Quest and Tillie

Chapter 14: It Doesn't Exist

When I was sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old -- up until last year, actually -- my love for Quest felt so strong, so pure, so unshakable that I never, ever would have believed I'd be sitting with him on a plush beige couch, side-by-side but miles apart, about to start marriage counseling because he'd cheated on me. With Mary-Lou Fucking Dawn. I eyed the woman in front of us, Dr. Ellis Brittany, highly recommended by my therapist, but also by Quest's therapist as well. In her mid-fifties, she was an odd contradiction: her bright red hair was slicked back into a smooth, neat bun at the nape of her neck, she was wearing a silky teal-colored blouse that she'd paired with a pair of black jeans and finished off with a pair of spiky black high heels.

Since I trusted Monica completely, and Quest trusted Mark, we felt like she was the right choice for us. Monica had told me Dr. Brittany was a straight shooter and very direct in the way she dealt with marital infidelity trauma.

"Thank you both for being here," she said to us after we'd introduced ourselves. "I know this is a difficult step to take, but it's a brave one. I won't lie to you that this may be one of the hardest things you've ever done -- there are going to be difficult conversations, painful emotions and up and down feelings. Marriage counseling is hard work."

"I'll do whatever it takes," Quest said immediately.

"Can it really help, Dr. Brittany?" I asked, feeling somewhat unsure about this.

"Call me Ellis," she told me, "and yes, it absolutely can. Numbers are all over the place, but some studies show that marriage counseling can have up to a seventy percent chance of success. As long as you both have the same end goal in mind, it can work."

"What does that mean?" I asked. "Why would you come to counseling if you both didn't want the same outcome?"

Ellis smiled. "You might be surprised. Sometimes a couple will come in with one person wanting to save the relationship, work it out, and the other one actually wants out."

 "I want to save our marriage," Quest said, his tone firm. Decisive. Unwavering.

"I want to try, to see if it's possible," I said, not nearly as sure as he was. "But I can't promise I'll ever get over seeing him with that woman or forget his betrayal. It's taken me more than a year to get to the point where I could even consider marriage counseling."

She nodded at me. "It's not a matter of getting over it or forgetting it. You won't forget it. But you can move through it."

Then she took a piece of paper and rolled it into a ball. "Think of this as your old marriage -- sometimes called your first marriage. That's over. It doesn't exist. If you think you can go back to the way things were, you can't. Part of this process is creating a new marriage, an improved one, rebuilding trust and learning to have a marriage between two people who are no longer the same people you were when you first got married."

"I feel different," I told her slowly. "Sometimes I feel like the last year or so happened to a stranger."

"That's all the hurt and anger," she said. "All of those emotions hitting you, carrying them so long, it makes you feel as if you're stuck in a never-ending loop or cycle of pain, pain and more pain."

"That actually describes it perfectly," I mused.

"How does this work?" Quest asked, his regretful eyes on me for a minute before he looked at Ellis.

She nodded in approval at his question. "We start at the problem, the day your marriage imploded, talk that through and then we back up and talk about who you were in your marriage. What your relationship was like, what your roles were, how you interacted with one another. What aspects of your relationship were working, what weren't. Then we talk about why the cheating occurred. That's tough, obviously, but necessary. You will have to be unflinchingly honest."