[balls rolling]
[Will VO] [whispering] Oh, that is so weird.
[balls rolling]
[whispering] That's easy enough.
[balls rolling]
Bingo.
It looks exactly like it did when you picked it up.
Yeah, that's how you end.
theme music
[Will VO] I'll start this week.
So she keeps saying that I'm not trying,
so I'd like to know what she means by that.
[chuckles]
Wait, but I thought you're starting.
Okay, fair enough. [laughs]
[Orna] That's starting by immediately passing the ball.
Well, like, it's been a constant argument.
But what-- for you, I mean, considering...
what we've talked about so far--
-[Will] Mm-hm. -What is "trying?"
What is the work you're doing?
Trying to be more appreciative?
[Orna] Mm-hm.
I feel like I still haven't found a way to...
I guess convey my appreciation in a way that
resonates with her.
[Orna] Mm-hm.
So in a way, you're describing the experience that you cannot
reach Ping -- that whatever you're doing is not reaching.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, she tells me so. [chuckles]
[Orna] Right, but I'm just staying with you.
-Yeah. -It's like when you're...
encased in this way where you feel like whatever you're doing
is not gonna make a difference...
[Will] Mm.
[Orna] You're creating a certain kind of forcefield
around you...
Mm-hm.
[Orna] That you've already given up...
-Mm-hm. -[Orna] That you've retreated...
Mm-hm.
And it's a very powerful forcefield.
Yeah, I mean, I just-- [sighs] I get to that point where I feel
like I've tried everything and I just don't know what else to do.
Mm-hm.
[Will] So, like, I feel like I'm listening more,
and I feel like I'm retreating less.
Are you noticing any of that?
I'm noticing that he's making, uh...
a lot more effort in us spending time together,
I'm noticing that he--
That's...major.
Yeah, it's major, but it comes with its conditions,
you know?
I mean, we were at a dinner at a really romantic place a couple
of nights ago, and...
I was looking at him and I was trying to engage him in just...
not just conversation, but just being present,
and I feel like that's always a struggle with him;
he can't be present with me.
Everything has gotta be just...
He's distracted all the time, and then he looks at me,
and he gives me these comical winks, like...
in the middle of dinner!
I'm like, "I'm trying to look at you!
Why do you wink at me like that?"
He's like, "What, I can't give you a wink?!"
So you're trying to make contact,
and you feel like Will is not present.
I feel like he's not present, and--
-[Orna] Okay. -Yeah.
[Orna] Pause.
Will, say what it's like on your end.
How are you feeling sitting there?
[Will] Yeah, it was like we were having a nice dinner--
Mm-hm.
It was a new place we wanted to check out and...
and yeah, I look over and she's kinda,
like, staring at me all flirtatious,
so I gave her a wink.
You weren't sitting there feeling...
shut-down, remote?
-[Will] No. -No.
So what if that's Will's way of being present?
What you're interpreting as "not present" is simply Will
being Will.
Yeah, I'm thinking that...
you know, I'm-- that night was the first night I...
looked at him without the contempt,
without the resentment--
Right, and it sounds like he felt it.
-[Ping] Without the hate-- -Right!
[Ping] Without all of this baggage, right?
Right, amazing.
Yeah, so I brought myself there.
[Orna] Mm-hm.
I wanted to be in the moment with him, and...
that was an opportu-- for me, that was an opportunity for him
to kind of return that energy, right?
-Because we were there-- -He was trying in his own way.
Maybe that is my problem; that's the deeper issue is that
when I'm trying to be present with someone,
I don't wanna be winked at eight times in a row.
That's not flirtatious, that's just obnoxious.
It's like trying to have a conversation with someone about
something deep--
-[Orna] Hold on, hold on. -[Ping] [sighs]
What you're just doing right now is rather than talk about
whatever feelings, you're being critical.
Okay, [sighs] so...
I miss...
the way we used to be when we would communicate with just...
our body language, right?
-[Orna] Mm-hm. -I miss the...
that chemistry, you know?
[Orna] Mm-hm.
I'm trying to recapture that, I'm trying to,
you know-- I'm trying to dig it out from all the crap that we've
piled on top of it--
[Orna] Mm-hm.
And when he does that -- Will being Will -- I feel like he's
not honoring what we used to be or what I need from him in
the moment.
The thing I don't get, though, is,
like, I've always been a little bit silly and goofy, and...
[Orna] Mm-hm.
She used to laugh with me and play with me,
and now, it aggravates her.
Well, it sounds like Ping is saying that she's missing
something else.
Can you say what you're missing?
Well, in that particular moment,
I was really missing...
the person I fell in love with, the person that was able to look
at me without...
all this extra stuff.
