm just saying it wasn't...
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: ...not in the same intellectual way. You know?
THERAPIST: Yeah. Right. You mean in terms of your compatibility intellectually with her? [00:14:59]
CLIENT: Well, I mean, it's not like you say, this is... Even talking about it, I guess, I sort of profane it a little bit but, I mean, it's not something you can grade or...
THERAPIST: Hmm.
CLIENT: You can't derive intellectual profit or... I don't know what to say about it. Yeah. It's sharing something, contact that was special.
THERAPIST: Yeah. But I interrupted you. I'm sorry.
CLIENT: That's where I was going. So...
THERAPIST: Oh.
CLIENT: Yeah and so it occurred to me I could be very much like that guy. (PAUSE) And it's really hard to break through. [00:16:01]
I mean, I'm not the only one in the whole of the neighborhood here (inaudible at 00:16:07) (LAUGHTER) But, I mean... (PAUSE) I don't know what to say.
THERAPIST: Well, one thing I'm, I guess that I was kind of thinking about as you were talking about Cleo and this guy, a man of, you know, discriminating tastes, is that Cleo did not... It's this kind of a... I imagine for you it's this kind of really kind of confusing thing in the sense that Cleo was not somebody that you felt, you know, passed a certain kind of... (SIGH) [00:17:01]
I don't know if passed the standards or whatever. You know, she wasn't somebody that you were really...
CLIENT: She was beneath my dignity.
THERAPIST: Yeah. That you felt... But yet you feel like there was a... Not only was there this kind of physical intimacy that did mean something to you but then there was also this kind of feeling that you find yourself really moved and kind of jealous in however you want to put that scenario, like kind of really distraught by the whole Edgar, her having sex thing. Yeah.
CLIENT: Yeah. I do.
THERAPIST: I imagine, in some way, the helpless woman was... I mean, I don't know how much of a really pure kind of a... I imagine, for some reason, she wouldn't be kind of your intellectual or kind of... [00:18:01]
CLIENT: Oh yeah. She was really superficial.
THERAPIST: Mmm.
CLIENT: It's really weird that one. It's so funny because I sort of built up this dam, I guess, where you meet this person and you have opportunities and you're just like, "Ah... You know? This person... She's not emotionally serious or this one, she's always talking about fashion or like iPhone..." She even had the whole American dream thing down pat to like a white picket fence. She was like, "Yeah. I want a house and I want it to be a big house and have like nice yard and like a good size yard." I was like, "Oh gee." That wasn't... I'm not characterizing her correctly. She was very shallow and whatever pop music was playing. So these are the things I tell myself all the time when I see her, when I see her, when I see her. Then there's that moment where we actually share something, where she's very vulnerable and, you know... [00:19:05]
She's sort of saying... You know, I asked her to come over but she felt uncomfortable so I went to her even though I didn't know if she would be there. What did I mean to say? I'm getting off track. I mean, she was vulnerable and I shared something of it, whatever that meant and after that, I realized... It's like the (inaudible at 00:19:27) Just when you need to tell her you have no love to give her, she lets her (inaudible at 00:19:35)
THERAPIST: She what... What's the line?
CLIENT: She let's the river answer that you've always been her lover. As in you can't really control love or affection or... Maybe affection. But you can't control the undercurrents of these connections you have with other people and once it breaks through, I guess I feel rather helpless or that sort of guy who's sort of layering on these judgments. [00:20:03]
It's just sort of helpless. He's on a little raft of his judgments being like swept away. You know? So (inaudible at 00:20:11) I mean, she was nineteen and to try and characterize a nineteen year old as in some way immoral or evil is in some way pathetic although she was pretty perfidious. She was very good at jockeying around different men.
THERAPIST: Mmm.
CLIENT: And I'm sure she was probably still got that guy, the franchise owner, her boss, who's probably providing for her in some way... (LAUGHTER)
THERAPIST: No, no. That she was getting the American dream. She was trying to get the American dream.
CLIENT: Yeah. She's good at it. That seems helpful.
THERAPIST: (inaudible at 00:20:57) displayed all these kind of things that you saw in her and it didn't... [00:21:03]
CLIENT: Yeah. That's the other side to this. There's something in me that's still glad I'm not talking to Cleo because even though I know nothing happened, I know how much it hurt me when Tracy (ph) my supervisor at my first kind of outside of college job, she just cut off contact with me all of the sudden and I have no idea why. She got very upset and it was after some sort of ambiguous episode where we'd... I don't know. She had called me in to hold the ladder or something...
