My Psychiatrist Thinks I'm a Loser
Several months ago as I was meeting with my new psychiatrist, he began the appointment by asking me the usual patient intake questions. I made sure to answer deliberately, to consider the implications of my answers before giving them. Things were going smoothly until he asked something I hadn’t forseen.
“Are you currently in a relationship?”
“When was your last relationship?”
“What do you mean, like a real relationship?”
“However you would define a relationship.”
I thought about it as I mentally thumbed through the years. The first relationship I came upon that vaguely qualified was with a man for whom I couldn’t even remember having serious feelings. We lived together for a short period of time, but it was always as if I knew it was coming to a close. I could never fully commit myself to him. I intended to love him, but I could never obtain the feelings I longed to have.
Feeling anxious and like each unanswered second was increasingly arousing my interlocutor’s suspicion, I blurted out the details of this past mediocre entanglement. I had referred to him as my boyfriend throughout the relationship after all.
“Are you sexually active?”
I felt somewhat embarrassed as a 25-year-old woman living in post-Sex and the City America without a single juicy detail to share with my therapist. Suddenly I’d been forced to show my empty hands to this man who wore socks with sandals, whose office was adorned with Buddha figurines and purple satin pillows. And I was almost positive that he was getting laid.
We continued the discussion and addressed the issues for which I’d initially scheduled the appointment. But toward the end he revisited my stagnant love life and recommended some reading.
“I’m concerned about your inability to relate to others. You’re a healthy, attractive girl. There’s no reason that you shouldn’t be engaged in romantic relationships.”
He recommended a book titled A.D.D. and Romance.
I laughed about the session with friends. One friend told me to brush it off, that he had once been told to read a book titled Dare to Love, that I wasn’t the only one whose therapist had unintentionally labeled a loser.
I suppose the real reason that my therapist’s recommendation bothered me was because it wasn’t as though I didn’t want to feel a romantic connection with someone. I did. I do. It was that every time I had attempted to, either I would become disengaged, or worse, the person who I wanted didn’t want me. The latter was becoming increasingly more consistent. I was at a point at which I’d rejected the entire notion of there being a possibility that I could find someone with whom I could share that type of intimacy.
As of now, I’ve been a self-proclaimed celibate for six months. And at this point I think it suits me. I’m not ready to have casual sexual encounters, and I’m not sure if I ever really will again. But there’s something that continues to motivate me, to allow me to realize that my current thick-skinned demeanor will soften. And that thing is love. I have felt real love before, and I don’t doubt that I will again. I am lucky to have loved people who gave me the sense (however false) to value myself and expect others to do the same. Although those relationships didn’t work out, I still cherish them.
So for now, I’m open to love, but I’m not consciously waiting for it to surface. I believe it can and will happen with time, probably a lot of time.
So even though my psychiatrist is somewhere wearing socks and practicing the Kama Sutra among Nag Champa fumes and the Best of Enya, I’m OK.
#UPDATE I’m actually just gay
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