And yeah, there's-- you know, we have our jovial moments,
but we had...
deep, intimate moments--
-[Orna] Mm-hm. -And...
in that particular moment, it just felt
like he was resisting...
getting there with me, and...
and I felt rejected.
-[Orna] Mm-hm. -You know?
And...
I know a wink is just a wink, it's just a wink,
whatever, but it just--
-You felt rejected. -[Ping] I felt rejected.
Mm-hm.
[Ping] I felt like he wasn't there with me.
Mm-hm.
It's hard to have the patience.
Well, that's-- that's what I'm struggling with is
because, you know, we've been together,
what, six, seven years, and I feel like I've been patient,
I've been trying to understand him,
and I was thinking about it the other day;
one of the reasons why...
I did fall in love with him, because I saw a little bit of me
-- the younger version of me -- in him,
and I wanted to take care of that person,
and I wanted to be there in a way that nobody was there
for me.
What did you see?
That inner child -- you know, the one that was neglected,
that wasn't given what they needed, you know?
-[Orna] Mm-hm. -But...
Yeah, and that's what connected me to him.
But I think over the years, I found myself not getting what I
needed, and however I expressed whatever I need,
he didn't hear it, I didn't feel like he listened,
and I'm just tired.
-[Orna] Mm-hm. -Like...
you know, it's-- he thinks I'm crying "Wolf."
He's like, "Oh, you always say you're gonna leave."
I'm like, "No!
I don't want to leave!
I'm telling you I don't want to leave,
but I feel like we're gonna get to a certain point...
where...
[voice cracking] I'm done!
I-- I can't do this anymore!"
Like, yeah, I have things I have to work on,
but I feel like you're so encapsulated in your own shit
that you can't see what you're throwing out,
and if you want to throw it out, then fine!
Then let me go!
Move on!
I would like to move on with my life.
[Orna] Mm-hm.
I feel like, you know, it's not my job to save him.
I need to save myself, I need to be here for myself.
And I really thought I had a partner in him,
I thought that we were kinda kindred spirits that way,
but he's not!
He's a fucking little boy that can't get out of his own fucking
bubble or little cave or whatever he created for himself,
and I'm tired!
[sniffles]
I'm just tired.
Mm-hm.
I was thinking about what you told us a few weeks ago.
It's like yeah, I'm starting to see the...
masochistic dynamic of our relationship.
It's like okay, how much more of this do we really need to do to
each other, right? Do we need to take?
moody ambient music
[boy] Hi, doggy!
-Hi! -[Orna] Hello!
So two weeks ago, Molly and Josh had,
like, an interesting...
like, dramatic turn.
Mm-hm.
It was like an outburst from her of...
impatience, like real, deep impatience with him and,
vicariously, with me.
[Virginia] Uh-huh!
And they...
cancelled the next session.
Hm.
With a pretend excuse or not even?
Nope, not a pretend excuse at all.
They suddenly got freaked out.
You know how there's that moment in therapy where...
you hit, like, a real spot, and suddenly,
you decide, "I don't need therapy anymore?"
[Virginia] Absolutely.
[Orna] So they got terrified.
Right.
I wonder if, in part, it was because the amount of intensity
and exhaustion and truth that occurred in that session was a
breakthrough.
[Orna VO] Yeah.
You could sort of see the entire dynamic in that vignette that
they came in with--
[Virginia VO] Yeah.
[Orna VO] With the whiteboard and the choice of colors.
When she's creating these scenes and setting it up with her
universe in her language--
[Virginia VO] Yeah.
[Orna VO] He's not comfortable there.
Not only not comfortable, he may not want to be speaking her
language--
[Virginia VO] Yeah.
[Orna VO] Which is great for her, actually.
[Virginia VO] Absolutely.
With people who aren't wired the same way,
there's a lot of work to be done--
[Orna VO] Mm-hm.
[Virginia VO] To let everybody be their own person--
[Orna VO] Yeah.
[Virginia VO] And nonetheless still partner with each other.
[Orna VO] Right.
When we left here last time, we did not speak--
-Yeah. -The entire way home.
Yeah.
We didn't speak for the rest of that evening...
or, really, the next day.
[Molly] Yeah.
I was freaking out; I was just freaking out,
and I was freaking out because I think what happened is...
all I could think was the sensational nature--
Right.
[Josh] Of the stuff we were talking about.
[Orna] Of course.
And, you know, part of the anxiety might also be related to
the kind of anxiety one would always feel in treatment...
-Mm-hm. -Right?
Because you're always, in a way...
putting yourself out there, which is often overwhelming.
-Mm-hm. -Right?
And part of what moves the process...
and part of what gets people out of their stuckness is,
like, involving a third person and another perspective.
