Enchanted Dreams (19 page)

We then proceeded to discuss her list—one item in particular was especially perplexing for me. Her husband had brought her a "gift" of a half-eaten chocolate cake. When she asked him about it, he admitted that it was leftover from a party at his office. I mentioned to her that it seemed a strange thing to include on her list, and as we discussed it further, I learned that Eleanor is actually allergic to chocolate! I questioned her repeatedly about why she would include this on her list, but she appeared to be unable to explain it. Yet she remained strangely fixed in her belief that it was a nice gesture, and also that the memory of it makes her feel "happy." Very odd.

Tom brought up sex again last night. In his usual passive-aggressive manner, he "wondered" out loud how long it had been. I wanted to say, "It's been four months, one week and two days, Tom." It's truly irritating the way he tiptoes around a subject. He doesn't see that he's making me the responsible party for the sex that
he
wants! It's so typical. I deal with this all of the time with my patients, and yet it doesn't make it easier to cope with in my personal life. I must say that it does shed a new light on many of my concepts about therapy. I have always encouraged both partners to make an equal effort on issues in their marriage. But what if both partners don't
want
change on a particular issue? Surely the party with the stronger interest should do the lion's share of the work. I can understand why some patients might resist therapy if it means working toward a solution they may not necessarily want.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Today Eleanor Dobbs and I discussed her marriage in more detail. Mainly I wanted to know more about the treatment she and her husband received in couples' therapy with Dr. Czernick. I have been hearing his name pop up more and more in the industry. He is purported to having somewhere in the neighborhood of a ninety-three percent success rate with couples—naturally I disregarded that for the absurdity that it is. Most therapists, I am certain, would agree that most of these couples should be encouraged to separate. Instead of assisting his patients in this natural progression of things, Dr. Czernick appears to be convincing them to stay together at all costs. But what I'm wondering is how he manages to do this. I tried to gain insight from Eleanor but she is still so steeped in denial and grief that it is difficult to get to the core of her ideas and beliefs, and locate their origins. Time appears to have little or no effect on her grief. She suffers as much, if not more, with each passing day. Her memories of her husband have not only been transformed into exclusively happy experiences, but they seem to be getting more and more distinct instead of fading, as would be expected. And when we discuss these memories in greater detail, the anticipated epiphany never comes. Whether she is describing a "wonderful moment" she shared with her husband or a "proof" of his love for her, she doesn't seem to notice that the incident does not come close to living up to her impression of it.

This is the case with all of Eleanor's memories of her husband, even those pertaining to sex. She mentioned several times that this part of their life was exceptional, so today I encouraged her to talk more openly about it. She proceeded to describe to me how, in the months preceding her husband's death, they had begun to share "intimacies" she had never before known existed.

I asked her what had prompted these new intimacies, to which she replied, "The efforts he was making toward our marriage made him seem so much more appealing to me." I let this pass without comment and encouraged her to continue.

"He had always called me his 'pet,'" she began with a strange little half smile on her lips. "I liked it when we first started dating, but after we were married it began to get on my nerves. It just seemed kind of degrading and annoying. But then, I don't know, it was like we were dating all over again and I liked it."

"And this was
after
you went to see Dr. Czernick?" I asked.

She thought about this for a minute and then nodded. "Most definitely after."

"All right…go on. So he would call you his pet?"

"Yes." The strange little smile settled over her features again. "And there were other things, too." She grinned sheepishly, somewhat embarrassed. "He wanted me to do things and I discovered that I liked doing them. It seemed to bring us closer together."

"What sort of things?"

"You know," she replied, apparently feeling awkward to be discussing it so openly. "I think it's called S and M."

"Oh," I said, catching on. I attempted to put her at ease. "It's very normal, Eleanor, for couples to experiment with sexual fantasy and role-playing. It's quite healthy for the relationship."

The expression on her face still struck me as peculiar. I found that I was becoming a bit ill at ease as I waited for her to continue.

