Life Coaching, a Case Fiction, Part 2

Herewith, the second and concluding half of the case fiction regarding a client named Chauncey. I posted the first half last Friday, July 5th.

Wresting himself free after what seemed an indecent interval, a flustered Chauncey decided to take the rest of the day off. By the time Ursula arrived home, greeting him with her normally cheerful Howdy-do he had descended into a guilt-ridden funk.

Not only could he not face Ursula, but how could he return to the Good Earth and look at Cassandra again?

Worse yet, his mind was flooded with images of the naked and willing Cassandra. He had been flagellating his soul all afternoon trying to suppress them. 

Nevertheless, Chauncey put on a good show. Imagining that he was still suffering the aftershocks of the weekend humiliation, Ursula showered him with charm. Chauncey felt that he had dodged a bullet. He would never allow himself to be so thoroughly compromised again. When they made love that night Ursula found Chauncey unusually ardent. She wondered whether humiliation evoked his greatest passions. In fact, he was fantasizing about Cassandra.

Listening to Chauncey’s story, Claude was trying to extract a semblance of order. He worried that Ursula needed an abject Chauncey, because a more dynamic and successful man might interfere with her career. 

Ten days after the incident with Cassandra, while Chauncey was tormenting himself with another reverie about the nubile twenty-year old, Ursula laid out a new plan. She thought it was time for her to become a mother. Since they had ample means to support a child, why were they waiting?

Ursula explained that her career interests would not allow her to take a very active role in bringing up a child, but that she would gladly hire a full time Nanny and that Chauncey could make himself available for the daily grind. 

To Chauncey this made eminently good sense. He was cheered by the prospect of being the kind of father his own father had never been. Perhaps this child would make him feel closer to Ursula and could forget Cassandra. When he explained the plan to his mother the next day, she was more than happy.

His father was another story. Two days later Chauncey picked up the insistently ringing telephone to hear his father rather coldly invite him to a friendly dinner at an obscure restaurant-- The Bronze Helmet. The man was not going to march into Patroon with a bedraggled, pony-tailed young man wearing sweat pants.

The dinner meeting was anything but cordial. The father told his son that he had become increasingly displeased with the course his life had taken. He found his appearance degraded, his job menial, and his so-called relationship with that Teutonic bitch-goddess to be masochistic. Now his son had announced that he was going to become a housewife and mother.

Chauncey tried to defend his decision, even to the point of denouncing his father’s anachronistic view of gender roles. His father stopped him mid-discourse and explained that he was not going to finance this folly. He had redrawn his will to disinherit his son and to leave everything to Yvette and her children.

The news slammed into Chauncey as though he had been blindsided by a Mike Tyson left hook. His head started to reel and before he could recover his equilibrium he had vomited onto his Caesar salad. Mortified and appalled, his father ran from the restaurant. The waiter and busboy helped him to clean up. They put him in a cab and sent him home. By the time he arrived at the empty loft, he felt like his ship had just struck an iceberg. The prospect of always depending on Ursula suddenly filled him with dread.

An hour later Ursula blew through the front door and found Chauncey crumpled at the foot of his bed, in tears. This time she could not reach him. For three days he called in sick to The Good Earth and refused to answer Cassandra’s messages. 

If anything, he was puzzled. Having repudiated his father’s values, it made little sense to live off the profits. His father’s action was more radical than usual, but it was not inconsistent. 

For her part Ursula was becoming more and more concerned. She insisted that if he did not see a therapist she would send him home to his mother. She wanted her Chauncey back and would pay to restore his sanity.

At this point Chauncey stopped telling Claude his story. Now it was his turn to say something that might stabilize Chauncey. Worse, Claude did not approve of Chauncey’s decisions. Rant all you want against insensitive men, Chauncey had gone to the opposite extreme. He was far too sensitive for his own good. He could not even defend himself.

Claude chose to keep these thoughts to himself. He could sympathize with Chauncey’s despair without taking sides in the struggle over the tattered remnants of his manly pride.

The world of men had not offered him a place, largely because he refused its mores. He was surrounded by strong women who loved and nurtured him, but at the price of purloining his manhood. Ursula did not want him to consult with another female therapist who would tell him to get in touch with his feelings.

Claude saw immediately that Chauncey was suffering from an accumulation of humiliations that had finally produced a feeling of complete ostracism. One might have suggested that he was more of a man to Cassandra than to Ursula, but still, their liaison, such as it was, seemed more adolescent than adult. 

Claude saw an intelligent young man who was frittering away his life. He knew that he would need to point Chaucey toward a more substantial career path, even though that might seem like surrendering to his father. Without a sense of real accomplishment Chauncey would never exit his depression.

For now Claude did not want the unhappy couple to try to overcome their funk by having a child. This would have trapped Chauncey and would have made it nearly impossible for him to engage a different career path. Besides, Claude was thinking that the way out of the labyrinth involved Cassandra, the only woman who was not trying to rip off a piece of Chauncey’s flesh. And yet, she was quite young. She had not even finished school.

Rather than offer a solution, Claude intoned: Damned if you do; damned if you don’t. There was no easy solution to this problem and Chauncey’s failure to find one was not necessarily his fault.

So, Claude decided to wax philosophical.  “Your life presents itself in black and white; there are no shades of gray, and certainly no colors. In my experience people who are facing irreconcilable extremes do best to find a middle ground. Or better, to find someone who is not involved in the great drama of your life.”

