Episode 6 - Not the Best Idea

Episode 6 - Not the Best Idea

“The mind, like a country road, has its own worn-out track.” — Honoré de Balzac Nelly didn’t know that life could be different. The road map of her life had been set for her — first by her parents, then partly by school. Beyond the school doors there was a big black hole called “the future,” and she had no idea what to do with it. Until that moment, every decision had been made by her mom and dad. Any attempt to think on her own was quickly shut down with the phrase “you don’t have life experience yet,” but no one ever explained where this life experience was supposed to come from if every decision was handed to you ready-made. As graduation exams and the national tests approached, her anxiety grew. Nelly’s mother called me, asking for help for her teenage daughter. She immediately explained what result she expected from our work. She sounded worried, but underneath that worry there was also shame — as if she felt she had failed as a mother. I invited both parents and Nelly to the first session and suggested the father join as well. He thought going to a psychologist was not the best idea, but since there were no other options, he agreed to come with his daughter. He considered himself balanced and normal and didn’t see much point in family sessions, but agreed to come once, just as an experiment. On a warm spring morning, the three of them walked into my office. Each sat in a separate chair. All three were nervous, but each in their own way. It was clear that each had a firm opinion about why they were there. We began with a circular interview — a method that helps reveal family dynamics. Sometimes even the first meeting is enough to lift the curtain a little on the real issue. At first, it was calm. The father, then the mother, spoke about how their sixteen-year-old daughter had always been an excellent student, praised by teachers. And how, over the past year, her behavior had suddenly changed. From an active, high-achieving girl, she had become withdrawn and almost antisocial. She shut herself in her room in the evenings and avoided conversations. When her grades dropped and the school started calling, her parents realized something was wrong. They tried to talk to her, but the only answer they heard was that she was stressed about exams. They hired the best private tutor in the city. Nothing changed. Their plan for her to enter a prestigious university — maybe even study abroad — slowly began to fall apart. It was no longer clear whether she would pass her exams at all. Her unwillingness to talk about it shocked them. They struggled not to get irritated by her “uh-huh” and “yeah,” which she used as her only responses. It became clear that the education issue worried the mother most. She spoke about how girls in today’s world must be educated and financially independent. She mentioned independence several times. She said she hadn’t had as many choices in her youth and wanted to help her daughter with everything. She was a woman under fifty, once very career-driven, who had consciously chosen to slow down and work as a consultant. She looked at her daughter with love and a desire to live through this process together — maybe even instead of her. While speaking, she looked either at the floor or at Nelly, but never at her husband. It was obvious their views did not fully match. The father was brief. He said he agreed that studying further was important and that he would support any decision Nelly made. But he also added that it wouldn’t be a disaster if she didn’t go to university right away. As he spoke, with long pauses, it felt as though he hadn’t really thought deeply about the issue — he was reacting to what was happening at home. When it was Nelly’s turn, she was silent at first. Then she said that education was important, but she simply didn’t understand how to decide what she wanted. She talked about exams, how difficult they were, about school being boring, about losing interest in her friends. Her speech was full of general phrases — as if rehearsed for her parents’ comfort. When the session ended, there was a sense that something important remained unsaid. Everyone had said what was expected, but not what mattered most. The next morning, her mother called and asked to schedule an individual session for Nelly to work on anxiety. When Nelly came alone, she looked exhausted. Her once neatly styled hair was messy. The careful appearance from the first session was gone, replaced with visible indifference. As if she wanted to show that her appearance didn’t matter anymore. She sat down and looked at me carefully. It was clear she wanted to say something, but she wouldn’t rush. Her first question was simple. “Is this confidential?” she asked. “Of course,” I answered. “I need advice,” she whispered. She was tense. This was hard for her. About eight months earlier, she had seen a message on her father’s phone. A woman wrote that she no longer wanted to share him with his wife and that he should leave his family. That message wouldn’t leave Nelly alone. She had never thought about her parents’ relationship this way before. But after that, her life became unbearable. On one hand, she loved her father deeply. On the other, she felt angry and betrayed. She couldn’t tell her mother — she feared it would destroy the family. She fell asleep and woke up thinking about that message, about the other woman. School no longer mattered. She couldn’t talk about it with her friends. Over time, they stopped coming around. She avoided them. Her grades suffered. At the same time, the education issue strangely united her parents. They were focused on solving the “university problem.” Meanwhile, Nelly’s world had shattered. It felt