You'll Thank Me for This by Nina Siegal (top novels txt) 📗

If we need therapy now, what does that say about our future?”

“It doesn’t matter what it says,” she answered. “Nobody is counting. I mean, it says that we care about the relationship we have and we want to make sure we get off to a good start. To make sure that we set off on a good footing. That we embark with the wind in the right direction—”

“And other metaphors,” he cut her off, but with a smile.

Martijn’s attitude toward therapy actually infuriated her. Was it the same aversion men had to asking for directions? If you had to ask for help, it meant you were weak? Grace was the kind of person who loved consulting anyone who might know something better than she did. She had stacks of books on her bedside table on all kinds of improvement categories—You as Your Best Self, How to Find Common Ground with Anyone, Loving Unconditionally, What Makes a Happy Stepmom?, Dealing with Anger in Your Relationship. It was rather an embarrassment, actually, but on the other hand, why be ashamed? She was a woman who wanted to be the optimal version of herself. Martijn told her she was “too Oprah.”

In any case, at this very moment, Grace desperately did not want to get into a marital dispute, if this could really be classified as such, right here at the Scout Clubhouse, just before her husband left to volunteer for her daughter’s camping trip. Especially since he was putting himself out there to show how much he cared about Karin, it would be a disgrace.

“It’s not that I don’t believe in therapy; I’m sure it can be good for some people,” he volunteered, without her having to say what she had been thinking. “It’s just that I think we can do this on our own. You just have to understand that I’m a little bit damaged, and, well, my kids are a little bit damaged too. And sometimes we just need you to give us the benefit of the doubt.”

This logic had its self-effacing element, Grace understood, but it also cut in the opposite direction. It blamed her, didn’t it, for not being patient and forgiving and generous enough. Was that really how it was?

She could go to therapy alone, of course, if he refused to come. She had heard people say that as soon as one side disarms, the battle necessarily ends. But what if she laid down her own defenses and his agitation remained? She’d trusted Martijn with everything until now; she’d put so much into his hands, her very life, and Karin’s life too.

“So you’re saying I’m not patient enough?”

Martijn spoke more softly. “No, no, no. It’s just—it’s me. I’m just dealing with a lot right now. I’ve got a lot on my plate, as you like to say. I’m trying to deal with a few too many things at once.”

“With what?” Grace genuinely wanted to understand. “With us? With work?”

He looked around, as if he was assessing how much to reveal in this public place.

“Please,” she said. “Can’t you just tell me if there is something outside of the marriage—outside of us—that is putting pressure on you? If I knew what it was, maybe we could address it together. Before you go, couldn’t you just articulate, a little, what is making you feel so stressed?”

He nodded and motioned her toward the lake. They walked together, their bodies aligned and their hands adjacent, without touching. Grace felt that if he would just take her hand, reassure her a little bit, she could make it through without worrying. But he didn’t.

Once they’d gotten some distance from the others, she said, “Okay, are you ready to tell me what is going on?”

He shook his head, lowering it to gaze at the ground. He looked back up into her eyes, his own shiny with moisture, if not tears. “I know I can’t live up to your standards, to what you really deserve, Grace, to what…”—he hesitated, and she knew what he was about to say—“to what he might have been able to give you.” They both knew that Martijn was referring to Pieter, but he wouldn’t say the name out loud. “I feel that I’m not the man I should be for you. And never will be. I’ll never be enough. It frightens me.”

Grace, for the briefest moment, felt pity for Martijn. He was being really vulnerable here. It was quite a thing for him to say, actually. And she wanted to give him the answer he was seeking—that of course he was enough, she loved him just as much as or more than she had loved Pieter, and he was what she wanted. But unfortunately he was right, on a fundamental level. Neither she nor Karin would ever be able to love him the way they had loved Pieter. Pieter had been her first, true love and Karin’s biological father. What could she do about that? It was impossible for her to lie to him.

Martijn stood there, looking simultaneously plaintive and afflicted. Grace saw in the wrinkles of his face, his beautiful green eyes, the desperation in his expression, that he contained a deep well of resentment toward her and maybe even a measure of fear. This was the expression of a man who had married a woman who wouldn’t completely adore him in the way he wished. And she knew in her own heart, no matter how hard she tried to wish it away, that he was right.

But then, mingled almost immediately with her empathy for Martijn, came another, and equally powerful, emotion, that of scorn. There was something of a manipulation behind this show of vulnerability. Wasn’t it a little ridiculous of Martijn to be envious of her feelings for a man who was dead? For a man with whom she’d spent half her lifetime and a man she’d lost to violence? For Karin’s actual father? This was an unreasonable expectation, was it not?

And after that, a third, stranger feeling: that