sometimes i genuinely feel like different (sometimes equally valid) parts of my life are pulling me in different directions. they each appeal to me with some sorta reel-you-in typa maneuver. ok, i'm attributing that to them, i'm not saying they purposefully bring that on.

so, there's therapy with veronica where at times i feel like she is still too much in a honeymoon period with me, b/c she doesn't see my flaws. i suppose i think to myself sometimes that she should see some other, the "rest of me" i feel she maybe didn't catch on to while i was inadvertently on my best behavior.

the thing about therapy... they don't want to create hopeless or despondent patients, b/c then the success rate (and their very impetus for pursuing such a profession) will decline, and that will not be good for society on the whole, let alone the profession they're involved in. when you stop and analyze things like medicine, psychology, etc., ... their hardest (and, at times, most rewarding) patients are the ones who are floating right on that line between committing to therapy and being conditionally available, sometimes not realizing the damage to their progress that frequent and continual absences are bound to create.

that said, there is, just like in teaching, a certain imperative to connect with the dopaminergic (reward-seeking) portion of the brain in obtaining a certain (mandatory? ??) propensity toward achieving success. usually a good route to pursue, especially with patients who are overly educated but with limited expertise pertaining to advancing efficacy of their professional & interpersonal skills (sometimes colloquially refered to as "social retards").

it's hard. i trust my wife. i trust her to look out for my well-being, and to protect me from things she sees me about to step into that we both know would be unpleasant or regretful for me. and i like to believe we would both say the exact same thing. but it's also important to gain outside perspectives. in the context in which my wife and i see a therapist together, i feel like there are certain facets of each of us that are isolated (and called to be acknowledged by the person in question) that we both identify from our perspectives and then find a way to make each other feel okay about or, else, in a feisty situation, to give sarcastic, tension-alleviating jokes that hopefully subdue said bringing-ups, and anyhow, i guess i'm just saying there are certain limitations there.

this is why i think she needs her own therapist and i need my own therapist. in addition to our couples therapist. i got a space cadet tangent thinking about a bunch of other stuff just then. but i'll probably come back and edit this to remove serious terrible mistakes in logic, or losing my train of thought derailments, and all those thingsish.