like a broken mirror — pieces of the future she thought she had were scattered everywhere. Sometimes she wondered if she had imagined the message. But she couldn’t ask her father directly. Saying it out loud would make it real. Parents’ stories are never easy for a child — even a grown one. It might feel natural to want to line up the parents and tell them to talk it through, so the child doesn’t carry their burden. But my role is not to give advice. It is to help with separation — to help the child step out of the responsibility for her parents’ choices. That’s where we began. We carefully defined what was Nelly’s responsibility — and what wasn’t. We separated her choices from her parents’ choices. We talked about decision-making, about cause and effect, about allowing herself to make mistakes — and allowing others to make mistakes too. Often our need for perfection, and our ideal image of our parents, leaves no room for error. And then we get stuck, not knowing how it happened or how to move forward. We worked on responsibility — and on the responsibility Nelly had taken on for her father. We worked on separation, on building adult-to-adult communication with both parents. It was not easy. But we walked that road together — Nelly and her parents. Later, her parents came for family therapy, but that is another story. Nelly, after putting down the weight she had been carrying for her parents, entered the university she truly wanted. She is now in her third year and studies with pleasure. Not everything is easy. But life is not one narrow track. It is many roads. And we choose among them. The important thing is to understand that there is always a choice — and it belongs to you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit drlenafeygin.substack.com [https://drlenafeygin.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Episode 5 - Sorting It Out Mentally

“Be careful what you wish for — wishes have a way of coming true.” — Mikhail Bulgakov Desire — such a simple word. Our lives are filled with wishes that we voice every single day. They range from “peace in the world” to very material ones — “money, an apartment, a car.” Every client who begins work in my office receives a first and very important homework task: to answer three questions. What do I want in general? What do I want from myself? And what do I want from others? General wishes can be anything — from vague and intangible to very concrete. Wishes from oneself are the hardest, because no one else is needed to fulfill them — only me. In that sense, we all become a little bit like magicians. Wishes from others are important for our work together. We cannot change the people close to us, but we can change how we relate to them and how we see their behavior. The days before New Year are special. Every wish feels touched by magic, and the psychologist is often expected to play the role of a wizard — to restore family relationships, remove loneliness, and bring happiness into what seems like a complicated life. But the real magicians are we ourselves. The psychologist is only a tool through which wishes may come true. She slowly took off her coat and carefully folded it over the arm of the couch in my office. Snow clung to her lashes, and her cheeks were pink from the cold. She had clearly walked and must have been freezing. Anna was about thirty-five, beautiful, with magically long lashes and clear green eyes. Her short haircut and white T-shirt under a large knitted sweater that slipped from one shoulder looked careless and stylish at the same time, as if every detail had been thought out. There was something in her that combined visible untidiness with deep femininity. She looked at me and stayed silent. For the first five minutes, we sat quietly. She studied me carefully. I waited until she felt comfortable. Different clients always bring different energy. Anna was warm and bright, and that warmth filled my small office. Finally, she spoke in a quiet voice: “I would like to understand what I should do. To figure out what I want.” “Let’s figure it out,” I said. “Tell me about yourself and what brought you here.” Anna grew up as a fairly happy child in a professor’s family in Connecticut. She went to school, to music classes, to art lessons, and danced on weekends. She did everything without extreme effort, but always with stable results. She graduated with only one “B,” and at family dinners they often said she would have received a gold medal if not for her strict Russian language teacher. At home it was always warm and cozy. Grandma baked oatmeal cookies for tea. Her mother served soup in an old pre-revolutionary soup tureen. Anna often felt as if they lived not in the modern world but inside the pages of a Bulgakov novel. At university, she met Alex. He started spending a lot of time at her house. She did not really have a student party life — the group was too mixed, and she rarely went to parties. They met when she twisted her ankle on the university steps and he offered her a ride. Later she found out he did not even study there; he was simply passing by. She was happy that he loved books as much as she did and shared her values. They talked endlessly about everything. Four years passed. Her family got used to Alex being around. Sometimes he was even allowed to stay overnight. He was her first man, and she felt truly happy. Her parents gently hinted that it was time to marry. Alex joked that first he needed to “stand firmly on his feet” and get his own place. Anna did not argue. She felt life could not be better. She thought such relationships existed only in books. Alex came from a wealthy family and planned to work with his father. Anna never really asked what exactly his father did. She graduated