Shrinks and the singles world

Paul Jablow

is a former Inquirer writer and editor

Maybe it just seemed easier back then.

I met her parents over the holidays. She met my mother a couple of weeks later. Everyone got along. We were married in the spring.

Now it's decades later, and we haven't been together for some years. I'm "out there," so to speak, along with countless other middle-aged and senior singles.

So if we find someone, to whom do we bring him or her for approval, advice or a second opinion?

Our parents are gone. Our kids are in their own world. Our friends have more issues than we do, maybe even their own agendas.

So we try something else: We bring them to our shrinks.

I doubt there are any statistics on it, but from talking to dozens of single people in their 50s, 60s and older, I know this happens often.

It certainly has in my case. I have been in three relationships since my divorce. The first two women took me to see their shrinks, and they insisted on meeting mine. (One of them even complained that her audience with him was not long enough.) The third woman was a shrink herself, so I guess she bypassed the middleperson.

It was Woman No. 3, by the way, who had my shrink really concerned.

"Why?" I asked him.

"Because we're the most screwed up people on the planet," he said. "Our only useful social purpose is to keep other people from getting as screwed up as we are."

The whole business has its own, unique seasonal rhythm, paralleling that of relationships themselves.

At first, there is the anticipation.

"How did your appointment go?" she asks nervously. "Did you tell him about me? What did he say?"

Later, as disputes arise and the parties agree to shrink intervention, you can often tell who the dominant person in the pair is by whose shrink they go to or, at least, go to first.

A female friend called me some years back, enthusiastic about what she considered great news in her sometimes-rocky relationship: "He's firing his shrink."

Shrinks, of course, can be wonderful allies, their advice tossed like verbal plates in the kitchen. As in: "Well, I told her about your relationship with your sister, and she just sat there and rolled her eyes. She thinks it's really weird that you haven't gotten beyond that."

Perhaps the most vivid example of this in my experience came when I told a woman I was seeing in New York that an issue between us seemed like an obstacle to moving further.

"I know," said the woman, a California transplant who frequently flew back home. "I'm working on it with my shrinks."

"Your shrinks?"

"Yes," she said. "I have an East Coast shrink and a West Coast shrink."

Safely back in Philadelphia, I called her to say that I did not see the issue in question - or any others - being resolved.

The full reaction came on my telephone answering machine the following day in a tirade that ended with the phrase, "And my shrink thinks you're an . . . too."

"East Coast or West Coast?" I said to no one in particular. Then I hit the delete button - literally and figuratively.

None of this should be taken to mean that shrinks can't be helpful in relationships (unless you're Woody Allen or Tony Soprano).

Plus, they reinforce our belief that advice is more valuable if you're paying for it. Lose that faith and we drag down the entire consulting industry.

And shrinks do have a way of pointing out those repeating patterns of rationalization that so often block us from contentment. To wit: "You've always said that you hate authority figures, but this would be the third straight female cop you've broken up with. You do realize that, don't you?"

But mostly, shrinks are useful in the singles world because we need all the help we can get. My shrink, naturally, has a phrase for it.

"We're all hanging on by our fingernails," he told me the other day. "Some of us just have a little firmer grip than others."