Chapter 4
You two,
Slugtrimpet told me something interesting over a slice of roast Wormwood.
Apparently, your patient has made a new friend at work. Apparently, the new friend is an old friend from whom the patient "just drifted apart". Apparently, the friend holds a promising but unspoken lust for your patient and apparently this was a factor in their friendship freezing over.
Tell me, you morons. Why am I only hearing this now? Can you not see a promising adultery when it stumbles onto your plate? Clearly, no one has told you the specifics of human sexuality. That miserable task is left to me. Consider yourself lucky I have so much paperwork to ignore.
In sexual sin, a human's libido is actually not that important. I know it's good for casual unchastity but that's more of an appetiser before vanity, deception and selfishness. Not only is unchastity rather flavourless (almost as much as a mere absence of virtue), a trite little tryst can quickly spiral into marriage. Too many of our colleagues have wasted months, riling a young man up for a life of debauchery, only to have their patient marry the first girl he lends a pencil to in a lecture room. Worse yet, the marriage of two libidinous people can lead to a tedious cycle of fun, fertility and "being in love". And frankly, tempters relying on sex alone deserve everything they get.
A female human has said that a woman can achieve moral perfect by simply avoiding sex. This is nonsense but humans believe it. We have cultivated an army of bullies, liars and gluttons by convincing them that abstinence is enough. I once had a patient of this ilk and I'm still picking bits of her from between my teeth.
My point is, don't bother her dreams with half-lit embraces or fix her eye on his too-tight trousers. Do that and she'll see the danger. Instead, why don't you try her on the idea that her friend doesn't know why they drifted, and has been silently saddened by her absence for all these years? Since she hasn't been in his life, she can be made to forget he has one when she isn't around. Can you awaken her pity for him – pity which compels her to spend time trying to explain herself to him? Repackage the story not as friends who drifted apart and had a certain something in the air, but as a deliberate abandonment. Make her feel like she needs to defend herself. If she keeps her distance, try "cold" on her, or "mean" or even "selfish". Suggest to her that she had the wrong idea. It helps, of course, that she is at work, where she goes every day to meet people she must cooperate with whether she wants to or not. Torment her with what other people would think if they heard his side. Suggest that she "led him on".
On that note – your patient is trying to lose weight at present, is she not? And she's spending plenty of time online looking at clothes and makeup. Has her husband noticed? You mention that they've been a little curt with each other, and that he's staying up playing computer games while she goes to bed. Can you persuade her that she needs a man's perspective on her marital troubles? Not the man at the source of them, of course. If you've done your job properly, she will already have written that off. She's a people pleaser. Therefore, you can depend on her to downplay her needs until her problems have burrowed in and cause her real pain. This is going to be more use to you than a serious vice. You want her in a state of mind where she'd sooner strangle her husband in his sleep than ask him to work on their marriage. I once had a patient... I'll tell you all about that when you're next in the office.
Yours,
Scabtree