university with honors and proudly received her medical diploma. She considered different job offers. As a beginner, they were not always attractive. She cried during her first night shift at the hospital, realizing the road to becoming a top doctor would be long. Alex began visiting less often. Their schedules no longer matched. Conversations became short phone calls, made more out of duty than desire. On her twenty-seventh birthday, he did not come at all, saying he had an urgent business trip. Their once warm and sincere relationship slipped through her fingers like sand. What remained were rare meetings, now filled with arguments. Mostly one-sided ones — Alex complained about almost everything, and Anna stayed silent. After he left, she cried quietly in her room. A year later, he almost disappeared from her life. One day he came to her workplace and calmly told her he had met another woman and was going to marry her. In that moment, Anna felt her life had stopped. For the next five years, she worked without looking back. As if nothing had ever happened. As if Alex had never existed. She cared deeply for her patients, her parents, and her aging grandmother. She became a senior doctor and no longer worked night shifts. She returned to theaters, to the conservatory, to reading books late into the night. One evening she met a friend at a restaurant and unexpectedly ran into Alex. He invited her for coffee. They sat for five hours, as if addicted to each other’s presence. All past pain disappeared instantly. It felt as if they had never separated. He took her to his apartment, and they stayed there until morning. It was beautiful. In the morning he said he needed to go home — to his wife, who lived in their country house. At that moment, Anna decided she never wanted to see him again. Never, meaning never. But life surprises us. When Anna found out she was pregnant, she came to my office. The first five minutes, she was silent. Then the work began. Grief, resentment, fear of loneliness, responsibility toward her parents — everything had to be sorted out mentally, taken apart piece by piece, to understand the true nature of her wishes. When we spoke about desires, one wish always remained on the list: a big family. She paused and thought about her unborn child. The answer became clear. During therapy, we also looked at her relationship with Alex. It turned out that for years she had worked alongside Kevin from the surgery department. He had been in love with her for a long time, but she had not noticed his care. Life unfolded like the best books she used to read. The following New Year, they celebrated as a new big family: Anna, Kevin, little Maya, her father, mother, and grandmother. And on the table, as always, was Grandma’s oatmeal cookies, filling the room with their familiar scent. Sometimes one night and an unexpected pregnancy are enough to truly understand what you want. Anna’s once-unconscious desire for a large family helped her see her true love in Kevin. And so this story has a happy ending — or rather, a happy beginning. Because for them, everything is just starting. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit drlenafeygin.substack.com [https://drlenafeygin.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Episode 4 - When the Smoke Cleared

“Joy in life is like oil in a lamp. As soon as there is too little oil, the wick burns up and, burning up, stops giving light and only smokes with black, foul smoke.” — Lev Tolstoy (All characters and stories are fictional and are composite images rather than anyone’s private life.) When the smoke from her cigarette cleared, you could make out the shape of a fairly young woman. Her eyes were red and swollen from tears. She had clearly been crying and clearly had not slept. Daisy put on her dark glasses and took another drag. The smoke covered the space in front of her face like a gray curtain, and she watched it dissolve, as if searching for some special meaning or message it was supposed to bring her. It was half past six in the morning. She lowered her bare feet from the windowsill and walked toward the table. There was something catlike in her walk—soft, flexible movements barely touching the parquet floor. In the silence that hung in the air along with the smoke, there was both tension and comfort. It felt wrong to disturb it. It fit the picture so perfectly. And at the same time, she wanted to scream out loud, to wake up the life that was being covered by the smoke of her cigarettes. She looked at the objects around her, trying to feel connected to at least one of them. It was useless. Sitting on the windowsill, Daisy often imagined her body flying down freely, no longer burdened by thoughts about work, relationships, and all the other clutter that suffocated her and did not let her live. No, she did not make a plan to jump. But the thought that her suffering could end in an instant felt more comforting than horrifying—even if the image of her body hitting the asphalt was not exactly beautiful. Life pressed on her like a concrete slab. It demanded involvement, and she had no strength left for that involvement. At twenty-five, Daisy felt unnecessary in this line of the strong and ambitious—those who finished universities, found jobs, worked in coworking spaces, built startups. Since childhood, she had firmly learned one thing: her birth had not only been unplanned, it had also gotten in the way of the people closest to her — her mother and father. They never said it directly. But her mother, sighing and looking at little Daisy, would sometimes say, “If it weren’t for you, I would have…” And then anything could follow: “finished university,” “taken a better job,” and so on. Her father adored Daisy, yet he would