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Archive for the ‘Jill and Brian’ Category

Meet Jill and Brian. They’ve been dating four years, they live together, and Jill just learned that Brian has had an affair.

It’s not the first time Brian has strayed, but Jill vows it will be the last. After the Pilates instructor, the old girlfriend, and now the frozen yogurt chef, enough is enough. Jill has given Brian two options. He can leave today and send for his things later. Or, they can get some couples therapy.

Jill remembers the Los Angeles marriage-counseling scene from when she was growing up in Southern California, when her parents’ marriage was generally in some perpetual state of self-imposed crisis. She has a positive view of counseling, if only because her parents are still together after 35 years.

Living up in the Bay Area now, as she pursues a doctoral degree at UC Berkeley, Jill is probably looking at some form of San Francisco couples therapy. She has no desire to see a psychiatrist or psychologist, too expensive, too clinical, but Jill does think it’s important she and Brian see some kind of certified Marriage and Family Therapist. For a time, she tried individual therapy at a school for therapists in training, and it was like getting haircuts at a barber’s college. The quality was not good.

Her greatest hopes are that she and Brian find a therapeutic environment where they can talk out their issues, sort their differences, and hopefully forge a stronger union. The man she loves is still there. This she knows.

Meet Jill and Brian. Now, they’re about to meet a whole new side of each other.