THERAPIST: (inaudible at 00:21:37)
CLIENT: Yeah. And I, you know, she fell down and said, "Yeah. Everything's good. I do care about you. You're more than whatever to me." Then the next time I saw her, I came back and said something like, "You know, I thought about that. I can't really do it or I can't..." [00:21:59]
She had offered me a choice between like going against the family and sort of going as just strictly professional. I said I couldn't really do it and after that she was just really bitchy. I didn't think anything of saying that at the time but in retrospect, it's exactly when she started acting like horrendous. I mean, she wouldn't talk to me except half yelling. Even simple things, it was clear it was like strong and evident in her voice and like she was...
THERAPIST: What did she ask you to do? She asked you to go somewhere and she said, offered it as family or professional?
CLIENT: Oh, just for the relationship. My memory's a little skewed. I'm not sure I could describe the whole situation. But to me, it seems like she offered the path of, you know, somewhat ambiguous intimacy and one of just sort of a working relationship. I said something along the lines of I wasn't really comfortable with how I was treated because both the flower girl at the counter and she were kind of being coy. [00:23:11]
If they had just called me in to like, "Hey, we need this done," I would be fine with it but it seemed like there was something else involved and the whole thing is more confusing because obviously, I was interested in the woman but I did say I wasn't comfortable and...
THERAPIST: You were interested in the supervisor or the...
CLIENT: Oh, the supervisor.
THERAPIST: Oh, okay.
CLIENT: The counter girl, we had like a good relationship but... Yeah. But what I was thinking was, what I wanted to say was... Anyway, she cut me off and I had no idea why. Like I tried to talk to her and, you know, there were periods where I knew exactly what I wanted to say, we were supposed to have a talk but she wouldn't, she would just put it off because it was almost as if she could sense that I was going to win some sort of argument. (LAUGHTER) [00:23:57]
I knew what I was going to say. It was like a man prepared to die. You know how you feel and you just like, there's no other choice so you're resolved to it. She just sort (inaudible at 00:24:07) her boyfriend would come or whatever. My stories sound less and less credible to me now but...
THERAPIST: What do you mean?
CLIENT: (LAUGHTER) It's just kind of... After imagining that Edgar and Cleo had sex, it's, it calls a lot into question. But that's... I'm just saying that that's how they sound to me but...
THERAPIST: Like you're wondering if you saw it correctly or something? Or...
CLIENT: Well, I never presume I see it correctly. (LAUGHTER)
THERAPIST: Okay.
CLIENT: I... I just said I'm sort of picking up on my own potential, maybe how you hear things. I don't know how...
THERAPIST: Oh yeah. Like my... Am I believing this?
CLIENT: Yes. (LAUGHTER)
THERAPIST: I see.
CLIENT: But what I wanted to say was, you know, I was twenty one or something... [00:24:59]
THERAPIST: If it helps, I do.
CLIENT: Okay. But...
THERAPIST: Maybe it helps or...
CLIENT: Maybe that's true.
THERAPIST: (LAUGHTER)
CLIENT: I've often found that things like that are stated... Rather, to put it this way, if things like that are true, then I don't need to be like heard. Like if it's true, you don't need to say so. But then I guess I called into question myself. That's one thing that got me with her. We had like a really, very caring mutual relationship and that one, that sort of taught me like sex isn't very significant next to caring about somebody when they care about you. But eventually, she said stuff like, you know, "You're like a brother to me or, you know, I'm like a sister." I'm like, "Yes, that's exactly true. I mean, that's exactly true." But I didn't say that. [00:26:01]
It made me pissed off that she said it because if it were true, why would she say it? If it were true, why did she feel the need to throw it out there in words? So for me... Maybe that's something incredibly particular. But I got pissed off at that. What she had said was exactly true but if it was exactly true, why did she say it?
THERAPIST: Yeah. What do you mean she said it though as opposed to just keeping it to herself?
CLIENT: Yeah. Instead of letting it grow, you sort of, you like cut the flower and...
THERAPIST: Ah.