"Yes, well, it all started kind of suddenly and then it just escalated from there," she said, becoming more distant as she retreated inward, focusing back on those memories of her husband. "One day he came home with a present for me." She spoke slowly. Tears came to her eyes, but she digressed here for a quick moment to add, "I didn't mention it on my list before because, you know, I thought it might be hard to explain it at the time."

I nodded for her to go on and she continued.

"It was beautifully wrapped," she said serenely. Her gaze drifted past me and attached itself to a picture I had hanging on the wall. "I remember the paper was yellow with little pink daisies, and there was even a bow on it. Inside there was a black velvet box. I was so excited when I saw it because it had been so many years since he bought me jewelry." She paused, seeming to savor the details of the moment as she related them to me. "Inside the box was the most gorgeous, white, shimmering gold-and-diamond-studded collar, with a tiny gold ring for a leash and an engraved ID tag and everything."

I was momentarily taken aback, but she went on, not noticing me at all now.

"He fastened the collar around my neck," she said, closing her eyes dreamily in remembrance. "I remember it felt cold on my skin, and a little heavy at first, but it fit around my neck perfectly. He asked me to wear it for him every night from then on. So I did." She opened her eyes to look at me. "I wear it sometimes still," she whispered.

I was having difficulty finding my voice. It was not the collar that disturbed me. Many women—and men, too, for that matter—find the symbolism of wearing a collar tremendously thrilling during various kinds of sexual play. But there was something in Eleanor's demeanor as she confided these things that bothered me, although I could not yet pinpoint what it was. I worked to keep my face impassive as I debated over how to proceed. It is not unusual for me to hold back commenting with patients, so Eleanor was not overly disturbed by my silence. At any rate, she was still too caught up in her memories to notice what my reactions were. Tears that had been filling her eyes began now to spill over as she resumed staring at the picture behind me on the wall.

"After that he began to jokingly call me his cute little pet doggie," she continued. That peculiar smile kept reappearing on her face in spite of her tears. "And then, like I said before, it just kind of escalated. Before I knew it, I was pretending to be his little dog, you know, getting into it. He liked me to crawl around on my hands and knees like a real dog does, and of course, he preferred I didn't wear clothes when I did it."

"Did you enjoy doing that?" I asked, finding my voice at last.

"I loved it," she said automatically, still staring at the wall. "I loved being his pet doggie."

"Were you…I mean, did
you
contribute any ideas for these…new intimacies?" I asked.

"Sure," she answered. "I was always trying to make it more real for him. I'm the one who came up with our nightly routine when he got home from work." She chuckled at the memory. "He laughed so hard the first time I barked. He was so pleased with me, so I started watching for him out one of the windows every night, and when I heard his car drive into the driveway, I would bark as loud as I could through the window so he could hear me. Then I would jump all over him and bark again when he came through the door." She snapped out of her stupor suddenly to look at me directly. "I would wag my tail and everything."

"What were you feeling while you pretended to be his dog?" I asked her, feeling more and more ill at ease.

She stared at me, as if my question momentarily stumped her. Then she crinkled her nose. "I suppose it was a little weird at first. But after a while, it began to feel normal. More normal than being me, even, in a way. I guess it was hard sometimes. I remember gagging a few times before he got me the kind of dog food that I liked."

The expression on my face must have jerked her out of her reverie, because she blushed suddenly and hastened to explain.

"He thought it would be more real if I didn't eat people food."

I felt myself growing pale as she continued with a nervous laugh. "People food isn't good for dogs."

This was considerably outside of my scope of experience with sexual fantasies involving sadomasochistic behavior. And here again, I knew that I wasn't hearing anything too terribly extraordinary in that sphere. Yet I was struggling to get to the root of Eleanor's behavior. I was curious to know what she was feeling during all of this, and what was driving her. I was looking for indications that she was deriving sexual pleasure from these activities with her husband. And yet, in the world of sadism, there are many motivations.