also say that if he had been single, he would have joined some more promising adventure—the kind that were common in the mid-90s. Daisy could not judge whether those adventures would have been good or bad for him. She simply understood it as a fact: she had gotten in the way of his dreams too. And since she had been born, she now had to help. By proving her usefulness, she justified her existence and softened the damage she believed she had caused. Tenderness, as a sign of love and warmth, was limited in her life and always brought mixed feelings. Because the sense of worthlessness came first, any attention from her parents felt like a request to fill their needs, not hers. Daisy could not remember when she stopped noticing her own wishes and needs—or whether she ever had them at all. Like a child, she tried to make up for her parents’ losses with total dedication. Adolescence caught her off guard. The long-standing feeling of loneliness turned into the question: “Why am I living?” Since she could not give her parents what they had supposedly lost because of her, it became easier to disconnect from them completely. She stopped listening to their instructions and rules. Her mind exhausted her with endless inner dialogue. If she existed, then she must be needed for something. And if she was not needed, then why exist? After school, Daisy met Alex. He was about fifteen years older and married. The old feeling returned—that she should not really be here. But she felt she served an important function in preserving Alex’s marriage by being in his life. In return, he provided her with an apartment and financial support. She rarely thought about the university she had enrolled in, but somehow, with the help of arrangements and understanding teachers, she graduated. Despite the steady rhythm of life and regular meetings with Alex, Daisy felt uneasy. The question “Why?” never left her. She wanted to find her purpose, complete the function given to her at birth, and finish her time in this world. Each day became harder. Alex tried to cheer her up, but he was busy with himself, and she wanted so badly to be needed by him that he did not notice her sad gaze at the window and the smoke-filled room where she constantly smoked. The smoke was like a theater curtain. It brought Daisy onto the stage as the leading actress in a play called “Alex.” Then it wrapped her like a warm blanket wraps a seriously ill patient. Her contact with the outside world became limited simply because it did not attract her. She felt the world had nothing to offer her. Her inner world was more appealing—filled with books, thoughts, music. There, she was needed. It was colorful and alive. We met at Alex’s insistence. He found her in a morning haze and decided something had to be done. Alex was a disciplined man with broad shoulders, and on those shoulders he had placed the burden called “Daisy.” It was the seventh year of their relationship, and he felt responsible for her life—at least for her safety. At first, she was silent in our sessions. She felt there was nothing to say. Then she cried, thinking time had passed and nothing could be changed. Then the work began. Childhood prohibitions are life scripts—and always negative ones. Parents, often without realizing it, give them to their children. And children carry them through their entire lives. The most frightening of the twelve childhood prohibitions is the ban on life itself. It always sounds the same: “Don’t live.” Any sentence that begins with “If it weren’t for you…” places this destructive script on a small child. It later shows up either as self-destruction or as aggression toward the world. Working through childhood trauma in therapy is never easy. We enter the territory of childhood, and that always hurts and always meets resistance. There is a desire to justify parents, to explain their behavior—and our own reactions to what life handed us. The feeling of hopelessness and fate that often appears in therapy gradually stands side by side with a new feeling: that something can be changed, that one can influence one’s own life. And this is often followed by actions the person has never taken before. Eight months passed. Alex opened Daisy’s apartment with his key. It was early; his wife was busy with the children, and he decided to stop by before work. In the dim hallway, the apartment felt unusually cool. He took off his coat and hurried into the room. The curtain of smoke had cleared. The window was open, tapping softly against the wall. In the sudden emptiness and chill, his mind refused to process what he saw. The only thought that came was: “That’s it. I didn’t see it. I didn’t make it in time.” On the table lay an open, unfinished book. Next to it, under a glass of water, he found a note. “My dear, I am endlessly grateful for everything you have done for me all these years. But most of all, I am grateful for life. For the life that is only now beginning. Twenty-five years late. See you. Daisy.” At that very moment, a plane was taking off from JFK. Daisy sat by the window, eyes wide open, looking out at the sky. A strand of her thick hair fell across her face. It was cool on the plane, and she wrapped herself in a large wool sweater. It was a little scary—her first flight ever. But for the first time, she felt that life had meaning and purpose. And that it was her life, no one else’s. The joy she felt came in waves, bringing warmth and calm inside. Ahead of her was a long road and a long journey into this huge, colorful world. Ahead of her was life—a life filled with desire and possibility. We continued our work together. But now our work was about the future, not the past. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit drlenafeygin.substack.com [https://drlenafeygin.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Episode 3 - Emilia’s Path