CLIENT: Which was her job, in fact. It could mean that she, she must have leveraged it in some way. Like, "You're like a brother to me so do this." Not that I...
THERAPIST: Oh. I see. Now that's interesting.
CLIENT: Yeah. It's just like why would you say that? You know? Why would you need to say that? [00:27:01]
THERAPIST: Okay. Yeah. That, in some way too is when I say something like, "Hey, I do believe you," it kind of, it kind of implies that I'm using it to some sort of capital or something.
CLIENT: I don't know. Maybe I'm just using it to make a point. (LAUGHTER) To you. (LAUGHTER)
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: (inaudible at 00:27:31) (PAUSE) Do you have a question?
THERAPIST: You know, actually I do. But what were you thinking?
CLIENT: I was thinking it would kind of be obnoxious for me to keep talking because you look like you have something to resolve or something. [00:28:03]
THERAPIST: Oh. Interesting. Were you picking up on something?
CLIENT: Sure.
THERAPIST: Yeah. No. I was thinking... I guess what I wanted to ask you about was if anything from Friday, like made anything more complicated to come here on Tuesday.
CLIENT: I don't know about that. Do you have anything specific in mind because I don't remember anything.
THERAPIST: Yeah. No. I mean, the whole incident around the bathroom and that what I felt like is that I came across as somewhat... I felt that I... In retrospect, after thinking about it, I felt that I kind of... You know, I guess I needed to just tell you what... Those were the ground rules.
CLIENT: (LAUGHTER) [00:28:57]
THERAPIST: And you get that. But I also felt like I might have, might have closed down some sort of discussion about what all that meant to you and especially in terms of what you might have been trying to say in terms of behavior as opposed to, as opposed to, you know, as opposed to being able to say it with words as people sometimes will do that. You know? Behavior communicates something that word can't.
CLIENT: Sure. From my point of view, that seemed Friday... I don't think that related at all to Tuesday. My perception of it was when you brought it up, it was like, "Oh geez..." Almost like when a woman gets too attached was my feeling about it and like something you do sort of offends her and you're just going about your business and like she picks up on like this one little thing that you do and you're completely caught off guard because, though I wasn't completely caught off guard, but you're caught off guard because you're just sort of like, I don't know, you're going to the fridge and you're putting the orange juice there and something about how you do it sort of like offends the other person and they bring up some... Whatever. [00:30:15]
That was my feeling because what I was doing didn't really have reference to you in my mind consciously. I mean, I didn't expect you to come out. I was relatively certain that I was just, you know... I don't think there was anyone on your radar that I know. I didn't know. So I just assumed that I would piss for like two seconds because it was like, I didn't have much urine in my bowels and I would just come in because I was already like ten minutes late. So I didn't close the door because, for me, that's like... It's almost the same thing. It's almost like profaning something. It's like a derived sense of importance just because, I mean, even if no one saw it, I'm doing this thing and, you know, like I said, urine is marking the territory. [00:30:57]
I don't know. Maybe I was just trying to extend some dominance in my mind. It didn't really.
THERAPIST: It didn't have that feeling to me. Instead it had something in the... I guess what struck me was that I was like catching you in the act of something and not that you were... Catching you... Something about... In how you said... You go, "Why didn't you knock?"
CLIENT: (LAUGHTER) I thought that was (inaudible at 00:31:33)
THERAPIST: (inaudible at 00:31:35) It said something about what it all meant to you.
CLIENT: Well, I...
THERAPIST: Actually, here's what I'll say... The last thing I'll say about it is it had... To me, what I associated with it later was the whole people... Your aunt finding this porn and blaming it on you. I don't know why exactly. There's something about being caught even though you didn't do anything that had some sort of association to it. That's... And then we talked about it. [00:32:11]
I remember at the end you felt like, "I don't know what the hell to do now. I've done this thing and..." (inaudible at 00:32:19) after all that.
CLIENT: Well, I think I sensed that it sort of struck you in a way that I hadn't expected it to. When I was going in there to look back more thoroughly, the possibility that it did strike me that it might come up. I didn't think it was impossible.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: But, in my mind, I was thinking it came out as (inaudible at 00:32:41) I guess. But it's nothing... I didn't expect it to go at all beneath the surface.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: But it seems like it did so that's why I was sort of downcast.
THERAPIST: Oh.
