Sexual Boundaries

My wife running late today, she's started therapy sessions. A regular hour with a therapist being necessary, apparently. Fifty pounds a week to untangle her mind.

For supper when she gets home, a small joint of lamb, she likes that. Crisp and dark with herbs on the outside, pink and juicy within. To be served with baby potatoes, beans, a glass of Barolo. The meal coming along nicely.

Therapy, the point about it, you can explore things which you can’t share with people close to you, to do so would be unsettling to all. Tell things to a therapist and it stays there. The same as would once have applied with a priest. Confessions contained in clear boundaries, these boundaries being essential to the therapeutic process.

Noises of the door opening, my wife dumping her bags, hanging up her coat. Coming through to the kitchen, a smile and squeezed hand for me, oohhh, smells good. Plop of cork being pulled, gurgle of wine being poured, clinking of glasses. A desultory discussion of the day’s happenings.

The other point about therapy, there are some things which after a point you can’t deal with by yourself, you need to share them with a detached outsider.

Later, in bed, she beside me, asleep, two bodies warm together. Gentle domestic rhythms, anchors for sanity.

Thinking about Anna, our time together. The thrill and implications far beyond my wife’s interest or capability of comprehension. No point in sharing that particular truth with her, it would only cause pain.

Well let her have her therapist and her boundaries and confidences and detached outsider, and I’ll have mine.