My Wife Won’t Give Me Blow Jobs Anymore
A client’s story
There are some clients you just don’t like. They annoy the shit out of you. Sometimes you can’t really put your finger on why. Yes, they’re defensive, argumentative, and don’t want to do the work. But that’s not why you don’t like them. The problem is not where they’re at. It’s who they are. They’re people you probably wouldn’t hang out with in “real life.” And they keep coming back, which is what annoys you the most, because as a therapist you can’t tell your clients to not come back because they annoy the shit out of you. I mean, you can, but you’ll probably end up in the back pages of one of those therapist magazines that list all the therapists who have lost their license.
Jon was one of those clients. He didn’t come for himself. He was sent. This happens a lot in my world. Usually, men are sent to me by their girlfriends and wives, who think they’re sending their men to behavior camp, convinced they will magically return with manners, emotional tools, and a newfound appreciation for life and their partner. Jon told me his wife heard me on “Dax’s podcast,” which he hadn’t listened to himself. His wife thought I could give him some “relationship tricks.”
So many things about the first words that came out of Jon’s mouth had already annoyed me. Why did he have to mention that he didn’t listen to my episode on “Dax’s podcast”? (By the way, the podcast is called Armchair Expert, not “Dax’s podcast,” like he knows Dax personally or something.) I’ll tell you why. Because he wanted me to know that I wasn’t better than him. And of course, that he only wanted “relationship tricks” from me. He was too cool for therapy. So he used a phrase that made me sound like a dog trainer. I would have been less annoyed if he’d come in and just said, “Listen, Kimbo, I don’t believe in therapy. I don’t believe in you. I’m just here because my wife won’t give me blow jobs anymore. Fix it.” If Jon had said those exact words, I would have fucking loved him. That kind of honesty would have broken down so many walls.
Instead, it would take many sessions to finally discover that he felt that way. Jon had never gone to therapy because he didn’t believe in it. He didn’t like me because his wife followed me on social media and listened to my podcasts, even bought one of my relationship audio courses (which he made sure to mention he hadn’t listened to either). And this whole thing started because she wouldn’t give him road head on the way home from Joshua Tree one night. Of course, it wasn’t about the head. It was about him not being present in his marriage because he wasn’t over his previous relationship.
Let’s call her Sally. Sally from the Valley. Jon met Sally when they were in their mid-twenties. It was that sticky codependent young love that has you losing yourself in each other. But since Jon had never gone to therapy, he didn’t know it wasn’t healthy love. He just remembered how in- tense it was and how much Sally loved going down on him. But did she really? Or was she afraid to lose him? Did she maybe think that’s what a good girlfriend does? I never met Sally, but I’m pretty sure she wasn’t obsessed with Jon’s penis like he claimed she was.
As we continued to process his relationship with Sally, Jon started to realize how much she had hurt him when she broke up with him. He realized he never really grieved that loss. He never accepted or moved through it. Instead, he compared all the other relationships after that to Sally from the Valley because that relationship had made the deepest love imprint on him.
He finally allowed himself to feel all the pain from that expired relationship. As we followed that string down, we discovered more old wounds from growing up with an alcoholic mother who changed men like socks, toxic men who bullied Jon and gave him a warped definition of a man. He realized how unhealthy his relationship with Sally actually was. This made him question if it had really been love. He finally watched the whole documentary instead of just playing the romance movie trailer over and over again. These realizations gave him fresh lenses and a newfound appreciation for his wife and what they were building. With this new perspective, Jon was able to be fully present in his relationship with her and to create a new definition of love, one that wasn’t based on others. He was able to build something new. Something fresh. Something healthy. Something real.
Two things about the clients who resist therapy: One, you realize you actually do like them once you see the real person, with a real story, hiding behind that resistance. Two, you realize their initial resistance reminded you of yourself. Jon’s story hit home for me, hard. I could relate to what he was going through. I have also compared my relationships with previous ones. I’d judged current loves with older im- prints because the feeling of that young love in the past was so powerful. I hadn’t yet learned that relationship dysfunction feels like crack cocaine. And that’s what I was chasing. Not love. Real love doesn’t knock your socks off. Real love holds up a mirror.
If this article was helpful, help me give singlehood a cape by checking out my book, Single. On Purpose. More real life stories from clients as well as my own journey with singlehood, dating, and connecting back to self.
- Angry