CLIENT: Yeah. Because, you know, frankly, I mean, I disclosed about as much as I could about it. So...
THERAPIST: Yeah. [00:33:03]
CLIENT: (inaudible at 00:33:07) There's not much that I can do to clean it up, which is the distress.
THERAPIST: Yeah. No. What I was trying to get at was that it's, you know, that there was, the whole me getting upset about it is not... Yeah, it's sure a part of it that I said, "Hey. Do this this way the next time," or whatever. I got that out. But I also felt like it meant that I shut down a kind of discussion of, you know, not that it needed to be figured out or anything but that what significance it had aside from the whole me being upset but what it all meant and, again, I had this kind of association to this later to your aunt. [00:33:59]
CLIENT: (LAUGHTER) Well, you're going to have to deal with that...
THERAPIST: (LAUGHTER) Is that my own problem?
CLIENT: ...on your own time. Yeah.
(PAUSE)
THERAPIST: Anyway, that was what was on my mind, that was the question and how it affected how you felt about Tuesday.
CLIENT: Tuesday... I think partly I was (inaudible at 00:34:27) which I did, I would be in trouble. What I did, since I wasn't talking to Cleo is that she didn't pay me the rent for April. So... I wasn't talking to her. So I had to go to the landlord and say, "You have to take the last month's rent from Cleo and Cleo has been saying to me... She's been talking for two or three months about leaving and now you're telling me on the first day that I take the rent out?" And I said, "Well, you know, she's living here and she hasn't moved yet so she should pay the rent." I had to fight that battle basically. [00:35:03]
THERAPIST: Mmm.
CLIENT: ...without talking to her. So, anyway, if I didn't come up with the money for next month, I would be in trouble. So I'm kind of like behind.
THERAPIST: Hmm.
CLIENT: So, there was that and the other part of it might have been I had just realized through talking with my other roommate Edgar that I had sort of perpetrated an illusion. I thought it (inaudible at 00:35:33) I didn't want to go too because, I mean, I had been talking to you for a couple months and perhaps feeding this...
THERAPIST: Oh.
CLIENT: You know? So I didn't feel confident about my own...
THERAPIST: Huh.
CLIENT: ...ability to tell a story at all or... Yeah. I felt more like I would, I would spin myself into, not you, but spin myself into some sort of corner where I wouldn't be able to see things clearly...
THERAPIST: Oh, okay. [00:36:09]
CLIENT: ...because I was still so (inaudible at 00:36:15) I don't know.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: So there's that.
THERAPIST: And what? With the hope that it would get less kind of, or get more clear or get...
CLIENT: Uh...
THERAPIST: You wouldn't kind of get, fall into that kind of thinking about the situation with Edgar and Cleo?
CLIENT: Yeah. The clearness, yeah, I was hoping it would become more clear. But it's like, too, if...
(PAUSE) [00:37:00]
CLIENT: If something someone believes is disproven, it takes awhile to sort of evaporate.
(PAUSE)
THERAPIST: Yeah. What about... You said you... You but and me.
CLIENT: I don't know. Well, like... (PAUSE) Well, it's like echo chamber almost. I could... Like, if I could lead myself and possibly you to believe something that was untrue, you know, over the course of several hours or several weeks, several hours over several weeks, whatever, it's, it didn't seem very attractive to me to come back in that moment. You know? [00:38:07]
Granted, I probably needed to say what I said so that I could see it clearly without sort of shifting back and forth all the time.
THERAPIST: I see.
CLIENT: You know, this is true, this isn't true, this is true, this isn't true. I don't think I'm that diluted in other aspects. It seems very specific...
THERAPIST: Yes.
CLIENT: ...to like...
THERAPIST: Yeah.
THERAPIST: ...some aversion to intimacy or vulnerability and what I was confused about was that what this woman did to me was pretty awful. She just cut ties and I worked really hard for her. I built her business and shit and she just cut me off. It's very hurtful and confusing and... Yeah. [00:38:55]
I mean, in a minute, despite whatever she did, I would still turn around and, if she offered herself, I would take her up on it. You know? So, so having been abused, I still...
THERAPIST: Uh huh.
CLIENT: I would still go back. So, in some way, there's something to this dominance...
