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The Therapist Who Taught Me How to Have a Healthy Relationship
She opened my eyes to a simple technique that YOU can use to make your own relationship better, too. It works!
This piece was inspired by the passing on December 30, 2021 of Lois Bass, a therapist in Amherst, Massachusetts. Lois was a remarkable woman, not merely a good clinician. I didn’t know her as a friend or colleague, although I knew people she knew. And for a brief time in 1993, she was my couples’ therapist. Her death reminded me of a time long ago that I can now write about without judging myself or worrying about being judged.
Needing Help
It wasn’t a healthy relationship to begin with. “X” and I were all wrong for each other from Day One.
I often joked about the mismatch: She is too young, I’d tell people — 13 years my junior —and too tall (six feet to my 5'3"). We were from completely different backgrounds and worlds. She was also — honestly, I knew this from the get-go — too dramatic and too depressed.
But there I was. I even left my beloved Manhattan to be with her.
I should have run the other away when she told me she’d “gone through” 21 sponsors in her 20 years in AA and had tried committing suicide twice… when those…
