While I was waiting at the door I had this feeling of… I need this session to be different. I don’t want to argue. So I entered the room with that in mind. T looked surprised when I smiled at him and said ‘hello’... surprised and slightly amused, maybe.

I told him I’d had a horrible dream about him, the week before. He asked about it. I wasn’t able to tell him some of the really nasty details, but I gave him the gist of it. He asked what I thought it was about. I said it was about feeling trapped and afraid. He said that my partner’s role in the dream was interesting, and said he wondered if I felt that my relationship with him, my therapy, was killing my relationship with my partner. I agreed that that made sense.

I went quiet and started looking at the floor, thinking. T asked what was going on and I said I had moved on to thinking about something else. Upon reflection I wonder if I was avoiding something… perhaps I didn’t want to go into any further detail about the dream, and yet I felt that if I didn’t there wasn’t much point in discussing it more?

Anyway… the week before, after I’d talked about not being able to leave him because I couldn’t give up the fantasy… he’d suggested that I do some ‘homework’. He asked me to draw a pie-chart, showing how my life was made up of fantasy and reality, and describing some of what the fantasies and realities are.

I had thought about doing that...and ultimately decided it was f***ing stupid, and impossible. My life doesn’t fit neatly into pie segments.

But I came up with my own way of expressing it. I decided that my fantasies feel more like a constant cloud over everything. So I drew that.

After a fairly brief period of talking around it and saying I wasn’t sure if I could show it to him, that I was worried that it was silly, and that I knew I would be embarrassed, I managed to hand it to him.



I haven’t seen him so excited and pleased in a while… he said it was great… that it was much better than his idea. Much more creative. He said it was courageous of me to share it with him. It felt… nice. It felt really good that he liked what I’d done. I guess that’s a bit weird, because I have been f***ing hating him so much for a while now. It’s not like I’ve been trying to impress him.

He admired the stick-figure representation of himself, and laughed slightly at the description of ‘not actually that great’. He asked me about parts of it… the anxiety cloud, the question mark door (representing my brother), and the picture of my eyes and lungs.
He said that he understands why I don’t want to lose my fantasy world given how difficult my life is ‘underneath’ it.

I said that the fantasies I’d written were just broad or ridiculous examples, because… I guess I don’t really have many specific fantasies. It’s more like a constant feeling of longing. He asked about the Rotterdam fantasy, anyway. I said it was a joke I’d had with a friend, and that I’d also told my friend that in reality I would find it incredibly annoying to live on a boat with him. I said that if he said ‘yes, I want to run away with you’, we wouldn’t even get as far as the airport before I realised I didn’t really want to do it.

I don’t think he said much in response to that… he asked “why Rotterdam?” and I said because I went there a long time ago and thought it was a great place. He said “okay… why a houseboat?”... I said, because they’re cosy and nice? He said, “okay. Yeah, houseboats are nice. Why not a houseboat in (my hometown)?” I said… “well that wouldn’t be running away would it?! All the same s**t would still be there…”

I don’t remember how he moved on to saying this, I guess it must have been in reference to the “T will f*** me” part of the fantasy cloud, but he talked about sex being life-giving, the opposite of death, and it being like a medication or antidote when life feels ‘dead’. I think he was suggesting that my sexual fantasies about him could have come about as a response to that deadness in my life. This is something he briefly spoke about before, and I think there is something in it. My way of expressing that was to say… “well, I’m not getting any of that.” (he already knows that myself and my partner have not had sex in a loooong time.)

So… I talked about that. First, I said that I think we stopped sleeping with each other because we were too lazy.

T said that he's not sure that he believes that. He said that he doesn't perceive me as lazy. And that hit me in the gut somehow. Tears came to my eyes instantly. I think I wanted to hug him. I… tried to explain. I told him that no-one has said that they don't see me as lazy before. That lots of people have said otherwise. I told him that he's wrong, that I am. I am lazy. He said something about it being my health issues that make me tired all the time. I said sometimes I think that, but it's hard to accept. I don't think people really believe it - including myself.

I talked about… porn. About my history with it, and its possible effect on my relationship. I didn't go into graphic detail, but I was pretty brave, I think. I think T said something like that too, at some point. Then he asked how I was feeling, having told him what I had. I said “how do you think I'm feeling?! I'm embarrassed.”
...and I was. But I felt okay. I wasn't in twelve-year-old girl mode, anyway.

I talked about how I don't know if I even remember how to have sex, it's been so long… and I don't know if anyone would want to sleep with me anyway. Since I haven't been constantly reassuring myself by being promiscuous in the last decade (like I used to do), I honestly don't know. I said that I don't think I'm definitely unattractive, I just… don't know.

I said maybe I prefer it this way anyway. Maybe it's fine like this. I really don't want to get pregnant, and maybe I just don't need sex. Except… obviously that isn't the case, or I wouldn't be fantasising about my therapist.
T said… something like… that he could hear the inner conflict that for me there. That it made sense.

I think there was more, a lot more, to this whole discussion, but I can't really remember it… maybe I will later.

T noticed that there were ten minutes left, and asked if I wanted to do something we had discussed the week before - write notes about the session together. I said I didn't feel like I could, I didn't know what I would write. He said that he'd leave it open as something we might do another time, and that he'd leave it up to me to bring it up again if I wanted to.

He asked how I was doing. I noticed that I was sitting with my arms tightly wrapped around myself. He said it looked like I was holding myself. I said… I was anxious, and that I thought the anxiety was because I was holding in a lot of sadness.

He said there were five minutes left, and I could let myself feel the sadness if I wanted to. I said… “I can't just neatly slot my sadness into an allotted five minutes! Is that what you do?!” and he laughed at that. Seriously I bet he does though.

I talked about how I feel sad to leave when we've had a ‘bad’ session, and argued, but I feel sad to leave when we've had a 'good’ session too, because it's so hard to leave the place where I feel so safe.

T asked how that session had been, whether it was a good one. I said yes, it had been good, but that was because I'd decided I didn't want to argue with him.
I said that I was still annoyed with him about all the same things - he pointed out that I was tapping my foot aggressively while I said this - and that I didn't want to do what me and my partner always do… get sick of having the same argument over and over and so just pretend it never happened - until the next time.

He said he didn’t want to do that, but that he’d felt connected to me this session and that he didn’t feel that for him anything was left unresolved. Good for him I guess?

But I left feeling loving again. I suppose I've missed that feeling.