"So, at times you felt repulsed by the things your husband wanted you to do?" I asked.

"Repulsed?" she repeated, instantly becoming defensive. "No, I don't think I said I was repulsed…"

"Okay, but you mentioned that you gagged at one point. Would you say that you were somewhat repulsed while you were gagging?"

"I was immersed in playing the part. Even real actors sometimes do things they don't want to in order to be more convincing!"

I could think of no reply to this, so I simply persisted with the same line of questioning.

"But overall, Eleanor, while you were playacting at being a dog, what feelings were you experiencing?" I asked.

"I was happy," Eleanor replied straightaway. Perhaps even she noticed how mechanical this sounded, so she went on, struggling somewhat, but more thoughtfully this time. "I needed to do it," she said. "I felt like I
really was
his pet dog…like that was my purpose." After another moment, she added, "The sex was incredible."

"In what way was it incredible?"

"The same," she said. "It was the thrill of being his pet and doing everything to please him. That's what dogs do."

"So you continued to play the part of a dog during sex?"

"Yes!"

"Can you describe the pleasure you experienced during sex?"

"I…It's hard to describe."

And as I continued to question Eleanor, my sense of foreboding increased. I felt we were touching upon issues here, but it was difficult to get to the source of them. The conundrum, of course, is that sexual motivation is pretty subjective to individuals, especially in the realm of sadism. The submissive will always struggle to please the dominant partner, often in even more disturbing ways than what Eleanor has described. But generally speaking, their underlying motivation is not simply to please their partner. In a true submissive, there is a motivation beneath this motivation. Being dominated arouses the submissive, most often sexually. Each act of domination excites them further. The more difficult the challenge put before them to "please" their partner, the more excited they become, which is why many of them will submit to extraordinary things, including pain. The euphoric sensations they get from submitting are more gratifying—and even, in some cases, empowering—than anything else they can imagine. And they are usually able to describe these euphoric sensations in great detail.

I cannot say for certain that Eleanor was simply playing the part of a submissive, yet my gut reaction to her responses is that a crucial element of their little "game" was missing, leaving me to wonder why she would go through the motions night after night. What was her motivation, if it wasn't sexual? The desire to please one's partner, in and of itself, is not normally enough to induce one to eat dog food.

And yet, her desire to please her husband seems to have been as genuine as her grief now appears.

My initial impression that Eleanor is delusional seems more probable than ever. But why or how these delusions have come about I am not yet able to determine. I wonder how Dr. Czernick fits into all of this. At some point in their marriage, Eleanor was so unhappy with her husband that she sought marriage counseling. The happiness that she now describes must have come out of that counseling, or else it developed later, out of guilt following her husband's death. Eleanor has stated that her husband became more loving and committed during their couples' therapy, but I see no actual evidence that this is the case. Her sudden happiness seems to have miraculously appeared out of nowhere.

I have learned that Dr. Czernick is a big advocate of hypnosis. I wonder if this has affected Eleanor's impressions about her husband. The power of suggestion can be strong in some people. His high success rate with couples also comes to mind. I can't pinpoint what it is exactly, but I feel that there is something not quite right here.

Meanwhile, my fights with Tom are growing worse. He will not be put off, and I haven't the energy to deal with him. There's just so much on my plate right now with my growing practice; the last thing I want when I come home is confrontation. It might sound clichéd, but I need space. Tom, more than anyone, should understand this. Where was he all those years when I wanted to work on our marriage? He actually had the nerve to suggest we go to couples' therapy, and even mentioned Dr. Czernick, of all people!

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Today I confronted Eleanor Dobbs with two lists. The first was a list of her husband's behavior before they went to therapy and the second was a list of his behavior after. The lists were so similar as to be almost the same. The only apparent distinction between the two, in fact, was that Mr. Dobb's efforts appeared to become even less genuine
after
therapy than they had been before.