So, Claude shifted the focus: “Have you discussed this with your sister or brother-in-law?”

Chauncey replied quickly that he had not. The two were implicated in his father’s decisions. How could he trust them? Claude was undeterred. “You do not really know unless you have tried.”

Chauncey looked puzzled and said that he felt he was being set up for more disappointment. At best, Claude continued, you have nothing to lose. Unless your sister is extremely greedy, she is hardly unlikely to countenance your father’s abuse.”

Chauncey noted that Yvette had always been good to him. She had put a significant distance between her family and her parents by moving to Omaha. 

Besides, any constructive gesture, any move in the game, would have redounded to Chauncey’s benefit. Picking up the phone would have been just such a move.

Then Claude asked whether Chauncey had any friends. To lift the sense of isolation that was plaguing Chauncey, Claude sought to picture Chauncey involved in a social group, a group of his peers.

As it happened Chauncey still had some contact with a few of his friends from Yale. By name they were Curtis, Edouard and Sebastian. Most of them spoke well of Ursula, and within the circle she was considered to be exotic and charming. Sebastian, however, believed that she was Kali reincarnated, the goddess of destruction. He had told Chauncey that he would do better to leave her.

So Chauncey arranged a dinner with his friends, and reluctantly shared what was going on. Needless to say, he did not provoke any sympathy, but did receive some advice-- to find a more serious career and to jettison his overbearing girlfriend.

These solutions were far too radical for Chauncey’s delicate constitution, but they served a purpose. His friends wanted him to take charge of the situation, and this was surely an improvement. 

The wild card was Cassandra. Chauncey was so guilty about their encounter in the storeroom that he kept his counsel. Claude was not going to ask his client to recount his feelings toward Cassandra, but he asked whether he had discussed anything about what was going on with her. Does she know about Ursula? Does she know his family history?

Over a lunch of bean sprouts and alfalfa she told Chauncey that she could not understand what he was doing at The Good Earth. She added that she herself wanted to become a marine biologist and is applying to graduate programs in the field. She had even suggested that he apply to several of the programs himself.

Chauncey was not impressed. He declared that she had ulterior motives, especially wanting the two of them to form a constituted couple. To which Claude responded: “the fact that a beautiful young woman finds you attractive ought not to make you feel diminished.”

Within Chauncey’s mythical kingdom Cassandra was not a prophetess of doom; she was a seductress luring him away from fidelity. Feeling guilty at finding her attractive, he was avoiding her. Now, Claude wanted Chauncey to return to work as soon as possible, and to develop a plan for dealing with Cassandra.

Apparently, there was more to the story than Chauncey had let on. It did not make him look very good.  

“Something did happen, but it is almost too painful to recount. After ignoring her for two days, I ran into her one morning when we were both waiting for the store to open. I was trying not to make eye contact, but she approached me and said: ‘I’m sorry if I hurt you.’”

Chauncey was taken aback. He went dumb. He could barely tolerate that she was blaming herself.

Uncharitably, Claude opined that Chauncey had run away. So, he added that perhaps Chauncey owed the woman an apology. To which his client declared that it would be too much of a risk. She might reject the apology.

Claude replied that it is indeed risky, but still, no one should treat another human being with impunity and just walk away from it. He added that the young woman was acting more like an adult than was Chauncey. Apologizing would be the more manly gesture, taking responsibility for bad behavior. He added that it was better not to allow her to think that his behavior had something to do with her. 

Chauncey continued to demur. He believed that he had feelings for Cassandra and that if he opened himself up to her, he would put himself in danger.

Claude replied that Chauncey seemed to have been questioning his feelings for Ursula, to say nothing of his current living arrangement.

Claude did not want to take this line of reasoning too far. He had wanted to show Chauncey how to accomplish something difficult and how to act like an honorable adult. He was not concerned with whether the two young people really loved each other. He wanted Chauncey to get out of his mind and into his life.

And yet, Claude did not know very much about his client. So in his next session he asked a series of standard interview questions. Since Chauncey had been trained to free associate, he felt uncomfortable answering such banal questions. 

The questions were not chosen at random. All were designed to measure Chauncey’s involvement in worldly activities, the better to place the young man somewhere other than in the throes of a mythic dilemma. 

Claude wanted Chauncey to be more engaged with his friends, whether by going to a sports bar or by joining an advocacy group. He recommended that Chauncey read newspapers more carefully, to form his own opinions about politics. He added that Chauncey ought to join a gym, not only to mitigate the effects of his depression but to get in better shape.

Claude wanted to foster human social connections. He was happy that Chauncey had had a couple of conversations with his sister and brother-in-law. He was pleased that Chauncey had been willing to go back to work and was considering other career paths. 

Was this counseling going to allow Chauncey to construct something of a life? How long would it be before Ursula would insist on having a baby, event that would abort these plans? And, he needed to keep in mind that Ursula was controlling the couple’s purse. How long before she decides that she does not like what Chauncey is becoming and pulls her financial support? And what will happen when Cassandra leaves her position and enrolls in a marine biology program in Florida?

Resolving these complexities was not going to be easy.

I have several free consulting hours in my own life coaching practice. If you are interested, please email me at StuartSchneiderman@gmail.com.