He looked up. “You think?”
“I think we should talk to someone. A counselor. Not because we’re in crisis, but because I want us to be better at the conversation before the next hard thing arrives, not after.”
He nodded. “Okay. Yeah. I think that’s right.”
We found Martin Cole through our insurance provider’s network, which is the least dramatic origin story for a couples counselor but the accurate one. He had a Wednesday evening slot. We took it.
Martin Cole and the Work of It
Martin Cole was fifty-four and methodical in a way that was not unkind. He did not deliver pronouncements or issue grades on our behavior. He asked questions and then asked what we thought the questions were getting at.
The first session was mostly context: who we were, what had happened, what we each thought was the real issue. Daniel said the real issue was that he’d avoided a conversation he should have had. I said the real issue was that we hadn’t built a shared habit of making hard decisions together, and the Patricia situation had exposed it.
Martin said: “Both of those can be true.”
He asked Daniel what made it hard to tell his mother directly that the stay needed to end.
Daniel said: “I didn’t want her to feel unwanted.”
Martin said: “And what happened instead?”
Daniel was quiet. Then: “Maya felt unwanted in her own house.”
Martin didn’t pile on. He just let the sentence sit.
He asked me what I was most afraid of when I decided not to push further in the Sunday night dish conversation.