‘When my thrilling older lover referred me to his therapist, it led to a double betrayal’

Illustration by Clare Mallison

But then there was that day I wandered into Stewart’s study and on his desk was a series of letters from a young woman. I read them, of course. Then I read a page from his journal, which, it was clear, was inspired by her. He wrote, “I think of your breasts. I feel the earth. My mind reels.” I found him in the kitchen and confronted him. “That’s an assignment my analyst gave me,” he insisted. “It’s not about a real person.”

I was seeing that same analyst. Stewart had seen him first, then stopped after a few years and got a new referral from Dr P to a female colleague, claiming, “You’d do well to work with the feminine aspect.” Stewart thought I might want to see Dr P, now that the two of them were done. I’d always been fascinated by dreams and symbolism, and Stewart thought he was good – what could it hurt to get into Jungian therapy? I started seeing him weekly.

How Dr P must have struggled, listening to me all those months as I droned on about self-doubt and my fear of abandonment by Stewart. Then, at one session, as I was recounting how Stewart and I had just celebrated a “year of monogamy,” I saw that Dr P was moving his head from side to side.

“No,” he said quietly.

I could barely breathe. The room felt as though it was tilting. It was like an eerie horror movie.

“What do you mean?” My heart felt wild, beating hard. “I just can’t do it any more,” Dr P said. “I care about you, and it’s true. Stewart is not faithful.”

A heart attack felt possible. Silence.

I left the session and got on the highway. I drove straight to school and found him teaching a class on Nathaniel Hawthorne – I caught his attention through the window in the door. He came out immediately. “I’ve just been at Dr P’s,” I said and stared at him.

“I’m finishing up. Meet me in the cafeteria.”

“He told me about the other women.”

His blue eyes suddenly looked cold and alien as he turned towards me. I had never seen this look before; it was like looking at a stranger. I took a step back.

“You just ended the relationship,” he declared.

We didn’t make it to the cafeteria.

That night we sat at the table in the rustic kitchen that had once given me such comfort. First, he wouldn’t admit the truth – he wore a spaced-out gaze, as if he were formulating a perfect alibi. He said my insecurity was stifling, but I barely heard; I was in my own bubble.

I cried like a desperate baby. I ran out into the backyard and dropped on to the snowy ground, hitting my head again and again. I was so dependent on this man, and not just the affirmation of his attention and adoration – my whole identity had been subsumed by his world. His music, his ideas, his friends. I felt like a hatchling, kicked prematurely out of the nest. Eventually I came back inside and we held each other, sliding to the floor. He didn’t ask for forgiveness, but we wondered together, could we repair this? In that embrace, we gathered forces against the therapist.

The next morning I wept in an urgent call to Dr P. “How could you traumatise me that way?”

“I suppose, upon reflection, it was like the hand of God coming down and I can see that…” Jungians loved Biblical references. “It was hard to watch you suffer.”

I left them both. I moved out of Stewart’s house and into a studio above a garage and concentrated on writing poetry. I cried a lot and lost a lot of weight. I thought I’d never recover. A lot happened in that studio; you know, the way it is in your 20s and you’re trying to get your self-esteem back and you have a crazy way of doing it.

Stewart’s new woman was even younger than me, and beautiful. I would drive by the old place, hoping to get a glimpse of her. It was like picking at a scab. One day there she was, in an old Volvo, long dark straight hair, a crisp white cotton sleeve hanging out the window. I followed the Volvo for a while, watching as her long arm turned the wheel. She seemed more graceful than me in every way.

Stewart began to call me, late at night. I’d let him come over to my studio above the garage and we’d have melancholy sex. He’d leave at 3am and return to the Volvo girlfriend. I was now “the other woman”. This was a man who slept with another woman during his honeymoon with his wife – I’d known this all along, but had caught that dangerous “it will be different with me” virus. Some months later I was suddenly cured – I broke off all contact. It had to be swift and severe; abstinence at the beginning of sobriety.

When I heard that Stewart had died, I’d moved to another city and was living with a gentle man. There was an old neighbour from those days living with Stewart who had always remained a friend; I ran into her once in a while. At first she told me he was sick, in the hospital, and not wanting to see anyone. But I didn’t want to know too much, and she was tentative – I still wanted her to hate him with me. At least she shared that the Volvo woman hadn’t lasted very long. Eventually, she told me he’d died and I imagined all the women who might appear at the funeral, like a procession from a Fellini film.

Over the years Stewart’s name has been hard to say aloud. It’s been like calling forth the winds of betrayal, but it was the last time I’d completely dissolve into someone else because of how lost I was, or how special they made me feel. Stewart had once asked me if I’d ever considered having my nose “fixed”. I was shocked and hurt at the time, but I said no. Turns out, my nose was fine.

A while after the midnight visits stopped, I ran into him in the street. I looked away. I didn’t even risk saying hello. That’s how you have to do it.

For more information on Binnie Klein’s music project, go to inthesetrees.com