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Both women were quiet again. “It’s a bit erratic ever since the pandemic,” Rhea admitted.
Dr. Seville allowed a mild silence to overtake her office. A clock ticked on the wall behind her, but it was the unrelenting sunlight beaming through one of the vertical windows that annoyed Rhea the most. She had worn one of her linen shirts that day, but the black jeans were oppressive against her skin, and sweat gathered beneath her sports bra. She was suddenly self-conscious of her hair – including the fuzz on her upper lip.No wonder she pointedly asked me my pronouns when we got here.Rhea didn’t recall Paige being asked hers.
“Do you two feel that’s when you started to notice a shift in your relationship?” the therapist gently asked. “During the pandemic?”
“I guess…” Paige muttered.
“It was a strange time,” Rhea concurred.
“You would be far from the first to come into this office and mention it,” Dr. Seville continued. “Some couples found renewed fervor in their marriages when they suddenly had all the time in the world to be together. Others had to face anxiety, strife, and stress in very close quarters with little room to breathe. And others found a new honeymoon period that quickly ended once things were back to ‘business as usual.’ Does any of this sound applicable to your marriage?”
The thing about Dr. Seville was that she said it so softly, so empathetically that Rhea couldn’t take offense.Yes, all of that makes sense.Couples faced things differently, let alone a global pandemic that completely upended their routines. Why shouldn’t she and Paige be the same way?Besides, we’ve been together for so long. It was coming for us at some time, right?The make-or-break point. Thedo we stay together because of sunk cost fallacy, address all of our issues, or… break up?
Rhea hated the thought. That’s why she was here – to tackle their challenges head-on.
“I was really anxious during lockdown,” Paige admitted. “I had to figure out my business, which is very ‘in-person’ because you have to be able to check someone’s form immediately. Despite being celebrities, a lot of my clients don’t have the kind of gym at home that I can provide at my business. When it wasn’t working, I pivoted to doing a YouTube channel to make money from ads and views.”
“Did pretty stellar,” Rhea said. “She was getting sponsorship offers before she went back to work in person.”
“How did you take the pandemic, Rhea?”
She wasn’t expecting to be put on the spot so soon again. “I was… well, I’m a writer. I have a home office. So I made upgrades to my office with the stimulus check… I mean, most of my work could be done online. I was already conducting a lot of my work meetings over the phone or the internet.”
“Do you think it changed your marriage in any meaningful, long-term way? Such as in the responsibilities department? Or in the bedroom?”
Rhea blushed. Paige cleared her throat.
“We actually did it a lot those first few months,” Paige said. “It was like being on our honeymoon again. Although…”
“Yes, Paige?”
“I think for me it was the anxiety. I thought if I had more sex, it would distract me from feeling like everything I worked for in my career was crumbling.”
“Did it work the way you anticipated?”
“Yes.” Paige rethought that. “No. I don’t know.”
Dr. Seville pivoted the conversation again. “It sounds like things have chilled a bit since lockdown lifted. How often are you two intimate with each other?”
Rhea felt like a target was on her forehead, and Dr. Seville pulled a BB gun out of her belt.I am the last person who openly talks about these things…Her friends could talk about sex and their love lives for hours. Rhea, however, had grown up in a house where that simply wasn’t brought up. Her mother had lived long enough to give Rhea “the talk,” but it hadn’t amounted to more than how periods worked, how babies were formed, and “once you have a boy you’re dating, we’ll talk about it more.” Except that day never came, because Rhea’s mother died, and Danny’s response to all sex talk was,“You’re supposed to learn that at school, right?”Not that Rhea ever,everwanted to hear her father say the word “sex.”
Paige, however, did not have such inhibitions.
“What do you mean by intimacy? Is that a euphemism for sex?”
The doctor nodded. “If you’d like.”
“Oh, we… ah…” Paige cleared her throat. “Maybe about once every…”
She left everyone hanging. Mostly Dr. Seville, because Rhea knew the answer.
“About once a month,” Rhea said. “On average. So sometimes more, sometimes way less.”
“I see.” If Dr. Seville judged them at all for that, she did not let on. Rhea supposed that was a therapist’s professionalism. “Are you two happy with that for now? Or would you like to see that frequency increase?”
“We’re intimate in other ways,” Rhea jumped in. “We cuddle on the couch a lot. We flirt. We kiss. We go on dates…”
Paige shook her head. “She’s talking about the horizontal tango, Ray,” she said. “Not the vertical tango in front of the TV when Carlos Gardel is on.”
