5.8 Sex etc

This is an instalment of an autobiographical series (unnamed as yet). For more about it, see right.

So then we tackled the thorny subject of sex.

Pat gave us a book to read. It was a collection of people’s sexual fantasies, possibly only those of women, but I can’t remember. I can’t remember the title either.
    It helped up to a point, but I didn’t like using fantasy – whether my own or other people’s. My fantasies were unpleasant, about being degraded and coerced, and I didn’t want to encourage them.
    Fantasy didn’t solve my fundamental blockages; it simply bypassed them. It wasn’t a long-term solution.
    Nor did using fantasy seem fair to Frog. It took me away from him.
    And I don’t think Frog ever used fantasy, not that we talked about it. It wasn’t in his nature. He was far too pragmatic.

Classic sexual therapy was next on the agenda. This involved taking things slowly – going to a certain point, as directed by Pat in her session with us that week, and then stopping. And then, all being well, going a little bit further the following week. Again, as directed by Pat.
    This didn’t work for me either as I switched off before we even started. In other words, I would do what I always did at the prospect of sex. I would stop breathing, my stomach would clench, my whole body would lock and my brain would fuse.
    We had a holiday booked during this part of our time with Pat and while on holiday we fell straight back into our old patterns.

We started to see her separately.

In Frog’s case, I suspected this meant him being able to give full rein to his grievances, his complaints about me. We didn’t talk about his sessions though. I think we felt that we’d already done enough talking – and shouting - with each other. We were so tired of it.
    In my case, seeing Pat alone meant talking about my parents, and in particular what I called The Letters – the letters my parents had written to me when Frog and I wanted to marry.
    I’d kept the letters in a file in the bottom of a drawer hoping to forget about them but not wanting to destroy them because I had an inkling that they might one day be important. They were evidence. I hadn’t forgotten about them however. In fact I thought about them every day.
    ‘During Sam’, as Frog and I now called the year when he was seeing her and I knew about it, I’d shown them to two people. To Di, the friend I met every week for lunch. She’d laughed and I’d wished I could too. And to Sam. As she finished reading them, she’d nodded.
    ‘I see,’ she said. ‘These make a lot of things much clearer.’
    I was grateful for her understanding.
    I brought them in to show Pat and she read through the file in silence while I waited.
    Up until then Pat had not expressed an opinion about anything, which was another of my surprises about counselling. I’d expected – from the name of the therapy – that being told what to do was its primary function. On the contrary. Its primary function, as far as I could see, was for us to find solutions for ourselves, through Pat’s questioning.
    I didn’t therefore expect her to pass any comment on the letters. I was simply showing them to her to give her the background.
    When she’d finished reading however, she looked up at me, her eyes shiny behind her serious black glasses.
    ‘Oh dear, Belinda,’ she said. ‘There are terrible.’

I would visit my parents, Pat and I decided, and talk to them about the effect of the letters on me. I wrote out what I was going to say, knowing that I would be incapable of saying anything otherwise. I read my speech out to Pat and she nodded her approval.
    ‘Why don’t you give your parents some spontaneous gestures of affection when you’re there,’ she said.
    I looked at her in horror. I’d never done such a thing. We didn’t do things like that in our family.
    ‘And when you’ve finished speaking,’ she said, ‘give them the letters back.’
    Frog was going to say something too but, in true Frog fashion, he didn’t prepare anything. He preferred speaking off the cuff. He did it all the time on the radio and he loved the adrenalin rush it gave him. I hated adrenalin. It gave me migraines.
    I made a date with my parents for Frog and me to visit, without telling them why. I wanted it to be a normal visit, as far they were concerned. I didn’t want to put any pressure on the situation. As far as I was concerned, it had more than enough already.
    The visit loomed over me like the entrance to a dark tunnel. It was the most frightening thing I’d ever done.

To be continued . . .