Mafia Desire (Erotica)

“No, Ben, you’re going to see the counselor to find out why you feel you’re not worthy of being loved. To find out what events in your past led you to that conclusion. Those of us who love you, who are in love with you, feel pain when we see you hurting because of your misconceptions. But you shouldn’t worry about our pain because healing yourself will eliminate ours.”

“In love?” he whispered.

“Yes, you silly man! You have a few women in love with you, and they accept the fact that others are in love with you. Something else you need to understand is that love CAN work that way.” Gabriella smiled and shook her head. “I wasn’t supposed to be here as your counselor, just a friend. What else would you like to talk about?”

He’d only had bad experiences with people who said that they loved him, Wendy being only the most recent. These experiences went back… a long way. He looked at Gabriella’s open and friendly expression. He wished she was his counselor, but then he’d feel wrong about burdening her with his baggage. Maybe he should do some groundwork to prepare for his sessions with the counselor.

“What is love?” he asked her.

Gabriella snorted gently in surprise.

“I mean, what does love mean to you? I’ve been in love a few times in my life, and it’s never worked out for me, so maybe if I could hear what love means to others, I could see what I’ve done wrong,” he amended quickly.

“Why do you think you’re the one who did something wrong?” she asked. “You weren’t alone in these relationships, were you?”

Ben blinked at her, and she smiled.

“When I met Daniel at university, I was smitten. He was young and dashing and so in charge of his future. I came from an impoverished family, and I found his confidence with money and finance very attractive. He also said the right things to me and made me feel important. I was completely dazzled. He played the courting game very well. That doesn’t mean I was faultless in the eventual state of our marriage. I put Daniel up on a pedestal. My expectations of him didn’t match reality. When I discovered that, I tried to work with him to recapture what made me fall in love with him, but some of that never existed outside of my mind, and his passions had moved on from me to money. He had no desire to change anything as he had what he wanted. Instead of leaving Daniel, who genuinely loved his children, I gave up on finding happiness for myself, so my children would have a stable home.”

“I’m sorry,” Ben said.

“My point in all that was that the two young people we were when we met at university weren’t honest with each other. We let our expectations and desires cloud our decisions. During courting, people always present their best attributes and hide the negative. That’s human nature, I suppose. But we should have taken more time to get to know the real people we were before deciding to get married. I don’t regret having my two wonderful children. There are other things I do regret, but now I get to start over.”

“To find happiness,” he said

“Yes, Ben. I’m going to find happiness!” she smiled at him.

“OK, so maybe I’m not solely to blame for the failures of my relationships. But maybe my expectations are interfering with my ability to sustain a healthy relationship.”

“List them,” Gabriella said.

“What?” he asked.Nôvel(D)rama.Org's content.

“You’ve just said you have expectations. What are they? If you can itemize them, then maybe you can see if any truly are holding you back.”

“Fidelity,” he immediately said.

“You are particularly sensitive to that one based on how your marriage ended?” she asked.

“Yes. Discovering Wendy had been having an affair for potentially years hurt me more than I thought possible.”

“So maybe honesty is more of a critical item for you. If Wendy had come to you before she had an affair and told you why she felt the need to have one, maybe you might not have been as hurt as you were?” Gabriella asked.

Ben thought about that for a bit. “I think it would have still hurt a great deal, but… yes, I think if she’d been honest, the pain would have been far less.”

“What else?” she asked.

“Communication,” he said.

“I think we just described that. Open communication, but it needs to be truthful,” Gabriella said. “Next.”

“Uh. Loyal, friendly, kind, caring…” he struggled to name other expectations he had.

“These aren’t really outrageous expectations. Where are the requirements like, must be a Nobel prize-winning scientist, run a humanitarian aid station, and bench press 300 pounds? How about must be able to cook, do bookkeeping, and laundry,” she smiled.

Ben smiled. “Reasonably intelligent, genuinely compassionate, and fit will do. The rest I can do myself.”

“So it sounds like your current expectations may not be as big a factor as you thought. What were your expectations when you got married? You said you were planning on having a big family. When that turned out to be not in the cards, how did you react in your relationship? You still had a chance at being fertile with someone at that time, just not your wife. What did you do?” Gabriella pushed.

“I told her it wasn’t important. And it wasn’t,” he murmured.

“You adapted your expectations to protect what you had, right?” Gabriella clarified.

“Yes.”

“So maybe your past expectations weren’t so rigid and difficult to live with either,” she said, looking him in the eye. “What about sex? Did you want it more often than her or less often? Were you incompatible with how you wanted to have sex?”

“The only time she complained was after she discovered she couldn’t have babies. She wanted to cut back significantly. Then near the end of our marriage, she wanted sex much less often. She even cut back on the cuddling before sleeping.”