Breaking up the boy

Yesterday I did a budget for myself so that I can finally pay down my credit card and build my savings back up. I dug through my charges and found the usual culprits- cocktails at Sable, lunch at Bandera, and desert at the Nordstrom shoe department. The surprising expenditure, however, was not shoes or martinis but therapy. I am now budgeting as much toward therapy as I am toward for food. Today I have to go meet my therapist and ask the really hard question: are you nourishing me as much as food?

Yes, for someone as neurotic and obsessive as myself therapy is not a luxury. But I have to challenge this person. I have to ask him if he's willing to step up and be the kind of therapist I need to help me pick up the pieces of my life and put them back together. Is he willing to go the distance to make this work?

When talking about therapists I often find myself using the same language that I use to talk about relationships, because it is a relationship in a sense. In this case he resembles most of my relationships, a tedious process with an attractive man that is winding up to be too expensive for me and ultimately not working out.

And the hardest part of leaving a therapist is that you've already laid the groundwork and made the investment by the time you realize it's not working out. Like relationships, I sometimes want to stay just so I don't have to go through the hassle of finding another one. Being single in a city full of SWM full of BS sucks, and it sucks enough to keep us in relationships that are not working. Yes, the boat is sinking but it hasn't sunk, and are we really ready to jump into shark-infested waters because of a little leak?

I look back over the last few months. This year has been full of some of the most painful and expensive life lessons that I have ever learned. And because of them, I've made some of the most positive changes in my life. And I wonder how much credit my therapist can take for my efforts to improve my life when he simply sat by the sidelines watching, not cheering, just watching. Occasionally he'll throw me a bone or ask me a question but the real dilemma is that I have set my own goals and held myself accountable to them and started this blog as another step of accountability. But would I have done those things if it weren't for therapy?

I'd like to think that I could make those changes on my own but it's hard to tell. It's hard to quantify and put a value on the effects of therapy, although my therapist seems to have no problem doing just that. Yes his time alone is worth what I pay, but isn't it what happens outside of the therapist's office that really defines a good therapist. Even if my therapist hasn't contributed to my success I am on a good path so why leave him when there's nothing really going wrong?

And this is the point in the thought process of over-analyzation that I would usually consult my therapist for answers.