thirteen
Out in the street, I looked up at our windows and saw my son’s sad face. He drew a heart in the air aimed at me, as if he thought it was his fault Sebastien and I had quarreled. His gesture almost made me cry. I smiled back up at him, and then I set off for a walk: I needed to calm down.
I was hoping I wouldn’t bump into any neighbors. I didn’t want anyone to see me like this. But that’s ridiculous, worrying about what other people think at a time like this. Still, I avoided looking any passersby in the eye; I was sure my distress was obvious in my face, and I didn’t want them to see. No witnesses to my depression, please.
I walked to a small square and called Claude.
“Claude? Camille here . . . Am I disturbing you?” I asked through my sniffles.
I didn’t have to tell him I was in trouble: he guessed that straightaway.
“It’s Sebastien; we’ve had a fight. I couldn’t take it anymore. It’s as if there’s a . . . a gulf between us.”
I told him everything, and it did me good to sense that he was listening so closely to my woes. What luxury to have such a receptive ear.
“He seems completely incapable of offering me anything I need.”
“And what do you need?” Claude shot back.
“I don’t know . . . I need him to pay attention to me, to be kind and thoughtful. But instead of that, it’s like having a robot in the apartment. He does nothing but moan and then hide behind his computer, in his own little world. I even get jealous of his virtual friends! While he’s online, everything around him could collapse and he wouldn’t notice! And in the meantime I have to be everywhere, looking after Adrien, his homework, cooking dinner. It’s not fair!”
“I understand, Camille . . .”
“On top of that, he’s forever telling me I don’t listen to him. But that’s not true. He’s the one who won’t listen! I can’t get a word in; he brings everything back to himself.”
I was pacing up and down the deserted square, my nerves still jangling.
“Ah yes, the ‘he’s-the-one-who’ game. That’s not good! In fact, that’s why you can’t hear each other: it’s like two deaf people talking. If you’re listening unwillingly it means you’re not listening at all. To really listen, you have to be able to identify with what the other person is experiencing, to have empathy. You can’t imagine how rare it is to find someone who truly knows how to listen. I often tell myself that whoever knows that will be the king of this world. Camille, remember that in an argument not everything is as it seems: you have to learn to read between the lines to uncover the real emotions. Behind a criticism there may be fear; behind aggression there could be sadness or an unhealed wound.”
As I listened to him, I drew my coat closer around me. I suddenly felt cold—all these swirling emotions . . .
“But it’s so hard to listen sympathetically. You should see how he looks at me when we’re arguing. I get the dreadful feeling that . . . that he doesn’t love me!”
“Mmm . . . That’s interesting. How about replacing that ‘he’ with ‘I’?”
I was too taken aback to say a word.
“Yes, you heard me correctly.”
“I . . . You mean I don’t love myself?”
“Yes, that’s it, Camille. You tend to interpret your partner’s behavior through the lens of your own negative thoughts. And that distorts everything. Right now you don’t love yourself very much, because you’ve got it into your head that you are less pretty with those few extra pounds and your first little wrinkles. You unconsciously project onto your husband your fear that you are no longer someone to be loved. And if you carry on like that, it’ll become a self-fulfilling prophecy! You’ll have confirmed your worst-case scenario: you’re no longer desirable, and so he doesn’t love you anymore.”
His words slowly seeped into my mind, but the soothing effect they had was cut short by the arrival of two men in the park. They had hoods pulled up over their heads, and warily, I watched them approach. I had been so desperate to hear what Claude had to say that it had not occurred to me it might be unwise to hang around at night in this deserted square. I quickly made my way toward the exit, trying not to give the impression I was running away. All of a sudden I felt a hand on my shoulder. I cried out and swiveled to break free of his grasp. One of the two men leaned toward me. He was young and reeked of weed.
“You’ve dropped something,” he said, holding out the scarf I usually tie round the strap of my bag.
