Aydan Dunnigan-Vickruck wants to see the world from an opposite perspective. That’s why he goes to a female therapist.
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My analyst wears ruby red lipstick.
Well, not always.
Sometimes burgundy, raspberry, blood, cherry.
But always red and always bold.
My journal which I take to my sessions also has bright red lips stamped on the cover.
What are the odds.
It provokes a slight chuckle.
My analyst asks “what is funny” but I never answer.
I am not sure why.
Maybe it is the pure audacity of being in the intimate company of two sets of red lips.
Maybe I feel adored, blessed, ganged up on.
Maybe I am too modest.
So why am I mentioning this now?
Because lips are important.
Among other things, they form words.
A lot of very special, treasured comments come out of that mouth.
So I notice.
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Red lips even more so.
They underscore the obvious.
They direct attention to the chasm that rips through the middle of the office and separates counsellor from counsellee, male from female.
Our history tells us that this fissure is almost impossibly deep and cavernous to bridge.
It has spurred violence, hatred and misunderstanding.
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So here it is in stark relief:
she female analyst on one side with knitted stockings, dyed hair, and ruby red lips crafting insights of the anima perspective
and me male, analyzed, in the animus camp with my matted hair, wrinkled tweed jacket and scruffy face, bewildered.
Which is what makes our sessions so fascinating and generative
and such a challenge.
We have to find a way to bridge that gap.
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I have often asked myself why I don’t go to a male therapist.
We could sit together on the same side of the room commiserating,
he nodding knowingly and sympathetically.
A man to help me solve all my male problems.
♦◊♦
Except that I don’t want sympathy from someone who understands.
I want someone who sees the world from the opposite side of the great divide.
I want to be able to stare mesmerized across the canyon at this quite brilliant, obviously other-gendered person and throw at her all my very male questions and confusion and watch with amazement as she deftly lobs back totally unanticipated insights.
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This is the power, the fascination, the attraction of working with a female therapist.
We get to thrash out in theatre all the accumulated fears and prejudices which have ripped apart humanity for millennia.
I don’t get to scapegoat the other half of humanity and my analyst has the privilege of hearing directly from unpainted lips what it is like to be male.
No longer talking in abstract about sexuality or sensuality or communication challenges.
We are doing it. We are taking it on, face to face in our caged enclosure.
I risk vulnerability, make admissions, confessions, await the response, watch the lips.
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This cross-gender connection fascinates me and I am not entirely sure why.
At other times in my life I assumed it was sexual attraction but this default assumption has been disproved on numerous occasions.
In other less professional encounters where the sex option was right out there, on the table so to speak, I stepped aside, backed down.
What the hell? What was I thinking? How did my male hormonal auto-reflex fail me at the critical moment?
Apparently I have an instinctive aversion to sexual encounters outside of a relationship.
They complicate life, invite emotional entanglement, create a mass of conflicted feelings of guilt and betrayal, etc.
But more than that, it is not what I am searching for.
Deep down I seem to be seeking that engaging, personally expansive possibility of cross-gender connection which moves above the waist and connects heart to heart, mind to mind.
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This is my attraction to tango.
As sensual or sexual as tango appears from the sidelines, there are very strict guidelines that keep one’s focus on the dance floor:
The embrace, though close is to connect heart to heart, not groin to groin.
Steps are led by invitation so that the follower always has the option to abort a particular maneuver if it goes beyond her/his comfort zone.
One does not go home with a dance partner (unless you also came with her.)
At the same time it introduces this incredible cross-gender energetic tension and raises the vibration to something other than or more than sexual.
♦◊♦
Which is?
Man and woman coming together in reverence and gentleness and co-creative energy.
For me this is in some way coming home, a completion.
Not entirely sure why or what that means.
But while I figure it out I happily hold my dance partner close, my life partner closer and
every once in a while casually glance down at my notebook and chuckle.
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Photo credit:Beks/flickr
Interesting. Well, I go to a female analyst as well, but my reasons are slightly less poetic. In short, internalized misandry. Deep in my gut I have such trouble believing that a male analyst would want to help me instead of making light of my emotions, telling me to “man up”, or not even understanding at all. I also fear male advice for social problems, believing no man can ever give advice that is ethical. I guess an emotionally unavailable father will do that to you.