First Kiss

I found myself sitting in the waiting room of the relationship counselor’s office waiting for Sean. His plane was delayed and he sent me a text saying he might be a few minutes late to our first session. I was irritated and kept wiggling my foot and looking at the clock. Mike, our counselor recommended by Dr. Sheehan, called me into his office after a few more minutes of waiting. Mike has cropped black hair and a meticulously manicured beard. He wears dark-framed, thick glasses and was wearing and brown suit.
I apologized for Sean’s lateness as I sat down in his office and explained the situation.
“That’s not a problem. Why don’t you explain why you guys are here today.” Mike prompted.
“Well,” I said trying to think of the best way to phrase everything, “Sean and I got engaged shortly before he left for tour, he’s a musician, and we’ve been having tension for a long time. I recently found out that he slept with his tour manager on our anniversary after a fight between us and after a lot of thinking about it I decided to stay with him and try to fix our relationship. So that’s where we’re at right now.”
Just then Sean came into Mike’s office apologizing profusely and sat in the chair next to mine. He was panting as if he’d ran here. The tension between him and I when he entered the room was still apparent, though (this was the first time seeing each other since we’d met in the park).
“Faith was just telling me what brought you guys here.” Mike explained calmly to Sean.
Sean gave me a sideways glance as if to gauge my mood.
“I’m sensing some tension.” Mike said.
I almost burst out laughing. That was an understatement, for sure. I hadn’t looked at Sean once since he’d come in. Neither of us said anything. I looked down at my nails; the long silence was very loud. Eventually Sean cleared his throat and spoke up.
“We haven’t seen each other since we last discussed my….”
“Infidelity.” Mike stated.
“Yeah.” Sean said.
I smirked on the inside. I liked that Mark was being direct about Sean’s actions.
“Sean you seem uncomfortable discussing this.” Mike never seems to ask questions; he makes comments, really.
“Well, I am.” Sean said.
“Is there a reason?” Mike asked.
“It’s a sensitive topic.” Sean chanced a look at me. I was still looking at my nails. “I don’t want to make anything worse.”
“Avoiding a candid discussion about this isn’t going to help either of you. Sean, you were unfaithful in your relationship with Faith. It happened. Let’s acknowledge it. Acknowledging what happened is the only way either of you will ever be able to move on from this.”
“Okay.” Sean said.
“Now, our time is almost up for today so-”
“What? We’ve barely just started talking.” I said looking up from my nails.
“We started rather late.” Mike said matter-of-factly.
I glared at Sean. It was the first time I looked at him during the appointment.
“Faith, you seem upset.”
“That’s because I am. I went to the trouble of setting up this appointment and Sean can’t even get here on time.” I said crossing my arms and looking out the window.
“My plane was late; I got here as fast as I could, Faith.”
“We can’t come here every week so it annoys me that you were late, especially since this is our first appointment and it’s going to last for less than 20 minutes because of you. If this becomes a habit, I don’t-”
“It won’t become a habit. I’ll just have to plan better.”
Sean and I were both looking at each other for the first time during our appointment. Mike cocked his head before deciding to move on.
“So, your homework for the next session is to have sex.”
Sean and I both looked at Mike with wide eyes full of confusion.
“Excuse me?” I said.
“What?” Sean said at the same time.
“I think that you two need to start building up the level of intimacy you have lost not just with Sean’s infidelity but with the tour, as well. Having sex will increase the intimacy the two of you will have and that can help repair the trust that was broken.”
“I fail to see how that will help. I have absolutely no desire to have sex with him right now.”
“You’ve gotta bite the bullet at some point, Faith. Here’s the problem: Until the intimacy is reinstated and the trust at least has a foundation to be rebuilt on, then you may never want to have sex with Sean again. But you aren’t going to get that intimacy back with just talking to each other considering how much Sean will be away from you and touring. You need to have sex in order to kick start your relationship back into gear. We can try getting the intimacy back with talking and bonding sessions but because of your situation with touring, I’m going to be blunt: you’re just going to end up wasting your time here. It won’t work. So you need to have sex.”
Sean and I gaped at Mike.
“That’s going to be the worst sex, ever.” Sean said.
I nodded.
“Neither one of us is going to enjoy it. I obviously don’t want to and Sean knows that, how are we supposed to have sex knowing how the other one feels about it?”
“Well, I don’t recommend that you have sex immediately,” Mike said, “You just need to before we have our next session. You’re going to have to talk to each other and bond a little in order to make the sex more bearable. I don’t expect you guys to have the same sex you had prior to Sean’s infidelity but the talking and bonding will help you avoid having hate sex, for example.”
Sean and I were speechless.
Mike herded us out of his office, I paid his secretary, and then Sean and I left the building together. We stood in front of the main entrance doors to Mike’s office building looking at each other for a few moments.
“I’ve gotta go to the airport in about an hour and a half for check-in.” Sean said, “Do you want to grab something to eat?”
“No, I ate before I came here,” I said. It was true. I’m not sure I would have gone with Sean even if it hadn't been true.
“Um. So I’m going to go, then. I’m sorry for being late. It won’t happen again.” Sean said.
“Okay.” I said turning to go.
“Faith?” I turned back around, “Can I give you a kiss good bye?”
I considered this. My first instinct was to say ‘no’ but then I thought about our therapy session and the fact that I was at least going to have to try to make this relationship work.
“Okay.” I said.
Sean leaned in and we kissed. It was kind of awkward because it was sort of a peck but then not; but then it wasn’t very passionate. It was like the first kiss you have in junior high where you bang your heads together and then get out of sync and you just stand there with your mouths pressed together really tightly while not touching each other and wondering where to put your hands. I’ve definitely had better ones. I probably would have laughed if it had been under different circumstances.