No. 65: Couples Therapy

How Managing a Boyfriend is a Lot Like Writing a Novel

I’m not a big one for astrology, but my father almost made me a believer.

When my two brothers and I were each a baby, he had our horoscopes done in India — and in the case of mine, it’s proved to be eerily accurate. The horoscope said I would have an artistic career. It was the only one of the three charts that did not explicitly mention a ‘wife.’ It said I would find love late in life, after I turned 40.

All three things came true.

My first real, long relationship started at 41, with a goat and cattle rancher from Missouri. I knew the moment I met him, at 7am in the lobby of a Dallas hotel at my brother’s wedding, that he was the one. (A story for another diary). He felt the same about me, even though I had a sweaty t-shirt and a glob of toothpaste on my cheek. So much so that I gave up my place in New York and moved to Missouri after spending a total of 6 days with him. The kind of fairy tale that Hallmark cattle-rancher movies are made of.

Only one problem.

I had zero clue how to do a relationship.

Once we were together, I was a total disaster. Whatever authentic intimacy is, New York City dating is the opposite. And I’d been in NYC for 22 years. A carousel of shallow, superficial connections, the opposite of intention and vulnerability, because everything is moving at Mach speed and everyone wears shields and armor because nothing lasts long enough to survive the grind and the only constant is rejection, either done to you or committed by you.

So now, to actually let my walls down and reveal every part of myself and get to know a person for the long haul… in the middle of Missouri… aaaaaaaaahhhhhh!

Two months later, we were in couples therapy.

Every Friday, at 6am (the only time where we could both do it), we’d sit in front of a deeply insightful counselor, where my partner and I discussed what we wanted out of a relationship, our traumas and baggage, and most of all, our desire to make things work. It was emotional, heated, difficult — but also a gift because we didn’t really know each other. At all. It felt like we’d skipped the dating and puppy-love phase and were now in the depths of negotiating a life together, with a trusted professional there to mediate.

It was clear that I was the problem at first. I just didn’t know how to do a relationship at this steady, subtle speed, where it just bloomed like a flower, slowly but surely instead of everything being layer-caked in dopamine.

But after about 10 sessions, something shifted. We began to understand each other. We learned each other’s language and hearts. We gave each other space to grow. Then the day came where we kept meaning to schedule our next session… but never found reason. We’d unlocked something. Life together had begun.

Nearly three years later, we look back at those few months in Couples Therapy at the beginning of our relationship as the sole reason we are still together now.

Consider me a convert, then — a firm believer that every committed couple should enlist in therapy preemptively. No matter how happy you are or how calm the seas. It gives you the toolkit to surf future waves.

This week, I began wondering what made me start this love journey in the first place — how, after zero success in relationships, I had the courage to blow up my life and move to a guy I barely knew in a state I’d never been to. After 6 dates!

And then I remembered. Ten years earlier, I’d blown up my life to write not just one novel, but a novel that I insisted to my publisher was actually a series of 6.

When I fall, I fall hard. On and off the page.

(Also, holy numerology!)

It’s why couples therapy worked for me. Because with guidance and self-reflection, I was able to quickly pick up on the language and cues of a relationship, despite my lack of experience.

And that’s because writing a book is a long-term relationship.

You commit to a marathon process, with zero clue whether your plan and dreams for it will ultimately come to fruition. You do the day-to-day hard work of managing, which is mostly hard yards, but also results in bursts of intense pleasure. You chase an ending, the next milestone, which brings joy and satisfaction, but then you reset and keep going. You fall in love with the story of what you’re creating, at once inside the narrative and constantly assessing it.

The bond between you and your book is a lot like the bond between you and your partner. It takes patience, faith, honesty with yourself, and the desire to keep pushing and leveling up until both you and the other party, living or literary, are getting the absolute, 100% best of you.

So… here I am. Back in a new version of Couples Therapy.

Because I’ve started another book.

It’s the fantasy novel I alluded to over the past month… the first in a series… and the best way I can describe it is, after the three-year Molotov cocktail that is YOUNG WORLD, this book feels like I’m coming back home. A sensual, glittery roll in celestial hay.

That’s not to say it’s been easy.

In the early days of writing, much like the early days of a relationship, you’re excited about everything — a little too excited — so then when time passes and you get perspective, you start to see the problems.

I remember writing Chapter 1 and 2 back in February and thinking it was the best thing since Ulysses, only to look at it in March and dump my head in my hands.

This is the problem with lust. It looks so sumptuous one day and the next day in the light… not so much.

It’s easy to abandon the novel in these moments of disappointment. Go do something less committed. Write a short story or screenplay. Think of another School for Good & Evil ancillary project. Anything but commit to the marathon.

That’s when you have to stop being a weenie, stiffen that backbone, and keep showing up. Every day, you go back to the work and keep ruthlessly asking questions of it and being honest, day after day, until like a real, committed relationship, it… develops. Unexpected things start to happen. Spontaneity. Synchronicity. Real love.

This week, I had plans every night and cancelled them all, because I just was in a cosmic flow. I’d come home from my afternoon workouts and just write until sundown, riding the energy that was originating from within the thing itself.

In fact, I’d go as far as to say that my writing career has become its own ongoing act of Couples Therapy — building faith, trust, awareness in myself with each new book.

Regardless of where you are in your own process, let me also give you a little homework. One that also inspired this week’s theme. Please watch Couples Therapy on Showtime, which premieres for its fourth season this week. It’s a documentary, following real-life couples in therapy, and there’s no frills, no gimmicks, no editorializing. It’s intimacy, vulnerability, truth —or as close as we can get to it vicariously. (Start with Season 1 and go in order.)

Trailer.

It’s the best show on television, hands down, and actually is a wonderful substitute for real couples therapy, which we all need, even if we’re not in a relationship! Because we’re all in some kind of relationship, whether with our work or our art or our habits, let alone with another human. And those relationships need a coach, even if it’s one on TV.

Meanwhile, I’ll go back to stardust novel, where right now, everything feels like honeymoon afterglow and T-Swift’s Lover era.

Stay tuned for the Reputation era where I set it on fire, rage at its infidelities, and dance around the flames.

All part of the process.

Your turn.

What do you need couples therapy with?

Until next week —