Mm-hm.
Josh, did you have a particular moment in the session that you
found...
either particularly difficult, or...
alarming, or transformative, or something that you were
responding to?
[sighs] It's a little blurry, honestly, for me.
Um...
like, it's, like, almost like the drive home is,
like, the thing that's so vivid in my mind.
Mm-hm, what about it?
Um...
The, like...
I'm trying to be poetic here, but the-- like,
the really loud silence.
[Orna] Mm-hm.
It felt thick and, like, oppressive,
like I could feel the space that was living between us.
-Mm-hm. -[Josh] You know?
-Mm-hm. -And...
I didn't work on my argument in my head that I was going to make
to you, which I do a lot.
I write the scripts...
Oftentimes, I don't even say it.
Yes!
Yes, and that's why-- oh my gosh!
And that's why...
it felt comfortable for me--
[Orna] Mm-hm.
To be silent, 'cause I also didn't feel like I had to...
You weren't continuing a silent conversation.
[Molly] And I didn't feel like I had to say,
"Honey, are you okay?" I didn't feel that way.
[Orna] Mm-hm.
And so it was very freeing!
[Orna] Mm-hm.
I found that car ride very...
hopeless, sad, and comfortable...
strangely.
It just felt like there was nothing to talk about in that
moment, it was just like...
"Okay. [sighs]
This is where we are, period."
[Orna] Mm-hm.
But I have a feeling, also, that maybe in that moment,
you were in despair...
that that's what Josh brings, and it will not
necessarily change.
[Molly] Yes, yes.
[Orna] That you have to find a different way of
arranging yourself.
Yes.
Yeah, I mean, there-- that's kind of the hopelessness,
right? Is that...
I don't-- I don't wanna use the word "settle,"
because I don't like that word.
I think it's the word...um...
"accept."
Mm-hm.
He may never change, I know that,
but I only have one chance at life.
Should I be accept-- like, shouldn't I be getting
everything that I want?
-Mm. -[Molly] [sighs]
moody ambient music
Thank you.
[Orna VO] It's funny; like two weeks ago,
I had this feeling that all these crises are coming up.
And I'm working, working, working,
and I'm like... [inhales deeply]
like, getting nervous that I'm not managing to,
like, help some of them enough.
But then, just when I hit that point in myself,
like, the next session, some of these couples came back,
and they turned the corner.
Like with Cyn and Yaya, they kept going back -- repeatedly,
like a gong -- to this sense of failure around
engaging sexually.
Mm.
And I was getting really worried for them.
Mm-hm.
But then, they come back, and Yaya says she sold her soul to
the Devil...
-[man] Yes. -And brought her mother in...
[woman] Mm-hm.
[Orna] [chuckling] And then, they told me that they did it!
-[man] Yeah. -[woman] Nice work.
I wonder: how does the mother link to this?
[man] Yeah.
[Nuar] Something that occurred to me was that Cyn's sexual
abuse was inside of the family....
Mm-hm.
And now, she has children, she's revisiting her trauma,
and sex is inside of the family again.
-[Orna] Yeah. -[man] Mm-hm.
That's interesting because her mother lives with them.
-[man] Mm-hm. -[woman] She does?
-Okay. -[man] Cyn's mother.
-Yep. -[man] Ah.
And one of their kids is exactly the age that
she was abused.
Oh, wow.
So she's deep in it; she's being re-traumatized.
-[man] Mm-hm, yeah. -Yeah.
I wonder if she's ever had this conversation with her mother.
No, and I've asked them both to maybe start thinking about doing
those conversations.
-[woman] Yeah. -Mm-hm.
[Orna] But I know this is difficult for them.
[man] Mm.
tender ambient music
[Cyn VO] Oh, we read, by the way.
-[Yaya VO] Yeah. -[Orna VO] Ah!
[laughter]
[Yaya VO] I was like, "Ooh, this book is good."
[Orna VO] Mm-hm.
I was like, "I haven't read a book in a very long time, Orna."
Yeah, honestly, we have not read a book in a long time.
-Yeah. -Mm-hm.
When I read the part like...
"You know how people sometimes feel that sex is just,
like, a spontaneous-- like it just happens naturally or
whatever?
Like, no, you can schedule that shit.
You can be like, 'Tomorrow, at 5PM,
we're gonna meet and we're gonna have sex,'" you know?
Mm-hm.
It is kind of all new.
Like, we are kind of...
in the honeymoon phase.
I think it's more 'cause we're trying to...
Well, it's kind of like we're dating our new vers-- like...
-[Orna] Yeah. -Our new selves.
-The grown selves. -[Orna] Mm-hm.
Yeah.
