I used to read my clients almost as soon as they crossed my threshold. It wasn’t clairvoyance, but something like it—a blend of instinct and experience. Depression, anxiety, and even certain personality disorders manifest in the body in observable ways. Some days, the predictability was mind-numbing.
People dodged self-compassion as though kindness toward others earned redemption, but kindness toward themselves brought sure damnation. They obsessed over their social façades, imagining everyone else was equally interested. Nobody was. They battled, albeit futilely, to control every entropic aspect of their lives and everyone else’s.
Then they deployed an arsenal of defense mechanisms from denial to projection to rationalization, psychological party tricks designed to keep reality at a tolerable distance. Most never noticed when those shields became cages. That’s what kept me in business.
When my company was named Imperfect Parenting, I knew precisely what types of cases I was getting. Parents whose spicy children didn’t behave or emote as expected, parents navigating divorce and tangled parenting agreements, and people who felt misaligned with their idealized parenting roles. Parents sought reassurance as their children struggled under the world’s impositions. Mostly, I nudged parents to loosen their anxious grip, reminding them they weren’t sculptors but witnesses as their infuriatingly delightful kids crafted themselves.
However, since being rebranded as Whole Wellness Counseling, any type of case could land on my sofa. Within months, my practice transformed into a living documentary on alternative sexual lifestyles. The shift felt like the universe challenging me to elevate my therapeutic game. Though, it was probably a logarithmic side-effect of Nancy’s social media fame as a sex and porn addiction expert.
Parallel to my professional growth, my piano teacher suggested I attempt one of Chopin’s mazurkas, Polish dances in triple time. Dance of any kind was utterly incongruous with my nature, which was exactly why I took the challenge. After spending a weekend immersing myself in dozens of mazurkas, one instantly grabbed me: Opus 56, No. 3.
When I first heard this mazurka, it felt like it was already inside me. It was like seeing your newborn for the first time, and their name is written invisibly on their face. Or, when the furry thing at the rescue bonds to you and you adopt it with just a glance. This piece wove an insistent melody into my consciousness. I heard this Mazurka and knew immediately I needed to learn it.
As I listened to this composition, I could see the falling notes, the breaks, the swirls, and the floating grace notes. I sensed the space between the layers, the bassline and melody, and the long lines that ran through in three-quarter time. The best moments were the subtle, unexpected rhythmic disruptions and harmonic tension that kept me delightfully off-balance. Just as I grasped the melody, it slipped free, pulling me somewhere unexpected. This Mazurka defied categorization, fluctuating between bittersweet defiance, playfulness, melancholy, and resignation. It mirrored the mercurial moods of the couples lately filling my office.
I emailed my teacher and asked if he had the digital score. He sent me a PDF without any additional comments. I assumed he thought I had chosen poorly. He didn’t like it or knew it was over my head, but didn’t want to say so. Perhaps, like the way I approach my clients in therapy, he thought pianists need to figure out their own mistakes.
I inched my way through the score, deciphering the tricky fingering and notation. During one lesson, I discovered I had mixed up fundamental articulation marks, confusing ties—curves connecting identical notes—with slurs—arcs that command smooth transitions between distinct notes. My error was like the mistakes I made interpreting emotions when my therapist's hat came off. My desire to learn this Mazurka carried me beyond embarrassment and the blushing and sweating that always accompanied it, though. Mastering the dynamics became a dialogue between Chopin’s intentions, my fingers, and the emotional terrain my clients mapped out in my office.
At first, I thought the shift in my caseload from people who wanted to discuss parenting to couples who wanted to focus on themselves was a fluke. A one-off. It started with one perfectly stable pair, solid as only children of Midwestern-born farmers can be. In the first half of their session, they detailed two decades of contentment. Their stories were like the Mazurka’s opening, repetitive and predictable.
Then, they let on to the problem: It was time to blow things up by exploring an open marriage. She wanted to have fun now that their kids had left for college, and he wanted to be left alone to nap in the recliner with sports blaring on the TV. They wanted help laying the ground rules. No, she would not be home to cook dinner every night or make coffee each morning, and yes, they would still visit his mother together on Sundays after church.
A few weeks later, their referral came in. This couple’s unfortunate downturn had involved homemade explicit photographs. The photos themselves weren’t the problem, the victim assured me—creative expression had always animated their adventurous bedroom life—but public distribution had not been part of their agreement.
“I trusted you,” the wife said forcefully.
The husband shrank. “They were really popular.”
