“Yes,” he said, quietly. “That’s accurate.”
“Then the question is whether the preference is going to continue to create problems, or whether we’re going to deal with it.”
“I want to deal with it,” he said.
“Wanting to deal with it and dealing with it are different things. I’m not going to manage your family’s understanding of my career for you. That stops now. If someone asks how things are going, you tell them accurately. If someone makes an assumption, you correct it on the spot, not eighteen months later.”
“Agreed.”
“And I think we should talk to someone. A professional. Because I don’t want to keep having these conversations in circles and I think we are going to keep having them in circles without help.”
He agreed to this too. It was the first agreement he made that cost him something real to make, because Daniel’s reluctance to discuss private things outside the marriage is a significant one. That he agreed without negotiating told me something.
## The Counselor
We found a marriage counselor named Dr. Carol Watts. She is fifty-five, practical, slightly sardonic in a way that Daniel found initially off-putting and then came to appreciate. She does not do what I privately think of as the validation loop, where you go around the room and everyone’s feelings are named and affirmed and you leave having felt heard but having made no actual decisions. Dr. Watts makes decisions happen.
In our second session she asked Daniel to explain why he had chosen the story he told his family.