We sat across from each other in his small, cozy office as we had done each week for the past month. Him next to his desk, me on the small loveseat with a wet tissue curled into my palm. He flexed his arm to rest against his head, and my eyes traced the outline of his bicep. I spoke even as my attention was more drawn to the tattoos partially hidden beneath his collared short sleeve. An urge to be held by more than just his words warred for my attention. I watched his Adam’s apple when he swallowed and had to look away from his dark eyes, the way he gave me his full attention. I knew the thoughts I was having were inappropriate, but my brain was quick to supply them anyway. Shame filled the alternating moments of imaginary smut as my mind drifted far from our serious discussion. I wondered if he noticed the flush in my cheeks as I hurried out the door when our time came to a close.
I had started therapy two weeks after my brother’s death. Chosen this stocky guy with his scruffy beard and tattoos lining his arms because his profile mentioned work in addiction and recovery. I didn’t have an addiction, but addiction had followed me all my life. It led my older brother to incarceration, and my youngest brother to his grave at 23. I was desperate for my own kind of recovery.
His approach was warm. Attentive. It cracked me open. I was a deluge of tears in that office, like crossing the threshold into his space shed me of society’s expectations to hold it together.
Several sessions in, I was talking about my older brother’s lifelong addiction and the juxtaposition of my younger brother’s death. He sat quietly, rubbing his head slightly and shaking his foot, breaking eye contact. I didn’t mind the silence. I knew that while he didn’t say much in our sessions, his observations were often salient. His eyes met mine, and his chest rose. He inhaled a deep breath before saying, “My friend, you and I are walking the same path.” He shook his head almost imperceptibly as he disclosed a piece of his life to me. “My little sister died of an overdose. My older sister was the one who struggled for years. The one I thought would die. I never thought it would be my little sister.”
We were both quiet. The air shifted as the imaginary line between professional and personal blurred ever so slightly. Our shared life experience flooded me with a sense of connection, so strong a part of me wished I could cross the room and curl into his lap. To touch someone who understood.
I had never met anyone with a life that so closely mirrored my own. With not one sibling in addiction, but two. Who understood the chaos and the love. The agony of burying your younger sibling while your older sibling still struggled.
It was our next session when I began noticing his body. His muscles. When my heart galloped with erotic visions. I knew it was wrong.
I sat in my car, silently berating myself, trying to understand why I felt such a physical pull to him. I was happily married. Many years earlier, I had similar feelings for a male friend who empathically listened to my anguish after my mom died. I was in my 20s when she dropped dead of a heart attack in her mid-40s. I spent hours talking to this friend, working through my grief while he quietly affirmed my pain. The more he listened, the more I would linger in his hugs, the more my thoughts would swirl with an array of indecent things I wished he would do to me. I was married then, too.
I tilted my head back against the headrest and wondered. Why am I like this? Am I defective? I always believed I was a good person, but I couldn’t reconcile this pattern of deviant thoughts with an upstanding moral character. In my 20s, I blamed it on my age, my immaturity, and my struggling marriage. Those excuses no longer stood. I was older and wiser, a stable adult, and most importantly, my marriage had been revitalized. And yet, here I was, with a body willing to give itself over to a man in exchange for emotional security.
I was older and wiser, a stable adult, and most importantly, my marriage had been revitalized. And yet, here I was, with a body willing to give itself over to a man in exchange for emotional security.
For several tumultuous years after my mother’s death, my husband and I tried to unearth why I felt so disconnected from him. Slowly, we made progress despite not having a clear understanding of why my grief caused such a fissure between us. We began hiking, allowing space for both silence and togetherness. We learned how to talk to each other in new ways while trudging through the wilderness for hours at a time. We grew toward each other rather than away. It was the reason we survived my brother’s death.
Knowing all we had been through only intensified my internal struggle. If things were so good, why did I get the hots for my therapist?
Sitting in my car, something clicked. I realized something about myself. The feeling of being heard, being understood, and validated when I was at the very brink of my emotional capacity, triggered physical desire. Mind and body — nurturing one gave rise to the other.
It turns out, being turned on by other men was a gift. To myself and to my marriage. It gave us words. Actions. A new aphrodisiac.
It was a realization that validation was not only helpful emotionally, but it was also sexy. More than flowers or a candlelit dinner, I needed my husband to really listen and acknowledge my experience without trying to fix it. Just as my therapist had, and my friend before that. Armed with this insight into my body and psyche, we focused on nurturing our emotional connection. While we haven’t always gotten it right, I try to be more forthcoming with my thoughts and feelings; he tries to meet me where I am, even when it is a dark place.
I stopped seeing the therapist soon after I began fantasizing about him. I still think about the ways our lives paralleled each other, and the power of shared experiences. Years later, the lesson I discovered sitting in my car that day stays with me too, as a personal insight and a tip our marriage tries to incorporate. Authentic listening can sometimes be a straight line to the bedroom.
Amanda Kernahan has been published in Slate, Dorothy Parker’s Ashes and other literary journals. She is working on a memoir about processing her grief through hiking. Find her on Instagram.
All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.
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