Her face softened slightly, curiosity and pride pushing through her sensibilities: “People liked them?”
The husband nodded, still trying to look contrite.
Internally, I grappled. What he had done was criminal, but here they sat, trying to mend. Part of me admired their effort, while another part of me wondered why she hired a therapist instead of a lawyer.
“He’s flawed,” she said during our private meeting, as I probed for hidden bruises, emotional or otherwise, “but he’s mine.”
This couple’s revelation and chosen solution hit like the Mazurka’s unexpected and emotionally charged modulation into its contrasting middle section.
While I learned Chopin’s Mazurka, my caseload grew equally nuanced. Couples wrestled with jealousy in polyamorous set-ups, expanding gender identities, and incompatible preferences in BDSM arrangements. I was constantly researching foreign terms, acronyms, and concepts. Each new couple stretched my knowledge and empathy, forcing me to look beneath bravado and freedom-posturing to the stubborn truths lurking awkwardly beneath the surface.
I privately groused about becoming a couples counselor, questioning my ability to remain open-minded and offer unconditional positive regard, cornerstones of effective therapeutic relationships. My professional boundaries, once clear and reliable, had begun to blur, leaving me feeling insecure despite consistently affirming reviews. Though in the end, communication and relational problems inevitably blend into the same chords. Despite my bewilderment, I was confident I could provide professional care.
Ultimately, I accepted every new case that came along. Nancy, whom I secretly blamed for the search-engine shift, already had a full schedule. We had hired new therapists, good ones, some of whom wanted to try their hand at couples counseling. I didn’t dare pass these cases off to the new employees, though, for fear of scaring them off.
When clients arrived alone or as pairs of parents, my role felt clear and manageable. When my client was a couple, though, everything changed. Boundaries blurred, meaning and purpose shifted, and my certainty faded. Each couple questioned norms for their own reasons, all of which were valid and deserving of respect. I rarely divulged my opinions. Occasionally, however, I reminded them that while we can thumb our noses at social expectations, biology is not so easily bucked.
Prairie vole studies offered a humbling peek into the biology behind social behavior and bonding similar to human drama. These furry rodents fall into three categories: lifelong pair bonders, promiscuous charmers hopping nest to nest, and hermits who prefer solitude over intimacy. It turns out their romantic fate is neither a choice nor a poetic destiny, but how their brains distribute oxytocin and vasopressin receptors.
Loyalty, at least in prairie voles, boils down to receptor real estate: a cruel twist of genetic and biochemical lottery rather than any virtue or vice. Nature stubbornly reminds us that free will in love often amounts to a hormonal illusion neatly wrapped in cultural expectations.
In one session, an exceptionally attractive woman, already a world-class researcher though only in her early thirties, explained her side of the story: “I wanted to explore my curiosity about other humans.”
She sized me up with a stern glare.
I met her gaze and accepted the challenge as the opening section of Chopin's Mazurka played in my head, intense but predictable.
“When she suggested consensual non-monogamy,” the bland husband said, “it was because she was attracted to women.” His chin quivered as he unabashedly wiped his glistening cheeks with the back of his hand. “Now, every weekend she’s with him.”
Her spine stiffened, and she pulled slightly away.
His shoulders slumped as he visibly deflated.
She was gone.
I heard the Mazurka’s final chords, resonating with resignation, concluding thoughtfully rather than triumphantly. These two would be good candidates for a collaborative separation.
Another time, I was hired solely to mediate a difficult conversation.
The client, short-haired, in belted chinos, a button-down plaid, and loafers, exuded a practical confidence; though, looking back, it might have been indifference.
“I want to start testosterone,” they said, eyes flickering toward me as if seeking courage.
The husband’s jaw hardened. “I didn’t sign up for this. Neither did our kids.”
Accusations rose and fell, their conversation swelled into an emotional crescendo, then quickly receded, leaving only lingering uncertainty. Theirs would be a litigious divorce.
I witnessed the raw edges of their pain, consciously acknowledging my caution around the lifelong medicalization and potential health risks imposed by social expectations and political pressures surrounding transgender and autoerotic identities.
Another couple, parents of two young children, complained that his insatiable sexual appetite complicated their daily life. With persistent encouragement from her husband, the wife had agreed to sleep with other men, new men, not just the dude who had been joining them regularly for years. In case you didn’t know, this is called hotwifing, a growing trend for 10% of couples.
She admitted she felt pushed, but insisted she wasn’t upset. She was enjoying herself.
Her husband was having second thoughts.
