Love and Marriage
Chapter Five

Sam entered the room and sat down on the couch, crossing her legs and biting her lip. She nervously looked up at Leslie, who was giving her a smile as a sign of encouragement. "I really appreciate you finding time for me and moving up my session."

"It's no problem." Leslie assured her. "On the phone you seemed rather distraught. Has something happened?"

"Last night, Martin wanted to talk. So we talked."

"That's good. Communication is a good thing." Leslie was glad to hear that they were talking.

"No. Communication is a bad thing for us." She informed Leslie. "We ended up having another fight."

Ok, so maybe communication wasn't a good thing. "What was the fight about?"

"It started out with me asking if he wanted a divorce." Sam replied, getting ready to relive the fight.

"And what did he say to that?" Leslie asked.

"He wasn't sure." Sam replied. "He asked me if I wanted a divorce and I told him I wasn't sure either."

"Are you really unsure of did you just not want to tell him your true feelings about it?"

"I…" She paused to collect her thoughts. "I don't know. Sometimes I think that a divorce would be the best thing for us. I don't particularly want one, but I also don't want to keep living like this."

Leslie absorbed Samantha's words and wrote down a few notes. "We'll come back to that statement later. Was that what the entire fight was about? Divorce?"

"No." She shook her head. "He then asked me if I was or ever had cheated on him." Just thinking about his words and the way he said them were enough to make her angry again.

Leslie found herself having to prod information of Samantha. "And you…"

"I haven't." Sam told the older woman. "But the way he said it just made my blood boil! His first reaction when something goes wrong is to accuse me of cheating."

Leslie wrote that down. "And why do you think that is?"

"Oh I know exactly why that is. Before I even met Martin, I had an affair with my boss, who at the time was married. It ended a long time before Martin even came to work in New York but he can't let it go. I'll always be the woman who was Jack's mistress."

"Has he said this to you?"

"He doesn't have to." Sam shook her head, staring at the couch. "It's written on his face. He doesn't trust me."

Leslie made sure that she noted that before continuing on. "So he asked if you were cheating. You said no, and then what?"

"I asked him the same question." She brought her eyes up to meet with Leslie's. "He said he hasn't cheated on me but…"

"You don't believe him?" Leslie guessed.

"I want to. I really do. I want to trust and believe him. There was a time when I never would've believed that Martin would or could cheat on me. Now though, he's always at work, comes home late nearly every night…"

"Isn't that part of his job though?" Leslie asked.

"Yes, but he works overtime every chance he gets. He avoids me at all costs. I guess I'm guilty of avoiding him too though."

"Why do you avoid him?"

"Because every time we're alone in a room together and not talking about Claire, we end up fighting. One of us says something hurtful and the other gets angry and says something hurtful back. It's a vicious cycle." Sam explained.

"I see." Leslie made another note in her notebook, wondering how in the world she was going to help this couple.

"It's exhausting—both physically and emotionally." Sam sighed.

Leslie nodded. "A few minutes ago you said that you don't think you want to get a divorce but you also don't want to keep living this way. Is this feeling of exhaustion one of the reasons?"

"Yes." Sam nodded. "I hate feeling like this!"

"Feeling like what exactly?"

"Feeling like I'm in limbo all of the time. Maybe we should just get divorced and get it over with. Maybe we're just not meant to be together."

Leslie wasn't sure what to say to that anymore. Normally she would try to install hope in her clients, but she didn't have much hope herself. So she continued on. "Did anything else happen last night or was that it?"

"No. I told him about my thoughts on how we needed to make a decision about the future of our marriage. He made a really hurtful remark so I stormed out and slept on the couch."

"I see." Leslie nodded. "So it looks like one of the main things we're going to have to focus on in the joint session is communication. That seems to be causing a lot of problems between you two." Leslie stated out-loud while making a few more notes. "But these individual sessions are going to be focused more on your life. In order for me to be able to help you I need to know who you are and what you've been through. For now, let's start with where you work."

"Well I work in the White Collar Crimes division of the FBI." Sam said.

"You mentioned that you met Martin through work. Is that where he works too?"

"No. He works in my old unit down in Missing Persons." She felt the need to explain further. "We used to work there together until after we got married. Then I was transferred because of the bureau's policy of not letting married people work on the same team."

"How was it decided that you would be the one transferred?"

"I was just decided for me. I didn't volunteer or anything. I was just reassigned." She sighed. "I think I was chosen because I fit the Brady Bunch theme they had going on in White Collar Crimes."

