The Advice I Almost Gave

“Greg is having an affair,” Lisa said, her voice quivering. She leaned forward in the blue easy chair my clients often refer to as “the comfy chair,” and perched on the cushion’s edge. She was in her mid-40s, well-dressed, and normally vivacious. But today was different. Her cheeks looked hollowed out, and her eyes were round and wide, encircled by dark rings. She looked practically shot through by the shock and grief of her husband’s infidelity—which reminded me of the same grief I’d felt many years earlier.

Tears began to stream down Lisa’s cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice growing hoarse. “I feel so betrayed.”

Suddenly, the fingers on my right hand twitched. It was a muscle memory, and I was now time-traveling back three decades. I was 32, and my husband had just left me. Here, I was the client sitting across from the therapist, pulling out a tissue before putting my head in my hands and sobbing.

I blinked a few times and pushed the grief-stricken younger version of myself back into a dark corner of my mind, where I wanted her to stay.

As Lisa continued to cry, a thought kept running through my mind: I know how she feels. But I also cautioned myself: Careful. Our assumptions about the similarities between a client’s experience and our own can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they can strengthen the therapeutic alliance, which multiple studies have shown improves treatment outcomes. On the other hand, a client’s story can unexpectedly trigger our own feelings—in my case, the loss related to my divorce—causing us to react from a place of emotion rather than objectivity and reason. I had made this mistake earlier in my career, and I didn’t want to make it again.

A Marriage Unravels

“Tell me more about what’s going on,” I said to Lisa.

“I just kicked Greg out of the house for the fourth time,” she said. “He’s been sleeping with his coworker.”

Lisa told me that each time her husband left, he’d call and promise to break off the affair, after which she’d let him move back home—only to discover he was still seeing the other woman and kick him out again. “I’m almost 50 years old,” she said. “I can’t believe I’m in this situation. I have to decide what to do about my marriage.”

In our next session the following week, Lisa told me Greg had asked for another chance but she didn’t know whether to let him come home again. She stared at me, waiting for me to say something. I pictured my ex-husband and imagined telling her what I really thought: Get rid of this guy immediately before he hurts you again. Then, a word flashed in my mind—countertransference—and I remembered the mistake I’d made with Angela.

Angela had come to see me because she was unhappy in her marriage. She’d been married to her husband Harry for 15 years, and they had two preteen daughters together. Each week, she’d tell me a different story about Harry—how he spent little time with the family, followed her around the house, and yelled at her in front of the kids. Once, she noticed him scrolling through a dating site. After two months of hearing these stories, I hated Harry. A sharper tone edged into my voice each week, and finally, I asked her why she’d stayed married to him.

The day of our next appointment, Angela didn’t show, and she didn’t return my call when I phoned to see if she’d forgotten. I immediately realized I’d done a poor job with her. My anger at Harry, a selfish man who reminded me of my ex-husband, had crept into my voice, and I’d failed to empathize with Angela’s need to stay with her husband—even though she could barely tolerate him.

I didn’t want to make a similar mistake with Lisa.

An Abrupt Ending

At first, therapy with Lisa seemed to be going well. When I asked her to tell me about her family, she said that her parents’ divorce—the result of her father’s affair—had made her teenage years difficult, and she didn’t want her kids to suffer as she had. She described a fear of turning into her mom, who was never able to put her life back together after the marriage ended.

As our third session drew to a close, Lisa dropped a bombshell: “This will be my last appointment.”

My head jerked back. “Your last appointment? How come?”

“Greg and I have been talking on the phone every night,” she replied. “We miss each other. We thought we’d spend more time together and eventually live together again.”

I fought the urge to scream, “Don’t let him back into your house!” Then, Angela’s face appeared in my mind, and I didn’t say anything at all. I tried to make sure my mouth wasn’t curling into a deep frown.

“I wonder if you’re moving too quickly,” I replied in my softest, most gentle therapist voice. “Are you sure you don’t want another appointment?”

“I’m sure,” Lisa said. She picked up her purse, shook my hand, and walked out the door.

Over the next six weeks, I reflected on the work I’d done with Lisa. I’d tried hard not to repeat the error I’d made with Angela. But maybe a harsh tone had inadvertently crept into my voice, giving away my feelings that reuniting with Greg was a mistake. A few months later, I saw a voicemail on my phone from Lisa. She wanted to book another appointment.

A few days later, I ushered her into my office, and she sat down and told me what had happened. The first few “dates” with Greg had gone well. But one night, after a goodnight kiss, she told him she wanted to discuss her unanswered questions about the affair.

“Greg told me the affair was over, that there was nothing to talk about because he’d already admitted he’d made a mistake.” She’d pushed back several times but got the same answer: “There’s nothing to talk about.”

