BOOKS
Hardcover, 304 pages
Touchstone Books
2010
The Husbands and Wives Club
A Year in the Life of a Couples Therapy Group
EXCERPT: CHAPTER ONE
WHO WOULD SUBMIT TO THIS?
The emotional intimacy,” Marie is telling her husband, Clem, and, unavoidably, the therapist and three other couples in the room, "needs to come before the physical intimacy."
"Okay," Clem says. His tone is chipper—so much of marriage is in the tone. This is the first meeting of a couples therapy group that will convene one or two days a month for the next year, and Clem doesn’t sound discouraged by this seemingly unoriginal request from his wife. (Women need to feel close before they can have sex, blah, blah, blah.) To the contrary: Clem is hearing it as a revelation, something he can do to make things better. His wife of twenty-two years is sitting catty-corner to him in a turquoise T-shirt with a tropical fish swimming across her chest; but her slim ankles are demurely crossed, the resting pose of one of those fifties starlets who swished around on-screen in full skirts, sheer hose, and kitten heels. So what if Marie is only wearing a loose T-shirt, cotton shorts, and white Keds? Clem first met her in college, when she was eighteen, and her legs are good, long for a woman of her modest height and round figure.
The therapist who runs the group, Philadelphia psychologist Judith Coché, opened the proceedings by instructing each of the four couples (there is a fifth, but they had to miss the first session for a long-scheduled vacation) to huddle together and tell each other what they wanted to accomplish in the next year. Quiet murmuring, periodically ripped by a seagull’s screech, filled the room.
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