THERAPIST: Yeah
CLIENT: ...or mistreating someone or staying on top that's not only compelling but it's a valid means of influence.
THERAPIST: Well and staying on top is also an answer, a way to kind of manage that experience of being completely vulnerable and used or something or feeling that kind of terrible feeling or being betrayed. [00:39:57]
CLIENT: Yeah. Yeah, there's some to... I don't want to say there's something to the way I think but there's something to how women operate that... Like, in the sort of aftermath of a relationship where the ways in which they take intimacy for granted and try to leverage it, which I've never quite grown comfortable with...
THERAPIST: Mmm. Well, I'm thinking about Cleo and how you've missed just having someone to talk to, having someone to check in with, you know, that you kind of knew what was going on in each other's lives.
CLIENT: Yeah, for me, it's nice to have someone to care for. I mean, even with here, I told myself I was only pretending to care. I think I was but it's still a nice exercise to be able to care about somebody else. [00:41:05]
It's almost like... It's akin to religion. You sort of put off the ego and chalk up something efforts to God. It's useful in the same way.
(PAUSE)
THERAPIST: Well, God cares back too.
CLIENT: Does he?
THERAPIST: Well, in some religions.
CLIENT: (LAUGHTER) (PAUSE) Yeah. I don't know. I mean, even if we sort of dive into my experiences and all of these experiences I've had with women where I either been mistreated or perceived being mistreated, I'm not sure how it could be useful. I don't value a victim's experience.
THERAPIST: Uh huh. Yeah. [00:42:01]
CLIENT: But Edgar my roommate made a good point to me. He said it's like... I forget how this came up. But I think I described the situation with the woman where I walked up and she was with another guy. She was clearly very happy to see me but I couldn't interpret it in any way except just as like some urge to deceive me or, yeah, string me along because I had been waiting for her to call because she needed help and I said, "You should come over and we'll talk about it." For two days, I waited for her to call. She didn't call. But she was genuinely happy to see me, I think, or she appeared to be happy. I did not see it like that. I only saw it as a very deep, deep betrayal. What Edgar said was basically in that situation, you know, what he does is he just assumes... [00:43:01]
I can't remember. (PAUSE) Well, he said the girl loses out in two ways in that because he assumes the girl doesn't want to be with the guy she's with and so, I mean, if you shaft her there, not only is she stuck with that guy but like you sort of hurt her in that moment too. I don't know. Instead of what should be done, which is wrest her from the other man. (LAUGHTER)
THERAPIST: Well, it sounds like it also extracts you from... His position is removed from any sense of being a victim.
CLIENT: Yeah. Yeah. It seems useful and sensible to me. I mean, there is a competition out there and it's... I don't know what to call it. [00:44:01]
It's fantasy to assume someone is just has some sort of sacred rite to protect your relationship to them. It's a competition and, I mean, if you're, you can stay pure but you're not going to win it. What I mean by that is not just like you have to be a bad boy. What I mean is... That's not what I mean at all. What I mean is you have to be (inaudible at 00:44:39)
THERAPIST: Oh, I see.
CLIENT: ...accept the rules of it and engage with it...
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: ...rather than either condemning or pedastalizing (ph) people.
THERAPIST: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. My last thought is just that it's, that there's some, there's some way I feel like... Maybe... Again, I'm linking it to other things but... I'm thinking about that there's some qualities with you and your mom that come to mind and changes and roles and betrayal and things that have kind of altered in your relationship over time and, and what I'm thinking about is that in a way, I think you, that... You feel, and I think have felt a lot of that kind of feeling of betrayal and it comes from a painful place and I hear... It's a very painful place for you and that I can see where you want to kind of extract yourself from that because it's such a loaded victimized kind of place. [00:46:09]
I hear it. But I also hear it's saying something real about your experience and something like, something about your life you're trying to say, you're trying to... I'm not putting it very well.
CLIENT: If I wake up though and my first thought is Cleo is doing me wrong, some girl I had a brief relationship with, you know, how credible are my grievances against my mother? Who knows?
THERAPIST: Yeah. Well, alright. Tuesday. Yeah. (PAUSE) Okay.
CLIENT: How does this guy stack up against me? Is he any good?
THERAPIST: What's that?
CLIENT: Is he any good?
THERAPIST: (LAUGHTER)
CLIENT: (LAUGHTER)
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