Frustrated and angry, Lisa had suggested they see a couples therapist, and during the first session, Lisa had told Greg that if he wouldn’t talk about the affair, then he should at least leave his job since his affair partner still worked there. Greg agreed to look for another job, but several weeks later, he told Lisa he hadn’t found anything that paid him enough to start over, and would be staying at his current job. For Lisa, this was the last straw.

“What are you thinking of doing now?” I asked.

“I have a feeling this separation is going to be permanent,” she replied. “That’s why I made an appointment with you. I have to decide if Greg and I are going to divorce.” Her voice trembled, and her face grew pale. It was as if she was standing on a fault line, watching the world around her sway back and forth.

A Slow Change

In our session the following week, Lisa and I discussed whether she should hire a lawyer and file for divorce. She admitted picking up the phone several times to make the call and putting it down without dialing. She spent the next six months wavering, trying to decide whether she should reconcile with Greg or end the marriage. Each week I encouraged Lisa to explore the issues that were preventing her from moving on. Was it a fear of being alone? Concerns about her kids? She answered yes to both. But even though she could identify the obstacles, she remained stuck.

Sometimes in our sessions, my right hand would clamp into a fist and my neck muscles would tighten. I was growing impatient. Lisa’s husband seemed as untrustworthy as mine had been. When I put the evidence together—Greg’s repeated infidelity, his refusal to answer Lisa’s questions, and his unwillingness to continue looking for a new job—I believed it was time for Lisa to move forward on her own.

Don’t repeat the mistake you made with Angela, I thought. Then, I took a deep breath and relaxed in my chair.  “I’m sure you’ll reach a decision when you’re ready,” I said to Lisa, reassuring myself as much as her.

As the months passed and Lisa continued to struggle with her dilemma, I kept in mind what I’d learned about therapy over three decades of practice. Our clients sometimes zigzag left, then right. They backtrack, make U-turns, and go in the opposite direction. All of this is part of the process of exploring their mind.

After nine months of treatment, Lisa made a surprising admission that changed the course of therapy. Several years earlier, Greg had been convicted of a white-collar crime and spent a year in prison. “Prison?” I said, clamping down my jaw to keep it from dropping open. Lisa blushed and nodded. “What was that like for you?” I asked.

“A big change.”

Before Greg went to prison, Lisa had been a stay-at-home mom. Afterwards, the family needed income and health insurance, so Lisa got a job as a teacher’s aide. As the head of her household, she’d paid the bills, handled the house repairs, and disciplined the kids. In the summer, she’d mowed the lawn. In the winter, she’d shoveled snow.

“Sometimes you talk about wondering how you’ll survive without Greg,” I said. “You did fine when he was in prison.”

“I hadn’t thought about it that way,” she said.

For a psychotherapist, there are few better words to hear.

Over the next month, Lisa told me more stories about her achievements, anecdotes that highlighted strengths she’d previously ignored and obstacles she’d overcome. It made me think about the work of narrative psychotherapists, who use rewriting a life story to encourage positive behavioral changes.

As they had before, these stories reminded me of something I’d experienced many years ago. I’d been sitting cross-legged on the floor of my apartment, trying to assemble a clothes rack—a task I would’ve left to my then-husband had he not moved out a month earlier. I’d reread the instructions several times, made a bold, black checkmark next to a seemingly important step, and finally made a move, sliding Tube A into Tube B. When the two plastic pieces clicked into place, I was thrilled, proud of my newfound assembly skills.

With that excitement still in mind, I said to Lisa, “Wow, those are big accomplishments!”

Nearly two years after we’d first met, Lisa hired an attorney. Despite feeling anxious about the decision, she told me she felt more empowered, an emotion I remembered from my own divorce. “I’m standing up to Greg,” she announced decisively.

I was happy with Lisa’s progress. But I was also pleased with mine: I hadn’t made the same mistake twice. The irritation and impatience I’d experienced when working with Angela hadn’t seeped into my work with Lisa. Instead, I’d been able to draw upon the similarities between our stories to deepen my understanding of her dilemma and build a therapeutic relationship that eventually contributed to her healing.

“I don’t think I need any more appointments,” Lisa told me after her divorce was finalized.

Her eyes were clear that day, and her smile was wide. She looked like a different woman than the one I’d met so many months earlier. I fought the urge to say, “I like seeing you, and I’ll miss you when you go,” and instead said, “I agree, you’re doing great.”

We smiled at each other. “You can always come back,” I added, and my voice cracked a little. I wondered if Lisa noticed it, too.

“I know,” she said, before giving me a hug and walking out the door.