“Ah . . . thanks so much,” I stammered, almost snatching it from him. Then I rushed away.
At the other end of the line, Claude was getting worried.
“Hello, Camille? Hello, are you still there?”
Swiftly back on the well-lit streets of my own neighborhood, I waited for my heart rate to subside before I answered him.
“I’m sorry, Claude, just a little . . . incident. What were you saying?”
In order to illustrate what was going on when we argued, he outlined the principle of the “dramatic triangle.” He explained how, in this negative scenario, each person in a relationship could successively play the role of victim, persecutor, and savior.
“And the problem is that there can never be any positive resolution, unless you quit the game altogether. In your case, here’s what happens: he is the persecutor, because he moans the whole time; you’re the savior when you offer to sweep up the crumbs, but then the victim when you complain he doesn’t help you. Next, you become the persecutor by criticizing him for his behavior, and it’s his turn to be the victim when he complains what a frightful day he’s had, and so on. Each of you swaps roles, unable to find any other way out than the inevitable full-blown argument! But there are ways of getting out of the triangle . . .”
“What are they? Quick, tell me!”
“First of all, you need to recognize what’s going on in order to put a stop to the game and wait for a calmer moment when you can renew the dialogue. Second, clearly identify your needs so that you can ask your partner directly and he can see without a decoder what it is you want. If it’s legitimate and reasonable, there’s no reason he shouldn’t agree.”
“That’s interesting . . .”
I pressed the mobile to my ear, trying to ignore the fact that my fingertips were freezing. I changed hands and thrust the free one as deep as I could into my coat pocket.
“You’ll also have to set your limits and tell everyone around you what they are,” Claude went on. “You’re a people pleaser: that means you’re always trying to satisfy the other person’s wishes and you end up sacrificing your own. You’re full of empathy—and of course it’s a good thing to be concerned about someone else’s well-being. But don’t confuse ‘dry empathy’ with ‘wet empathy.’ In the latter, you take on board the other person’s drama; you absorb their negative emotions and end up in a bad way yourself. Dry empathy, on the other hand, means you manage to hear and share the problems of those around you but you don’t let yourself get contaminated by their dark thoughts. You put up a protective shield that stops you getting dragged down—which is very useful! Not to mention the fact that eventually, thanks to feeling that you have to be a ‘good egg’ all the time, you end up blowing a fuse. That’s what happened tonight, wasn’t it?”
I agreed.
“Don’t worry. You simply have to make adjustments. Stop being too nice; simply be true to your emotions. And another important thing: learn to ‘steam off stamps’ as you go along, rather than exploding like a pressure cooker, the way you did just now.”
“Steam off stamps? What does that mean? You want me to write to him?”
“No, not at all! Steaming off stamps is an expression that means you should show what you’re feeling as you go along. You need to tell your husband what’s upsetting you when it happens.”
“OK . . .”
“If you tell him nicely, there’s no reason for him not to listen. Then in the future, when you sense that things are coming to a boil, you can agree with him on a ‘red card.’”
“A red card?”
“Yes. You two need to find a signal to warn the other there’s a danger of things turning into an argument. My wife and I do that, and it works wonderfully. It’s like in a car when a red light comes on: you know there’s danger ahead. And if you’re both aware of it, then you can avoid an escalation into aggression.”
A ping. Another call on my mobile. It must be Sebastien. Should I pick up or not? Not immediately. I sent a text:
I’m on a call.
“Camille, are you still there? I heard a ping.”
“Yes, yes, it was another call. It’s not urgent. I’ll ring back.”
“Was it your husband?”
“Yes, but please, go on. This is such good stuff.”
“OK, Camille. But I’ll be quick: you need to get home, and I have a good book waiting for me by my fire.”
I hadn’t realized I had kept him on the phone for so long. I felt embarrassed.
