BY SANDE SNEAD

I admit it. I’m addicted to counseling. I enjoy analyzing my childhood to help figure out why I am who I am today. I like finding out things about myself that were right in front of me all along. I feel enlightened when I gain insight into the behavior of my significant other.

My former husband and I had three counselors over the course of our 15-year marriage. The absolute best was our last, but despite all we learned about ourselves and our relationship, our marriage could not be saved.

I look at therapy the way some people look at prayer and God. I know it’s there if I need it, but if everything is going OK I don’t think about it too much. So it had been a while since I had stretched out on that leather couch.

Then, I lost my car and my boyfriend all in the same weekend. Replacing the car was just a big headache. Replacing the man I’ve loved for nearly four years, however, has been a whole lot of heartache.

I had to get him out of my head and my heart. Our break-up occurred Thanksgiving week, so I had weeks of solo holiday weekends stretching out before me. When anyone in my family asked what I was doing, I replied, borrowing lines from Jim Carrey’s version of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, “Wallowing in self pity.” If they said, “What are you doing tomorrow night?” I’d say, “Let me check my shed-youl. Let’s see (as if consulting a calendar)…Ah yes, dinner with self. Can’t cancel that again.”

When the broken record of what went wrong in our relationship just wouldn’t stop playing itself over and over in my head, I knew it was time to go see someone who would say those magic words, “Tell me about how you fee-ee-ee-l.”

The thing about the end of a long-term, meaningful relationship is that you go through all of the stages of grief including sadness, anger and denial. I didn’t want to bring my family and friends down with me right through the holidays. And I sure didn’t want them to hear me rant about all the things he did wrong as the anger stage kicked in with the new year.

I wanted someone to talk to who wouldn’t judge me — or him. I also wanted to explore areas where I needed improvement, so I would be better equipped for my next relationship, even if it was with this same guy (obviously, I haven’t reached the acceptance stage yet).

After a few sessions of talking about my shortcomings in a relationship — I tend to suppress my feelings and emotions and not express myself — Dr. Michael Smith recommended the national bestselling book by Dr. Harriet Lerner, The Dance of Intimacy: A Woman’s Guide to Courageous Acts of Change in Key Relationships.
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While I am not one to typically enjoy self-help books, this one resonated with me. One thing I learned is that our reactions to another person’s differences is what leads us to exaggerated and stuck positions in relationships. Lerner writes: “Our positions become so rigid and polarized that we lose our ability to relate to both the competence and the incompetence in the other party and the competence and incompetence in the self. Instead we become overfocused on the incompetence of the other and underfocused on the incompetence of the self.”

What a concept. We get so hung up on the negative in the other person to the point that we can’t even see our own negative habits and traits. The worse he looks through my filter, the better I am through that same filter.

In addition to recommendations of helpful books to read and sometimes even homework, therapy can include personality and other types of tests that also help shed light on who you are. A good counselor will even go through these tests and help you understand why you are who you are.

One of the things I learned is that I tend to have male-dominant traits. My view of the world is less feeling and emotional than that of most women.

According to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test, I am an ENTJ  — extroverted and thinking, task-oriented, logical and objective – traits more typically associated with men. So while the men in my life tend to want to solve my problems, I’ve already solved them.

And then there are those Eureka moments, either in counseling or just riding in your car, where you start to figure some things out on your own.

While I am not a Ph.D., I came to the brilliant conclusion that each of us has a set-point of happiness. Just like I believe we all have a set-point for our weight. If you eat right and exercise, your weight will reach a plateau and it really will not budge from that point. I weigh the same at the doctor’s office (almost to the pound) every year of my physical and I don’t even own a bathroom scale. We all have ups and downs in our lives, but our own personal happiness level doesn’t really change much. I am a happy person. I always have been. So even though I don’t have mad, passionate love in my life right now, I am happy. And I’m no longer wallowing in self-pity.

Besides, my boyfriend and I will probably get together again soon.

This appeared in Richmond Magazine in 2009. And I am happy to report that I do have mad, passionate love in my life again.