After a year and a half of therapy to deal with my subconscious man-issues, I came to the conclusion that the healthiest relationship I’ve ever had with a man is with my therapist, Roger.  If you’ve been following the “Y” Factor you know that I have had some pretty touch-and-go relationships with men.  So it would seem ironic that I would have a male therapist.  A coworker recommended Roger to me.  I was having problems at work, so I proposed to my boss that as part of my reparations strategy I would start seeing a therapist. (Recall my theory that we don’t start going to therapy for the reason we think we do).

Unfortunately, as a new client, I had to wait three months to see him.  In the meantime I lost that job, but I still persevered with the plan to seek help getting along with others. (I must have missed that day of kindergarten).

At first I was uncomfortable.  It wasn’t my first time in therapy, but it was the first time with a male therapist.  I knew that he wouldn’t take any crap and that I couldn’t rely on my old tricks of flirting or being nasty to get my way.  The first few times we talked through the reasons that I thought I was there, but then, as the good therapist he is, Roger began to pull out the threads of my subconscious behavior and offer them to me for reflection.  I’m still integrating all of the pieces, but have made significant progress.

As we started to get to the nitty-gritty of my relationships with my boyfriends, it was a bit embarrassing to have to share details of my “bedroom behavior.”  Roger was nonjudgmental, supportive and helped me see the patterns of my behavior.  Early on he asked me if I was okay with working with him.  The question caught me offguard, but based on my man-issues I understand why he asked.  I’m less put off by the fact that Roger is male than by the horrible pregnant pauses he gives during our sessions while he’s waiting for me to make some great revelation.

Nearly …

Until I went to graduate school, I spent 22 years living within a 10-mile radius of my childhood home.  The only time I hadn’t lived in my parents’ house was the four years I spent at university – which included a visit home every weekend.  My father was born and raised in my home state; my mother had moved there after college graduation because that’s where her parents lived.  Dad is not the adventurous type, and if it weren’t for Mom, we never would have gone camping on the sea coast or made the pilgrimage to Disney World.  My brother Mike[1] inherited Dad’s homebody gene, thinking there’s no place better than his home state.  He now lives only 15 miles from our childhood home.

When I got into graduate school, I was at the point in my life when I was ready to escape the nightmare that my parents’ marriage had become.  Of course I was pursuing higher education, but I couldn’t wait to live somewhere else and shed the yucky feeling that being around my parents gave me.  Yes, I was running away from them, but also running toward a future in which I could “start over” and make new friends.  Boy, was I ever naïve.  You can’t “start over” if you haven’t dealt with the subconscious crap in your head.  This is where I made my mistake – thinking I was going to be a new and better person because I moved away from my parents.

I was running away, although I never admitted this to myself or my family.  I still wanted to be a part of my family, just on my terms.  My brother thought that my going away to school, and my subsequent move out west, was a conscious attempt to not be a part of my family,  although I didn’t know this until three years after I moved back east.  During the six years I was out west, Mike never made an effort to come see me, even when my parents offered to pay.  When I moved back east – three hours from his house – he and Meg visited …

In a vain attempt to solve my parents’ marital problems, I had them come to therapy with me one time when they were visiting me out west.  I was seeing a therapist because I was trying to work through some problems with my boyfriend, Russell, while our relationship crashed and burned around me.  This is where I began to form my theory of “you’re not in therapy for the reason you think you’re there.”  It turns out that I wasn’t ready to be cognizant of my problems.

Mom eagerly agreed to come to the family therapy appointment – “anything for you, sweetheart.”  She knew there were issues with her marriage, but hadn’t taken any steps to deal with them.  So getting my father to come to a family therapy session might bring him one step closer to couples therapy at home.

