In twice-weekly sessions with a psychotherapist, I learned the suppressed sadness was my past catching up to me, and the sooner I let the emotion out, the better I would feel. Instead I’d felt depressed, unable to eat, sleep or laugh. Independence, finally! No one controlling my every move, monitoring my religiosity. I’d recently left home, which I’d assumed would bring elation. I’d only seen a shrink once before – a decade earlier. I wasn’t really a lifer patient: I saw therapy as something you did to get help with a specific problem, like hiring an SAT tutor before the exam or a physical trainer before your wedding. (Which is probably all I really felt for Brian.) That didn’t mean I’d sleep with my superior. I was still trying to figure out casual encounters – in my off periods with Brian – how you didn’t have to be in love to be in lust. My therapist and I rarely talked about sex. “I never had any sexual connection to my boss,” I insisted, mortified. But no matter how secular I might ultimately become, an adulterer is not the kind of woman I wanted to be. Now I knew: he thought my real stories were so boring that he’d embellished my life, made me over in his mind into someone else, someone more enticing. Over the past year, I’d often wondered what my shrink thought of me – if I was entertaining, if he liked me. Apparently he believed I felt bad about leaving my job not because I was letting someone down, but because all my feelings for my boss were romantic – or worse, tawdry. Okay, he wasn’t mixing me up with someone else. “The one you admired so much, the one who moved you here from New York?” X shifted out of his nonchalant stance in the comfy leather chair across from me and leaned forward.

Perhaps my doctor was confusing me with another patient? “Do you even know who I’m talking about?” I demanded.ĭr. So, no, I wasn’t having an affair with my boss…or with anyone, for that matter. I started breaking a few other Jewish laws to boot.)īesides, as a feminist, I’d never steal another woman’s husband. (I’d been waiting for my wedding night, but when that failed to materialize, I took matters into my own hands, literally. Growing up in the Orthodox Jewish community, I hadn’t slept with many men, period. I had no feelings for my boss – he was married. “Yeah, the one with whom you had an affair.” “Wait, what?” I shot straight up in my chair. “Is this the guy that you’re sleeping with?” the doctor said. A brilliant man who’d brought me from New York, my supervisor had counted on me to remake the company. “I feel like I’d be abandoning my boss,” I said, the guilt of potentially leaving weighing on me like a wet awning. One typically sunny Thursday (so not conducive to therapy!), I had a breakthrough. Why did I keep getting back together with my boyfriend Brian if I didn’t love him? Why did I feel so guilty wanting to leave my workplace – after all, I’d been a manager at the company for four years! My therapist showed me I had options – to start dating others, to look for a different job – options a “stuck” person doesn’t realize she has. X and I spent the better part of a year questioning my life choices: He was just a person to talk to and help me figure things out. He didn’t ascribe to one particular psychological discipline, or think there was any magical solution to problems. I was living in Los Angeles and found a psychiatrist who was warm, laid-back, and open.

I couldn’t quite believe how my life was turning out – I was neither the successful career woman I aspired to be, nor the young, fecund housewife my former New York Orthodox Jewish community had wanted me to become. At 35, I felt stuck: I was dating a guy I didn’t love and mired in a job I was starting to hate.

I think my brain just committed