“Objectively, honor is the opinion others have of our value; subjectively, it is our fear of that opinion.” — Arthur Schopenhauer I am a Doctor of psychotherapy science, with twenty years of experience and practice around the world. These are my stories — stories that can happen anywhere and to anyone. (All characters and stories are fictional and represent composite images rather than anyone’s private life.) She comes back again and again, trying to understand what she should do. The calm, structured life she had built for herself collapsed right before her eyes, and she felt powerless to change anything. The reason, of course, was Him—or at least that is how it seemed to her now. Emilia was embarrassed, and even the privacy of the sessions at the beginning of our work did not help her open up. Everything happening in her life felt so far removed from the idea she had of herself and her future that she struggled to grasp how she was supposed to relate to it. All her boundaries and defenses had been built long ago, back in childhood. She remembered that at around six years old, when questions of physiology first caught her attention, she received a strict reprimand from her grandmother: honor must be protected from a young age. Since no one ever clarified when exactly that “young age” began, Emilia started guarding her honor from about the age of six. In adolescence, the world of fiction opened up to her—she read The Story of O, Emmanuelle, Lolita—yet she found no answers to her questions about what she was supposed to do. Puberty passed without particular difficulties for her parents, and Emilia stepped into adulthood with a clear idea of what adult life was supposed to look like. Her school-year experiments were minimal and yielded no experiences she would later recall with joy or regret. Her university years were spent in Paris, but despite how many of her friends romanticized the city, for Emilia those years were marked by hard work and a fight for her place in the sun. During that period, she did not even consider relationships—she could not imagine dividing her time between love and study. It seemed to her that life was about to begin, and then she would surely be ready for relationships, although she herself did not fully understand what that meant. And then weeks turned into months, months into years. A career had to be built, and after fifteen years of competition and relentless struggle, Emilia became the head of a very large company, carrying even greater responsibility—for thousands of employees and subordinates. Naturally, she no longer understood how one could devote time to anything other than work, although from time to time she allowed herself rare vacations with friends who had long since started families and were raising children. Her capacity for relationships was limited to a single experience back in her school years—an experience that, due to both partners’ inexperience, left her puzzled as to why one would want relationships at all, and how questionable that pleasure might be, the very pleasure her grandmother had warned her against. But forty caught her off guard. For the first time, she felt loneliness and realized that her friends no longer met her need for intimacy, and that a dog was unlikely to start talking. The world, despite its apparent perfection, began to crack slightly at the seams. In the evenings, she brewed coffee as usual and read reports she had not managed to finish during the day. Loneliness had its advantages—it was sterile and predictable. Nothing disturbed the silence she once craved. Yet inside, tension was growing: the sense that she had missed something, that there existed an entirely different plane of being. For many years, through the lives of her friends, she had seen weddings, divorces, affairs, children being born and growing up. And if at some point she flirted with the thought, Do I even need this?, she almost invariably concluded that she did not want to artificially create a life alternative to the one she had already built. And then He appeared. It happened entirely by chance, at yet another meeting. He casually brushed her hand, and Emilia felt as if she had been struck by an electric current. From that moment on, she could think of nothing and no one else but him—and there were many reasons for that. First, she had never experienced such intense physical attraction to another person. Second, it was so unexpected that it fit none of the relationship scenarios she had read about or heard of. With fierce obsession, she wanted to possess this man and understood that nothing could stop her anymore. That was the paradox: the honor she had guarded since childhood vibrated and resisted, while the sudden surge of desire fought for freedom and demanded satisfaction. And Emilia took a step that was unthinkable for her—she met with Him again. Inside, she trembled; her self-esteem cowered in a corner, nervously biting its nails, and her voice betrayed her excitement with a tremor. But Emilia saw no way back. She regarded that moment as a starting point. Now or never, she thought, and began talking about business. Her lack of experience in romantic matters interfered—she stumbled—but her habitual corporate composure helped her carry the conversation forward. He showed no sign of affection toward her, apart from a clearly affected interest in her field of work and professional achievements (and Emilia had plenty of those). The conversation continued. His calm, orderly life did not imply the kind of changes Emilia’s presence could bring. When the meeting ended, Emilia’s world finally tilted off balance. Never before had she