Part One Hundred And Seventy
Later that afternoon as they drove towards the clinic where Helen worked, George could feel the tension rising in him, the slight air of nervousness which she certainly wasn't used to seeing in him. "Is this how you often feel before a session?" George asked him as she waited for a traffic light to turn green. "Sometimes," He admitted, not having been aware that his feelings were quite so visible to her. But as they sat in the waiting room as Helen finished with her previous patient, George took his hand in hers, trying to give him the silent support that wouldn't actually intrude on his thoughts. In truth, she really wasn't sure how to help him with what he'd been going through over the last day or so, and she had to do this purely by instinct. She didn't want to make him feel in any way crowded, but she did want him to know that she was there for him if he wanted her. John definitely appreciated her gentle presence, because it put no pressure on him to discuss his feelings whatsoever, something that he knew he couldn't have coped with today.
When Helen appeared and asked John to follow her, George rose with him, putting her arms round him and softly kissing him. "You don't need to stay," he told her, feeling more than a little self-conscious at her presence. "Do you want me to go?" She asked, perfectly happy to do whatever he wanted. After a moment's thought, he said, "No," Suddenly wanting the silent support that her presence down the corridor would inevitably provide. As George watched him walk with Helen into the consulting room, she picked up an out of date copy of Cosmopolitan, and tried to lose herself in its pages, but all the time wondering how John was getting on behind the closed door.
When they were seated opposite each other, Helen asked, "So, how are you feeling today?" "As though I'm on a different planet," He replied, thinking this the simplest way of explaining his sense of unreality. "Part of me feels numb, empty, as though I don't have anything left inside me, yet the rest of me feels overwhelmed." "That's not unusual," Helen told him matter-of-factly. "You had an enormous emotional shock yesterday, because a lot of those feelings had remained hidden and dormant for years. It will in the long run be a good thing that you faced some of your demons, but it might not feel like it for quite a while." "So what do I do now?" John asked. "How do I return to my job and the rest of my life without completely disintegrating?" "You do that by constantly reminding yourself that you're not the only person who knows how you feel," Helen told him succinctly. "If it hadn't been necessary for me to contact George yesterday, I would have suggested that you tell somebody about what you were going through, because you will occasionally need someone to lean on." "I think that's what I don't like about all this," John said a little bitterly. "The fact that I do need such a level of emotional support. Certainly where George and Jo are concerned, I'm used to giving it to them, not having it the other way round." "And how did George live up to that?" Helen asked with some curiosity. "She was wonderful," John was forced to admit. "She's barely asked me anything about why I've been coming to see you, or what we've talked about, something I am certain Jo would have done. When I had therapy last time and made such a disaster of it, I think the fact that Jo knew about it, and was expecting me to make a success of it put an enormous amount of pressure on me. Failing wasn't really an option, because it had been Jo's idea in the first place. She was so angry with me when I told her that I'd slept with Rachel, which I suppose was hardly surprising. Jo made me feel as though I'd failed her more than I'd failed myself. I don't blame her for it, but that's almost certainly why I asked you to contact George rather than Jo. I don't want Jo to know that I'm having therapy again, at least not yet, because I don't want to be under the same pressure to make it succeed as I was before." "Is it really so different with George?" Helen asked, marvelling at how two people could see something like this quite so differently. "Yes," John said with absolute certainty. "George sees it as something that I've chosen to do for whatever reason, and a part of my life that she will probably know very little about. The difference is that she doesn't feel threatened by my having an area of my life that she doesn't have any part in, whereas Jo probably would." "And why do you think that is?" It hurt John that he didn't have to think before immediately coming up with an answer to this.
"When I was married to George, she was forced to become used to my straying, because the more she ignored it, the more she thought I was likely to stay with her. I don't admit something like that lightly, because I do feel incredibly guilty for the way I often treated her. No matter how hurt I might have been over her inability to feel any real love for Charlie, George didn't deserve such a lacklustre approach to fidelity. The fact that George entirely went off making love for a while, was not an excuse for me to pick up someone else." "So why did you do it?" Helen asked, striving to remove any hint of censure from her tone. "I thought that she no longer loved me," John said quietly. "I now know that it was because she thought that she didn't deserve my love, but at the time I lighted on the most probable explanation. I thought I'd managed to keep my infidelity from her, but she found out somehow, and began sleeping with me again because she didn't want to lose me." "Doesn't that tell you how much she loved you, and still does love you?" Helen persisted quietly. "Yes," John said with a heavy sigh of regret. "But it didn't prevent me from straying again and again over subsequent years. I sometimes think that if my mother had been alive, she would have been utterly ashamed of me." "Whilst some parents can criticise and belittle every single thing that their children either achieve or don't achieve," Helen said thoughtfully. "There are other parents who have an enormous capacity for forgiveness, no matter what their children do. I sometimes like to think that my mother would have been one of those, and that no matter how bad some of the things I've done may have been, she would have been able to understand the reasons behind what I'd done. I might be deluding myself, but I'll never know and neither will you."
John was quiet for a time, trying to put his thoughts into some sort of order. "Where do I go from here?" he asked eventually, wanting an answer to this above everything else. "I think you need some time out," Helen replied gently. "You need some time to begin putting yourself back together. It isn't going to be easy, and I will be here any time you want to talk about it, but it is something that only you can decide how to do. You need to start rebuilding your self-confidence and to start telling yourself that you are worth an awful lot more than you think you are. Try not to think that I'm dropping you just when I've managed to get through your emotional armour because I'm not, but there's only so much I can do for you from now on. I haven't done what you wanted me to do, I haven't given you an answer as to how you can avoid using sex with random women as a fallback, but that particular question didn't ever have a simple answer. You didn't know it when you came to me, but you needed to face your innermost fears, and to admit to the things you would rather avoid discussing. Somehow, we've got there. It hasn't been easy, and just because you've achieved that doesn't mean it will necessarily be easier from hereon in. What I hope, is that you will be more likely to think about what you're doing before you do it, though that isn't a guarantee." "I hope I can live up to your expectations," John said with a slight smile. "They have to be your expectations, John, not mine," Helen told him seriously. "You need to decide what you want to expect for yourself. This isn't about what others may want of you, but what you want out of yourself. George might now be aware that you've been having therapy, but I don't think she'll hold it against you if it doesn't automatically make you faithful to her and Jo. She loves you too much for the occasional lapse to be a real issue. That isn't to say that you shouldn't try your hardest not to stray in the future however." "Are you sure that it's okay for me to come back if I feel the need?" He asked, wanting some sort of lifeline to cling onto. "Of course," Helen replied as she got to her feet. "That's what I'm here for."
As John followed George home, having picked up his car which had thankfully remained in one piece after spending a night in the clinic's car park, he wondered if he really could continue on his own from here. He appreciated what Helen had said, but would his few months of therapy really stand him in good stead for the future? He honestly couldn't tell. He wasn't arrogant enough to think that he could ignore or bypass all forms of female beauty except for those of Jo and George, because he knew himself of old. If Jo knew about the therapy, she would probably expect him to succeed at his endeavour to be faithful to them. George on the other hand would be unfailingly realistic, and possibly even expect him to stray, knowing him as well as she did after all these years. The question he kept asking himself was, what on earth was the fine line between these two extremes, and did he have the willpower and self-control to maintain it?