'Cause we were-- we were young when we first got together.
Mm-hm.
You know?
So now we're...
[Cyn] Again, we're just learning each other.
-That's wonderful. -[Yaya] Yeah.
So we appreciated that.
Thank you very much for forcing us to read.
Mm-hm.
She had a conversation with her mom -- an impromptu one.
Oh, I did! I forgot!
-Wow! -[Cyn] Oh my God!
Oh, babe, I forgot about that!
No, that was-- that was big.
Tell me!
I said, "All right, Mom, we gotta talk.
Apparently, this whole thing that happened with me as a kid
is really affecting me, so I need to fix this."
Mm-hm.
And that's where she verbalized that she did actually speak to
my uncle.
She did actually try to keep him away from us -- or at least from
me -- and I have never heard her say that.
Wait, when did she speak with him?
I guess after-- she said that I told her.
So I don't remember telling her.
Yeah, she said you told her around eight or nine.
Yeah, and then she said, "You know,
Cyndy, there's a lot of things that I went through when I was
younger...
but I don't think about that anymore."
And I'm like, "Okay."
And I said, "Do you wanna talk about it?"
And she goes, "I don't wanna talk about it;
it's gonna bring it up again."
So I just...
let it be.
How did you feel after this conversation with her?
I felt like... [sighs] lighter.
[Orna] Yeah.
Like, I felt like...
[sighs]
like I was just able to breathe.
[Orna] Mm-hm.
That's very moving.
Yeah, it, um...
I'm hoping that this'll change...
the relationship that we currently have...
'cause I don't wanna--
Well, you have at least a little bit of information
that...
you can't really go back on...
Yeah.
That you did say something, which I think will change how
you feel about yourself.
Yes.
And it actually did...
even just, like, the slight...
changes.
I can see how keeping to myself, not saying anything,
not expressing how I was feeling,
it came out in action.
[Orna] Mm-hm.
And how those actions started to affect us.
-Yeah. -[Cyn] So that's helping.
-Yeah. -[Orna] Wonderful.
So something I want us to think about together is:
What are each of you gonna take from...
our work?
Just as something you can go back to internally...
if things slide back.
For me, the biggest thing is staying present -- like not
switching off the light, you know?
Being communicative.
Mm-hm, that's very, very big.
[Cyn] That's one of your biggest things.
-[Yaya] Yeah. -You're doing good.
[Orna] And for you, Cyn?
Um...
I'm gonna just keep telling you what I want.
[chuckles] But also want--
[chuckling] You've always told me what you want.
I think it's more of being completely honest with her, too.
[Orna] Mm-hm.
You know, there are times where I'll tell you stuff,
but I, you know, omit little details.
Like?
Like crushes.
If I would say I have a crush, you would just look at it as
"Oh, it's something that's little,"
but it's not a little thing, it's a big thing.
Um...
so things like that, I wouldn't...
keep that from you.
Mm.
And what's your reaction?
I think it's bullshit.
It's bullshit.
-Mm-hm. -[Yaya] It's like...
right now, I feel raw. I have all my emotions...
It's just fucked up.
[voice cracking] You know, like I feel like I have all my
emotions on my skin...
like, on my surface, and then...
I'm saying what I would do...
to not fall back into our old habits...
and you're worried about crushes?
Like, that's...
bullshit.
[Orna] Why do you think of that?
This is me just trying to be...
honest with you.
But why bring it up now, at this particular moment?
I'm not saying that as a critique.
-[Cyn] Mm. -I'm really curious.
[sighs]
Is that, like, self-sabotage?
It's like you're saying something like...
"But I'm still...
a source of danger."
It's not like I was...
you know, meaning to-- to hurt you all over again.
[sighs] It was just an example that I used.
I honestly didn't think of it that way.
And I didn't mean to make you feel this way.
I think what would be helpful at this point is not-- Cyn,
not for you to feel like you need to...
dig yourself out of some kind of...
-[Cyn] Hole. -Hole that you fell into...
[Cyn] Mm-hm.
But to ask yourself why did you create that hole right now.
And Cyn, I would not...
turn this into a big conversation between the two of
you, but I would turn it inward into,
like, asking yourself what, unconsciously,
were you...
[Cyn] Trying to say?
Trying to do or communicate or communicate to yourself or to
Yaya.
Mm.
Or to me.
Maybe you're saying something to me.
[Cyn] Mm.
Maybe you're telling me our work is not done.
[sighs]
tender piano music
I've been staring out my window
Not sure if I have the strength to go
Been staring out this window
Knowing I can't stay no more
I've been thinkin' 'bout my own self
So I need to lift from this perch
(Fly Away)
I need to find the strength for my search