wanted someone so specifically. Never before had she felt such powerful attraction toward a person she did not know. Never before had she felt so powerless before her own body and its desires. She desperately needed to know whether He felt the same. Now she could no longer remember how she had lived before experiencing all this. Honor, along with conscience, was pushed far onto a shelf, and lust and sensuality stepped onto the stage—desires to possess and to have. Emilia knew how to get what she wanted. She fought herself honestly, but her body resisted, and her thoughts were filled with fantasies of his hands, his lips, the words she wanted to hear from him. Her only desire was to be close to him—to feel his touch on her skin, to listen to the resonant timbre of his voice, to be wrapped in his tenderness and affection. Delay was akin to death, and Emilia went on the offensive. He, on the contrary, hesitated. Her pressure and confident advance toward victory disoriented him. He stumbled and made desperate attempts to appeal to her sense of honor—but by then, there was no trace of it left. Everything was unfolding against familiar social scripts. It was simultaneously arousing and unsettling, exciting and confusing, and it was unclear what should come next. When he finally told her that the feeling was mutual, Emilia found a noticeable calm, and her life flowed into an entirely new current. In it, there was no need to hide behind masks or mechanically repeat socially acceptable scripts. There was room for a life filled with feeling and freedom. Emilia discovered an entire world. She realized that everything happening to her could be called by one word—love. Many times she asked herself how it was possible that she had never felt anything like this before, that at forty she had fallen in love like a teenager. And many times she answered herself that she was grateful it had happened in her life at all. All-consuming love, born from a single touch. She did not know—and could not know—how long this state would last, but having experienced it, she could no longer imagine living any other way. It was as if someone had torn Ellie’s little house from the ground and carried it by a hurricane into the magical land of Oz. It was a path full of discoveries and hope. It was Emilia’s path toward herself—her chance to truly know who she was and to experience what she had once thought impossible. In therapy, Emilia managed to work through her childhood scripts and free herself from the unnecessary baggage she had so carefully carried on her shoulders since childhood. We never blame parents for the baggage we carry—we simply sort through it meticulously, leaving by the roadside of our life what will no longer be useful, what is no longer needed. Emilia no longer needed honor in the sense in which she had carried it. But the love she found turned out to be very much needed. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit drlenafeygin.substack.com [https://drlenafeygin.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Episode 2 - Closed Stories of Open Gestalts

Podcast Episode 2 - “There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, the highest tension of vital forces. And paradoxically, this ecstasy is the fullness of sensing life and, at the same time, a complete forgetting of oneself and everything around.” — Jack London, The Call of the Wild I am a Doctor of psychotherapy science, with twenty years of experience and practice around the world. These are my stories — stories that can happen anywhere and to anyone. (All characters and stories are fictional and represent composite images rather than anyone’s private life.) Andrew remembered with absolute clarity the very moment when something in his life went wrong. That day, he could not yet imagine how the events that would unfold would affect the rest of his life—or rather, most of it. He enters my office hesitantly, and it is immediately clear that deciding to come was not easy for him. Andrew is a middle-aged man, in good physical shape, with a boyish smile on his face. He sinks into the armchair opposite me, almost disappearing into it under his own weight. The smile that never leaves his face is, of course, a defense against the serious conversation ahead of us. His life has split into two halves: one in which he is a successful businessman and family man, and another in which, at the first call, he runs to her. At first glance, a socially acceptable scenario—one where he has both a wife and a mistress. Such men come for help extremely rarely, and most often at the insistence of either the wife or the mistress. Wives—in an attempt to save the marriage; mistresses—to finally understand when he will leave her (the wife). But Andrew came on his own, because he was unbearably tormented by the situation in which he could not leave his wife, and yet, when he seemed to have parted with Lara for good, he would once again run to her at the first call whenever she was in trouble. It is worth noting that Lara was in trouble almost constantly. She was completely incapable of opening a can, doing grocery shopping for the week, holding a job, or dealing with everyday matters. She was a fragile, ethereal creature who required constant care simply to sustain life. Andrew had been a rescuer since childhood—or almost since childhood. When his parents were divorcing, he bravely took responsibility for his mother and saved her as best he could from gloom and depression, until a stepfather appeared in their lives. Though, from the stepfather, he saved his mother no less—whenever he felt the stepfather was in the wrong. Perhaps his need to rescue was no less developed than his mother’s need to be rescued. Until about the age of twenty, he