My client's husband has a crush on me
And I am going to use it.
You know the look. Male therapist or female, you have caught a client’s partner staring at you like cake. You went cold, dropped the eye contact, cooled your voice, crossed your legs the other way. You stayed professional. You were polite to a man disrespecting your client while she sat next to him.
I do the opposite. Here’s an example, one of many.
My client came to me for her lethargic mornings. Last time I asked her husband Jerry to join us in a session, and he had been doing the look from the moment he sat down. On the way out, with both of them at the door, I said it out loud.
Jerry. One thing before you go. If you looked at your wife the way men look at a woman they are afraid to lose, you would be the luckiest husband you know, and you would have stories your friends could not match.
If you wonder how I came up with this response
After some years as a Cognitive Behavior therapist, I decided to take a training program in Applied Strategic Therapy, and that changed how I work with clients. I no longer follow strict protocols or get frustrated when there’s a setback.
If you’re new to these ideas, read these:
- Book: Uncommon Therapy
- Book: Strategic Therapy in a Nutshell
- Article: Paradox and Symptom Prescription
- Tool (free): Mapping a Repetitive Conflict Cycle
He went red and his wife laughed once and they left together.
Two weeks later she came in alone and told me Jerry had bought her flowers delivered to her workplace for no reason, booked them a tango class, and started paying attention to her body in bed instead of his own.
The energy that was about to embarrass Jerry in front of his wife is the same energy that bought her flowers.
When you go cold, that energy stays pointed at you. Jerry goes home with it, fantasizing about you, scheming about how he would tell his friends he slept with his wife’s therapist. He had zero chances with me. That usually does not matter when a man decides the story he wants to tell himself is more real than the one he is living.
The cold treatment is a gesture you do for the husband, on the wife’s expense. It only challenges him to want you more.
So use the sentence. One forward line, said in front of her, on the way out, where Jerry cannot pretend he did not hear it and his wife cannot pretend she did not see him take it. That is what strategic therapy gives you that the textbooks do not. I fixed a marriage I was not hired to fix, with one sentence, at the door.
Keep being professional the way you were trained, and keep sending these men home with the wrong woman in their head. Or say the sentence and let your client go home with the husband who books the tango class.
Maya
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Thanks for reading my mind. I hope you enjoyed it and got inspired to speak your truth as well. Learn more about me.