I’m a man in my early 30s and I have never been in a serious relationship. I started seeing a therapist to “get to the bottom” of my relationship problems and her opinion is that they may stem from an incident that happened years ago. I was raised by a single mom. When I was about 15 years old she went through a very bad breakup, and while I was comforting her we wound up having intercourse. I was a virgin. This only happened once, and we’ve never spoken of it.
My therapist feels that the first step in overcoming my relationship problems is to confront my mother, but I’d really rather not do this since my mother and I have a good relationship now and I don’t want to destroy it. My therapist is pressuring me to speak with her and it’s very hard to get a second opinion on a matter like this. I don’t think the incident with my mother caused my current problems and, further, I don’t see how talking to her about it will do any good. Any words of wisdom for me?
— The Good Son
Oh man, I fucking hate Tom Cruise. After his spaztastic therapist-bashing meltdown last year, it’s impossible to say anything negative about shrinks without people accusing you of being a closet Scientologist.
But I’m going to risk it: fuck your therapist, TGS. She’s not your parole officer — you don’t have to do what she says and you’re free to go find another therapist if she’s pissing you off. If you don’t want to screw up your relationship with your mother and if you really feel that this one hugely fucked-up sexual encounter did not cause your current problems (plenty of men who’ve never fucked their mothers have relationship problems), then your therapist should stop hectoring you and start listening to you.
Oh sure, your therapist may have your best interests at heart, and it may be what she, with her fancy education, sincerely thinks is best. But she could also be one of those conflict junkies who pass themselves off as therapists. Tell her for me that ripping open old wounds doesn’t always lead to scenes of weepy reconciliation and newfound emotional health. Sometimes it just makes a bloody mess of things.
But if you decide, after carefully weighing my advice against your therapist’s, to go ahead and talk to your mom, perhaps your therapist might agree to recast this conversation? Instead of confronting your mom, maybe you can have, I don’t know, a conversation with her?