“One last thing that’s important, Camille: you have to learn to criticize without being aggressive. That means you shouldn’t start your sentences with those ‘you’ accusations. They’re fatal. I call them ‘reproach machine guns’: they’re bound to make the other person blow a fuse. What you need to do is move your FEET.”
“What’s this got to do with footwork?”
“They’re initials: F, you remind him of the Facts that have upset you. E, you express your Emotions, what you felt at the time. E, you Encourage him, and T, you call a Truce. That way, it’s a win-win situation for both of you. If we take your argument tonight, it would mean something like: ‘When you hinted that I worked less than you (the Fact), I was upset because I felt you didn’t value me (the Emotion), when I really need you to support and feel proud of me, just as no doubt you do. I think we should give each other tokens of our appreciation more often so that we both feel valued for the contribution we make to the family (the Encouragement that’s constructive for both sides). That should help put a stop to difficulties and misunderstandings (the Truce). What do you think?”
“Not bad. But people don’t really behave like that.”
“What’s more important? Behaving naturally or avoiding a hideous fight?”
I smiled to myself.
“OK, Claude, I get the idea. But how am I going to sort things out right now? When I left him, he was in a rage. He even mentioned divorce!”
“Bah, that was just his anger talking . . . I’m sure that if you offer him the hand of reconciliation he won’t refuse it. To take a step toward the other person seems so simple, and yet so few people do it. That’s why there are so many divorces. It’s such a shame! All that wasted love when with a little effort those relationships could be so successful. Although of course, in our hyperconsumerist society, we find it easier to throw things away than to repair them. ‘Great joys come from heaven, little joys from effort,’ as that Chinese proverb says.”
“Oh, Claude, sometimes I get so sad. I feel as though the glass is always half empty.”
“There you go again. Your mind keeps sending you negative images. But remember, you can decide it’s got to change!”
“How do I do that?”
“For a start, continue to do what we’ve been doing up to now: feeling good about yourself, taking care of yourself, recentering yourself on your good qualities and attributes, rediscovering your needs and core values. In other words, flourishing from within. You shouldn’t make your husband feel he is the only one responsible for your happiness. He should be more like the cherry on the cake in your life.”
I got a weird mental image of Sebastien’s head stuck on top of a huge cake oozing cream. Scary.
“You think I expect too much of him?”
“It’s not for me to answer that question. I’m simply saying that you need to know how to live at a proper distance. It’s like an elastic band: if it’s too tight, it’s restrictive; if it’s too loose, everything falls apart. You need it to have the right tension. But we also need to untangle all the knots tying us to the past.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning in your case that you need to understand how the relationships you had as a child continue to influence your life today.”
“I don’t see how something that happened in the past can influence my life now.”
“Oh, but you can’t imagine how much it does! Didn’t you tell me that your father left your mother before you were two?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“It’s possible that certain situations in your present life reawaken those wounds and—despite yourself—unleash an emotional reaction out of all proportion to what’s caused it. That’s what I mean by ‘elastic bands.’ Tonight, unconsciously, you stretched things so far that your partner was driven to say that you would end up divorcing. Without being aware of it, you have reinforced an old negative pattern, one that terrified you as a child: being abandoned by the man you love.”
“But that’s terrible! I honestly didn’t realize . . .”
By now I was completely frozen, and so I went into a bar that was still open and ordered a hot chocolate. My mobile was warm in my hands: I had been talking to Claude for a good half hour, and he was still coaching with the same enthusiasm as always. He must have lived through all this himself at some point, surely: it came out so naturally. And I didn’t want to miss a word of it.
“Becoming aware is an excellent first step to cutting those ties to the past. After that, by continuing to work on yourself and by embracing positive change you’ll be able to banish those old demons once and for all. You’re no longer the helpless little girl you were when your father walked out. You’re a responsible, autonomous adult, able to face up to whatever life throws at you. Even so, it’s important to reassure that part of you that is frightened and that suffered in the past. If you do, you’ll become reconciled to that important piece of yourself.”
