I recently read “We do what we do in the dark” by Michelle Hart, a book on a college student having a sexual relationship with a female professor at the college. The book explores the nature of the relationship and the motivation of Mallory, the student, as well as the aftermath.
In therapy, I often find myself sitting opposite of someone who wants both romance and intimacy, and fears it in equal measures. Initially, our conversation will be all about the desire. But then when they decide to enter a relationship it becomes more complex.
Our fears drive us as much in our partner choices as our desires do.
Consequently, if we are not able to truly bear intimacy, we seek partners who on the surface offer what we want but are also unavailable in key areas. In this way, we avoid getting more than we can cope with unconsciously.
While this initially sounds ideal, it often isn’t. It clashes with the part of us that we spoke about initially, the one that desires romance and deeper connection. This in turn causes internal confusion as we struggle to accept the limits of what the partner offers and to make sense of why we picked them in the first instance.
In Mallory’s case it causes a sense of obsession and hyper-awareness of the professor which for a while does not allow her to enter other relationships where there is a chance of a deepening bond. While the affair is brief, it shapes her relationship for years to come. In a way, the professor was both an attempt to re-enter the world after the devastating loss of her mother while also providing an excuse to not fully commit to re-entering.
Like many who have been hurt deeply in some way, there is a desire to no longer be the one on the outside that battles with the sense that being removed is a safer position as you run less risk of being hurt.
Mallory cannot tell anyone about the professor. Both due to her being a student but also due to the professor being married. Speaking on it would cause people to ask questions of her and her motivations which she herself is not willing to ask herself yet.
I know that my sessions are often the place where people dare to tell their story for the first time and tiptoe towards asking themselves the questions they fear others might ask.
But therapy is often the first place where you can acknowledge your confusion at the choices you have made and try to make sense of them. Relationships like the one described in “We do what we do in the dark” are confusing. And they are messy. But they challenge us to consider the moral fibres of our being.
Can we truly be good people and have done something like sleeping with a professor or a married person?
More often than not, the judgement we fear provides more excuses to keep silent and stay away from a world we both crave to be a part of, yet fear will hurt us.
It is only by utilising the space and allowing ourselves to explore these relationships with minimal judgement of ourselves that we can gain an understanding of what got us there in the first place.
From there, we can start to grow more courage to attempt to re-enter the world with an awareness of our fear of being hurt and a trust in ourselves that, if we do, we will be okay.