desperately saved his mother. Then university ended, and he moved from Connecticut to New York. In New York, life became both more dynamic and calmer. He no longer needed to rush to his mother’s place at three in the morning when she thought she was “about to have a heart attack.” He soothed her over the phone and lived his own life. Probably for the first time in a long while, he felt free from rescuing others—and he enjoyed his solitude. He met Jane at work. She was a girl from a well-to-do family, a graduate of Columbia University, with a clear professional trajectory. A lawyer by training, she advanced quickly and climbed the career ladder. They bumped into each other in the lobby, and while riding up in the elevator he asked for her phone number. He called almost immediately, practically that same evening. Jane was easy to talk to, well-read, curious, and quite self-sufficient. At first, he liked the fact that she did not need saving. She could save anyone herself. Jane, as she was now addressed—was completely independent and possessed enviable connections. She took an active part in her company’s life and often traveled on business, as she worked in international law. Her independence and self-sufficiency were both exciting and repelling. He felt a desire to conquer her, to prove that he, too, was capable of something. And so he pushed himself to grow and develop in order to measure up. In a sense, in this simple way Jane turned Andrew into a successful businessman who built a respectable fortune over the years of their life together. By twenty-five they were married, and by thirty they had children. With the arrival of the children, Jane partially stepped back from work, and Andrew once again felt like a rescuer, running at every call of his little ones, who so desperately needed daddy’s saving. His relationship with Jane carried more of a friendly, familial meaning than a romantic or passionate one. He had long stopped competing with her, and since there was no need to rescue her, sexual desire did not arise either. The children grew up and, approaching fourteen, needed his attention less and less. Of course, he continued to save his mother—but that same year she died of heart failure. She passed quickly, and he never managed to speak everything through with her. He experienced her loss deeply, yet did not dare to voice all that remained unsaid to Jane. And then he met her. Lara—he could not call her anything else—seemed as if she were from another planet. A petite, fragile girl from a good family. She almost ran under his car simply because she failed to notice that the traffic light had already changed. She was carrying a violin, and although it was impossible to determine her exact age, he knew she studied at the Conservatory. Lara resembled Chopin’s music—the Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor. She burst into Andrew’s life like a hurricane, and he could no longer live without her. Desperately, as he once had with his mother, he rescued her from misfortunes and protected her from the outside world, while she gifted him a world of music and poetry. Her half-closed eyes and curls casually scattered on the pillow did not distract him—on the contrary, they beckoned him to immerse himself in a world completely unknown to him. Her favorite poem, which she dedicated to him, was written by Sofia Parnok: In barren soil no seed will rise, But who has not believed in miracle in cruel hours?— What will Pushkin’s lines foretell to me? Beloved pages I will open once again. Again, again “The stormy day has faded,” Torn by the piercing “but if only”! Is not my soul, is not my whole world Now trembling within these two short words? The hotter the blood, the colder grows the heart; You love not with the heart, but with hot blood. In the eternity promised by love, I will not count too many days. Seek no cheerfulness within my eyes: That third one already stands between us as a shadow. No tender glow will flare within your soul, The pledge of love’s unchanging vow— In barren soil no seed will rise, But who has not believed in miracle in cruel hours?— What will Pushkin’s lines foretell to me? Beloved pages I will open once again. They cried and parted, again and again. She knew he would never leave Jane; he knew it too—and this knowledge made it bitter for them both. Then everything unfolded according to a familiar script: Lara emotionally blackmailed Andrew through misfortune, and he ran to her at the first call, time and again. Andrew loved Lara. He was fully aware that Jane was the woman beside whom he became better—but also more insecure. His libido suffered because of this. He worshiped her ability to solve any task placed before her. He considered her ideal. Lara was the embodiment of his childhood traumas, of the violated boundaries with his mother, who died without giving him the chance to work everything through. Lara was the very epicenter of his so-called unclosed childhood gestalts, and Andrew was in a codependent relationship with her. It was precisely these unclosed childhood stories, boundaries, and the accompanying self-confidence that Andrew worked on. In the process, he made discoveries about himself, found new facets of his Self, and, as much as he could, shared all of this with Lara. Time passed. Anndrew began to care for Lara in a more friendly way and even rejoiced in her achievements—both professional and personal. A year later, Andrew wrote to say that he and Jane had had their third child. Apparently, she never learned about Lara, about her husband’s long journey back home. And only a new wave of passion in their relationship spoke of the work he had done on himself. This is a public episode. 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