There we were, the three of us, sitting in the dimly lit office of my therapist, Cheryl.  Dad got antagonistic, not wanting to share or open up.  He finally admitted that the only reason he was there was because I asked him to come.  We talked about the emotional distance that existed in our family – especially between my father and the rest of us.  He admitted that that’s how his parents treated him.  His emotional distance became actual physical distance, as he was much more interested in pursuing his own hobbies and career than actively participating in his marriage, and Mike’s and my childhood.

Then the revelation came. Cheryl said, “So you and your brother were married to your mother.  You provided the emotional and physical support for your mother because your father was absent.”

You could have knocked me over with a feather.  Cheryl got it.  It was true.  Mike and I were both very close with my mother.  To this day she is the first person either of us calls when we need advice or want to share news.   Unbeknownst to us, as children she was leaning on us for the emotional support and affection that she was not getting from my father.  She was sacrificing her own emotional needs (her marriage) to be mother …

In my family the concept of “I’ll hurt you before you hurt me” was our modus operandi.  It manifested itself most acutely at the dinner table.  For years it went undetected, until my sister-in-law, Meg[1], came into our lives.  As my father, brother (Mike), and I went about this destructive behavior, Meg became quieter and quieter until she said nearly nothing at family gatherings.  I began to take offense, thinking that she didn’t like us.  It turns out that she was so embarrassed and offended by our behavior toward each other that she dreaded dining with us.

So what is the “I’ll hurt you before you hurt me” behavior?  Our preferred method of interaction was insult, verbally dismember, and set off the other person before they could do it to you.  In our dysfunctional world, this is how we got attention, and how we deflected our internal pain and personal inadequacies.  I can’t speak for my brother, although to my knowledge he hasn’t dealt with this in therapy. I only came to terms with this by dissecting my relationship with my father in therapy.

I repeated this behavior outside of my family on a regular basis – with boyfriends, coworkers, pretty much anyone who I wanted to feel superior to.  I was so insecure about my own emotions that all I knew how to do was attack.  The primary emotion inside was vitriol – toward myself – and the only way I knew to feel better about myself was to make others feel bad.  Of course, this was all subconscious at the time.  I lost many a boyfriend, and even a job, plus alienated many childhood friends along the way.

With my boyfriend Justin, I would nag, criticize, and insult, just so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the emotions that I was feeling.  Subconsciously I felt that he was probably going to hurt me or leave me or alienate me, so I did it to him first in an attempt to avoid getting hurt.  How ridiculous is that?!

As I matured, but before entering therapy, I began to realize that my bitter tongue could get me …

“Men are from Mars….”   “Men, can’t live with them ….”  “It’s raining men ….”  Okay, enough with the terse quips about the opposite sex.  We’ve all had many men in our lives, right girls, and invariably we gain some insight from them about the opposite sex.  But most importantly, I think we forget to learn lessons about ourselves in the process.

The old “it’s not you, it’s me” may work with a boyfriend, but how can that play with your father or another male family member?  It’s overused, but have any of us really thought about what we really mean when we say it?  Think about it: when you say that line, it really is the “me” that it’s about.  The “me” is making the choice not to see the “you” anymore.  So it really is about “me” – although there are probably things about the “you” that the “me” doesn’t like or finds annoying, so in essence it is about the “you.”  Did you get that?  If you take it upon yourself to utter that dreaded declaration, then it is about the “me” and you need to own it.

Well, I’ve finally decided to stop using that line and start taking a look at me.  There are, and have been, many men in my life.  Don’t think of me as Carrie Bradshaw or Samantha Jones … my boy count is much, much smaller and certainly more naïve.  I’m counting male family members, boyfriends, friends, bosses, etc.  All of these men have had an impact on the direction of my life – some major, some minor.  Their involvement in my life has brought about many ups and downs, but all came with lessons.  These lessons were sometimes easily learned and others came during the process of self-exploration many years later.

One of the ways I’ve begun my self-exploration is through therapy.  I have a philosophy about therapy – one is never actually there for the reason they think they are.  I started in therapy two years ago because I lost my job, so I thought I was going to readjust my outlook on how to get along with …