A Jerry Springerish Nightmare

Being a sexual healer is fraught with problems that spring from misunderstandings about what we do. We walk a balance between discretion and truth telling, as we clear the culturally installed shame of being ‘out there,’ working in a realm that holds many layers of distress and confusion. We are involved in an occupation in twilight, being courageous, and at the same time, as careful as possible. Here’s a true story to illustrate the sort of thing that can, and does happen to those of us in this most exacting field of healing.



The players:
D-The Client
R- The Fiancée
N- The Fiancée’s Sister

A new client arrived at 3 on a Friday afternoon, for a two-hour session. There’s an obvious cloud of despondency and despair around him, so I inquire about what might be up. D- starts into a saga of an on-and-off six-year loveship, a recent engagement, and much confusion about his ability to make a commitment of marriage with this woman. In other words, he was having serious doubts.

About 20 minutes into our conversation, there is a knock at the door. I’m thinking it’s the maintenance man, so I foolishly swing the door wide to find two blonde and obviously angry women. The vibes emanating from them were pretty poisonous.

The older one, who was hanging back, begins to pierce me with the nastiest look I believe I’ve ever received from anyone and stayed conscious to tell about. The other one advances as if she’s coming through my door, diverts to the right at the last minute and starts working herself up, wildly cursing and screaming. “You lying m…..f…..,” she starts. “Whoa,” I say, “I’m going to have to ask you to leave. I’m sorry. You have to leave.” And I shut the door.

The rest of my time with D- was spent in conversation about making the relationship work, or taking care of himself if it collapses. He was embarrassed by the intrusion and guessed that R- must have gotten into his e-mails, read the letter I sent him, and followed the directions to my place.

When he leaves, I go to the grocery store. On my way home, my cell rings and it is N-, owner of the killer-nasty glare, who I learn is the sister of R-, the fiancée. The conversation starts with her demanding to know what I do, and what D- said and why he was in my apartment. I explained confidentiality and suggested she read my website. We talked for a while and I felt she gained some understanding that I was trying to help, not hurt. She softened and eventually apologized for the intrusion. I asked her to have R- call me.

And she did call. She started into what a liar and cheat D- is and I gently suggested that if she wanted to work on her relationship she could come to see me in a session, preferably with him. Is it really high ethics to get into someone’s e-mail and cause a scene at the home of a total stranger? There seemed to be breaches of trust on both sides. She apologized, too, more than seemed necessary to me, and we hung up.

Once home, I get a call from D-. He is very sincere with an apology as well, saying R- won’t speak to him and he thinks this is the end of the relationship. As we are finishing the conversation, he says, “Oh, by the way, just to give you a ‘heads-up,’ R- went to the office of your apartment complex and told them you were selling sexual services from your apartment.”

His statement hit me like a ton of bricks. I was completely overtaken with fear. My legs were trembling and I had to sit down. A part of me realized I was overreacting, but I went straight from “I’ll be evicted.” to “I’ll be homeless again.” It felt like such a deep betrayal and a threat that struck at my core, at survival level. I was being triggered around the previous trauma of being without a home. I sat and shook and cried for a while and finally got it together enough to call R- and leave her a message. (Of course, she wouldn’t answer a call from me, knowing, I’m sure, that I had found out what she’d done.)

I told her in my message that I viewed all women as my sisters and her actions were very hurtful and sadly unkind. I let her know that I had just lost my blood sister to cancer and that this felt like a huge betrayal. She had known nothing about who I am or what I do when she did this damaging act. I was unfortunately in the middle of a bad scene, and she wanted to punish someone, so she struck out at me. I let her know that if there were financial repercussions from what she’d done, she’d be hearing from my lawyer. I spent the rest of the evening crying, heart aching, fear running rampant through me.

By the next Thursday, I’d decided R- had lied to D- about going to the office here, as nothing further had been done. Then there was a knock at the door and a 'notice of violation of the terms in the lease.' I went in the next day to meet with the manager and calmly explained myself. It has blown over. And I can see how I was served in releasing a tremendous amount of survival level fear.

This is an example of just one of the many challenges those of us in this field have to face, every day.