“At first, it aroused me," he admitted. “Now she's gone every weekend. I’m stuck at home, alone with the kids, with this… this rage.”
As these couples circled around their frustrations, each accusatory pause matched the Mazurka’s hesitations, a breath before plunging into an uncertain phrase or charged truth. I tried to hear and reflect the layers beneath the surface so that they could better understand themselves and either repair their relationship or part ways amicably, usually the latter.
No more was my calendar loaded with couples who wanted help thoughtfully parenting their children as they navigated divorce or behavioral problems. Now, I never really knew how each new session would unfold. Most often, couples hid their true reasons for seeking my services from the intake coordinators. One time, I almost saw it coming.
The couple, a towering woman wearing a leather miniskirt and fishnet stockings and her very vanilla wife, said they wanted help communicating.
“We’ve been together for fifteen years,” said the fishnet stockings. “We’re kink-positive and poly. Everything’s great,” she boasted.
“Except when it isn’t,” whispered the vanilla one, eyes downcast.
“When isn’t it?” I asked, looking at each, dreadfully knowing the answer would drag me deeper into their pain.
After a pause, the vanilla one answered. “When her jealousy gets really loud and mean. When the freedom I thought she supported feels like blame and resentment.”
Listening to their conversation felt like experiencing the tense and unpredictable bars 184 to 212 of the Mazurka, initially unsettled but gradually easing into acceptance, suspended gracefully between resistance and letting go.
Couples sessions made me wonder if the autonomy these individuals sought could coincide with the bonding they clung to. Sessions increasingly revealed emotional wounds masked as liberation. I questioned whether their open-mindedness represented genuine growth or unresolved trauma surfacing chaotically. Couples initially excited by sexual and identity exploration devolved into turmoil.
Each new revelation resembled the transitions and development in Chopin’s Mazurka, with notes awkwardly suspended and tension unresolved, forcing me to hold on to discomfort until I could barely stand it. I found myself mapping their pauses, stutters, and sudden emotional turns onto the musical phrases, as if each couple fit into a measure in Chopin’s Polish dance.
In their discourse, hidden notations emerged—missed connections, hurried releases, chords prematurely broken. Therapy shifted from guiding couples toward resolution to helping them read their own messy emotional scores.
I watched couples circle the same patterns, replaying the same conflicts with only slight variations in tone. One had an anxious-avoidant attachment, the other was codependent. One was guarded and self-protective, the other hell-bent on dragging every wound to the surface. One was perfectionistic, the other laissez-faire.
I never took notes during these intense Mazurka couple sessions. Documentation fell by the wayside. I hardly knew what I was hearing, let alone what I should record. I admit, sometimes I wanted to grab them by the shoulders and shake them. If they could just walk away, or else flip the dialogue back to an earlier point in time when they first met and oxytocin was flowing, before the hurts stacked up, before pride and resentment layered every conversation, then they might find ways to connect and sustain their affection.
I could see it sometimes, the faintest flicker of the couple they used to be, hinging on the hope of becoming the couple they wanted to be. A pause before a sarcastic comment. A softening in the jawline. A hand that, for a moment, almost reached for the other. But then, most often, they lost the connection and defaulted back.
He never listens. She always nags. He’s checked out. She’s controlling.
Each played their discordant notes while blaming the other for being off-key and out of sync. I continued to listen, nodding patiently, but privately accepted that no amount of insight could penetrate an ego determined to keep its blinders firmly in place.
The sessions also became a mirror I couldn’t avoid. Each exchange reminded me of gaps I failed to bridge in my own life. I could untangle anxious parents’ knotted expectations with my eyes closed, but couples who fought to remain bound in their unhappy webs mystified me. They clung stubbornly, even miserably, to relationships that clearly harmed them when walking away would have been simpler and likely healthier. Society’s disdain for singlehood was harsh, but at least it came with fewer limits.
Session after session, I gently reflected patterns that were glaringly obvious from my chair yet invisible from theirs. Occasionally, they caught a glimpse of themselves; usually, they looked away. There’s safety in familiar wounds. Recognizing patterns is the easy part. I knew that truth better than anyone.
Each night, I returned to the piano, my eyes tracing the Mazurka's stubborn passages, my fingers stumbling repeatedly to grasp the harmony I could clearly see but never quite hold. The same pattern, control slipping through my fingers just as I reached for it, was unraveling in my business finances, too. What I couldn’t resolve musically, I was also struggling to balance on a spreadsheet.