Leslie didn't understand and was confused. "What do you mean by that?"

"My co-workers are all named after the Brady Bunch kids: Greg, Peter, Marsha and Cindy. I fit in better than Martin because of Sam the butcher."

A look of realization flashed across her face and she understood better now. "Oh yeah. Sam the butcher. He was Alice's love interest on that show. I remember now."

"I'm not sure if that was the real reason or not." Sam confessed. "It might have been because Martin didn't want me to continue working with Jack as my boss if he wasn't going to be there to supervise."

"Jack as in the Jack you had a relationship with?" Leslie asked for clarification.

"Yes, but it wasn't really much of a relationship. It was more like a mistake." She went back to picking invisible lint from the couch.

Sam's nervous habit of trying to find lint on the couch didn't go unnoticed by Leslie, but she didn't say anything about it. "And you believe that Martin didn't want to leave you working on the same team as Jack because he doesn't trust you?"

"It's a very strong possibility." Sam nodded.

"I see." Leslie paused for a moment. "So you didn't choose to leave?"

"No." Her voice raised and she felt the anger stir within her. "Even though I had been a part of that team for a lot longer than Martin and that team was like family to me, I was the one who had to leave."

"How did that make you feel?" Leslie asked, realizing that she was on to something revealing.

"Sad. Danny, Vivian and Jack were like family to me and now I hardly ever get to see them."

"So is sad the only emotion you felt?"

Sam hesitated before answering. "No. I was angry…I am angry."

Leslie felt the need to prod Sam along again. "At?"

"Martin, for not offering to transfer instead. He'd be a lot better at this job than I am." She never told anyone about her anger towards Martin for this and it was starting to feel good venting about it. "And in all fairness he should have at least offered to leave. I've known those people a lot longer than he has and I was good at my job. But he didn't." Suddenly she found herself almost yelling. "He just let me go and didn't care that I was stuck doing a job that I hate with a bunch of people that I can't stand!"

"Have you ever told him that you don't like your job?" Leslie asked.

"No." Sam shook her head.

"I see. Well I think we've discovered one of the causes of unhappiness in your marriage." Leslie smiled.

"So I hate my job! What does that have to do with my marriage?" Sam asked. She was surprised that she actually admitted that she hated her job to someone. It felt good to let it out considering that she'd been holding it in for about seven years now.

"It's not that you hate your job." Leslie explained. "It's about this resentment and anger that you obviously harbor against Martin for allowing you to be stuck in a job that you dislike."

"Oh." Sam finally understood what Leslie was saying. "So you're saying since I've been angry with him for such a long time…"

"It's manifesting itself into a general anger over anything and everything he does." Leslie finished explaining.

"I see." Sam nodded. There was a certain ring of truth to that.

"Now, I have a strong feeling that isn't the only problem here, but it's definitely a good place to start. I want you to try and talk to Martin about your feelings concerning your job. But I don't want you to accuse him of anything and I don't want the conversation to turn negative in any way. Try to have a polite conversation that doesn't end in an argument. Do you think you can do that?"

Sam laughed. "I don't know. It's become almost second nature to fight with him."

"I'm beginning to realize that." Leslie grinned. "But that is a habit that we need to break in order to try and fix your marriage."

"What if I talk to him about this and we end up fighting?" Sam asked, knowing that there was a very good possibility that they would end up fighting.

"I hope that doesn't happen. But if it does, I want you to count to ten before you say anything. During those ten seconds, I want you to come up with three reasons why you shouldn't be fighting with him. Once those ten seconds are up, calmly re-open the discussion. Understand?"

"Yes." Sam nodded.

"Good." Leslie took a deep breath. "I think that resolving this anger you have with Martin about your job is a good first step in the right direction. It won't solve everything, but it might make you feel better."

"I already feel a little better talking to you about it. It felt good to acknowledge the fact that I hate my job." Sam chuckled. "Maybe I should go to a tall building and just scream it from the roof."

Leslie grinned. "That's not a bad idea, but I would prefer that you talk to Martin about it first."

"Ok." She nodded. She noticed that her session was almost finished. "Thank you Leslie."

"You don't have to keep thanking me Samantha."

"You must think that Martin and I are a mess." She shook her head and looked at the ground. "And you'd be right. There are times when I just get so mad at him and I wish that I could just leave. But God help me, I love him. Sometimes I'm not sure why anymore, but...I do love him."

"Then this isn't a hopeless situation." Leslie told her.