Overheard at a weekly session with the Psychotherapist
“My love is like a red red rose” but not plucked from that garden! Photo by:By Quarrion via Flickr CC
Therapist: So tell me how have things been going this past week? Any problems.
Patient: Not too bad, a few work problems here and there. The kids have been busy.
Therapist: And your wife? How’s your relationship at the moment?
Patient: It’s good. We’re great. It’s just, as you can imagine being so down and having a tough time it’s hard to really connect..
Therapist: In the bedroom?
Patient: Yes.
Therapist: Did you read Winnie the Pooh as I suggested?
Patient: Yes I did but she got a little annoyed when I boinged on the bed at midnight like Tigger!
Therapist: I can see how that could be a problem.
Patient: And wasn’t happy when I started amorously referring to her as ‘my little Piglet’.
Therapist: I was hoping you would get more of a perspective on things by reading Winnie the Pooh. That you would relax and have a little more fun. Did you try the other book I suggested?
Patient: (shamefacedly) The ‘Garden’ one? Yes I’ve seen that. Didn’t think too much of it, to be honest.
Therapist: (quizzical) Really? You didn’t find it erotic? Arousing?
Patient: Not arousing no. I saw it on the tele a while ago. Can’t say programmes dreamt up by creatives high as kites really do it for me.
Therapist: Were you not titivated by their frank revelations?
Patient: (eager to please) The opening sequence – ‘This is the way to the garden in the night’ – was a promising start…but it didn’t go anywhere..even though she said ‘Upsy daisy here I come..’
Therapist: Who said that? The girl with the vibrating toothbrush?
Patient: (confused) I think I missed the vibrating toothbrush.
Therapist: Some men have said that reading that book together was the best thing that ever happened to their sex life. But everyone’s different aren’t they?…
So, moving on… how about the tapping, how are you getting on with practising that technique in moments of stress…?
*****
It wasn’t until the patient had returned home to the comfy chair and Google that he came to grips with his session. And in that quiet moment he realised with red face that the therapist had not been recommending a nightly dose of In the Night Garden (the BBC programme that rocks the world of 2-4 yr olds) but rather a similarly titled, but exceptionally different kind of book:
My Secret Garden – a 1970s feminist tome detailing – in frank, explicit detail – women’s sexual fantasies. And not an IgglePiggle in sight.
Lesson – There is a world of different between loving in the night garden and loving in the secret garden.