“So how do you reassure the little girl inside you?” I asked, blowing on my steaming hot chocolate.
“You sit down quietly in a corner and talk to her gently, the way you do with your own child. You can tell her you love her, that you’ll always be there, that she can rely on you . . . But to get over that childhood wound completely, you’ll have to go through the forgiveness stage.”
“Which is?”
“You’ll have to forgive your father.”
I was so stunned I didn’t know what to say.
Claude must have sensed my difficulty, because he went on, trying to soften the blow. “You can do that when the moment comes, when you’re ready for it. For now, concentrate on your relationship with your husband: make it work, give more!”
“Doesn’t that take us back to square one? Why do I always have to be the one to make an effort? Why not him?”
“Because your positive input into the relationship will reap rich rewards. Doing good to others is enlightened self-interest, according to Aristotle. Besides, don’t forget that, for now, you are ahead of him in terms of personal development. So you have to show him the way. Maybe it’s a fact, also, that it comes more naturally to you to take the initiative? You’ll know instinctively how to strike the spark to rekindle the fire . . . Don’t you agree it’s better to stop fighting over ‘who did what’? To stop trying to make out which one of the two of you is more deserving?”
Yes, of course. He was right. A hundred times over.
“Start from the principle that the other person is trying to give as much as he can at any given moment in a relationship. Then concentrate on what he is bringing that is positive, rather than focusing on what disappoints you because it doesn’t completely live up to your expectations. You reap what you sow: that old adage makes sense. If you sow criticism, you reap resentment and disillusionment. Sow love and appreciation, and you’ll reap tenderness and gratitude.”
“Mmm . . . I can see that, but what drives me mad is how lukewarm he is. Our love life is so . . . so uninspiring now! No passion or . . . or romantic gestures. I miss those . . .”
“Well, you have to find a middle way there too: no unattainable fantasies, but no lowering of your sights either. You’re right to want to improve your love life—so long as you don’t have unrealistic expectations. You have to respect and accept your partner’s basic character and not expect from him things he can’t give you. Love is like a plant that demands lots of care and grows best when it’s watered. Appreciate your husband for everything he does well, show him how grateful you are, demonstrate your admiration. He’ll flourish and will probably be much more receptive to your advances. So, smiles, support, tenderness: those are your three watchwords.”
Another ping.
“That’s Sebastien again.”
“All right, answer him, Camille—what are you waiting for?”
“Claude?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you.”
SEBASTIEN AND I EXCHANGED a few words, enough to relieve the tension. And to add a touch of humor to our reconciliation, when I got home I waved a white handkerchief in the doorway. Peace was sealed with a kiss.
Adrien took advantage to rush out of his hiding place and hug us.
“So you’re not going to get a divorce?” he asked anxiously.
Sebastien and I searched each other’s faces, looking for reassurance. And in his eyes I saw . . . yes . . . a glimmer of affection that comforted me.
“Of course not,” I told Adrien, ruffling his mop of hair.
“Hey, Mom!” he protested, quickly smoothing his locks.
For some months now, he had been very concerned about his “look.” Woe betide anyone touching his carefully gelled hairstyle! Then, quick to take advantage of the general air of reconciliation, the cunning little guy returned to the attack: “Now that I’ve finished all my homework, could I have some time on my tablet, Mommy?” looking up at me with his huge doe eyes.
I had no idea what profession he would end up in, but I wasn’t too worried about him. He had a real talent for making people do what he wanted them to. It was impossible to be cross with him for long, or to resist his charm offensive . . .
As soon as Adrien was busy with his tablet like a veteran gamer, I turned my attention to Sebastien. I was still upset about the argument, so I was struggling to be affectionate. And while he poured us the remains of a bottle of white, I realized how much work we were going to have to do to restore our love life to its former glory. Rebuilding Shangri-La was a long way off!
Fortunately, when it came to ways and means, it seemed Claude was aware of quite a few.