Katya worked out back at school that romance and she were simply incompatible. Katya was far too logical, far too correct for that. All those miniskirts, plunging necklines, lipstick trials in the girls' toilets, pink pompoms on pencils and pouting lips — none of it was for her. She watched it the way a scientist watches some new bug, without ever thinking of trying it herself. School is for studying, not for making eyes at boys!
Background: The stories are published from the feedback we received and with our clients’ consent. The names have been deliberately changed. At the end you will find a counsellor’s commentary analysing the relationship.
Skip to the counsellor’s commentaryHaving left school with a gold medal and university with a first-class diploma, Katya somehow slipped, without noticing it, head first into her job as a judge's assistant at the Commercial Court; and when she came up for air for a moment, she discovered that all her friends and colleagues were already, as one is supposed to be, married and getting ready to have a second or a third child. And it was that "supposed to be" that stung most of all. It seemed that everyone but the very laziest asked her when she was finally getting married. Her colleagues cheerfully swapped tips on where to buy toddlers' clothes in the sales, how to get coffee stains out of a husband's shirt and who had been given what for their anniversary; they showed off sickly-sweet photographs from family holidays and plastered their computers with pictures of themselves kissing their husbands. Katya felt like an alien, an odd one out who was already too old for parties and still too young for domestic bliss. It seemed that when her colleagues looked at the clock they saw how long was left until the end of the working day, while Katya saw how long was left until the end of her childbearing years.
And what exactly was wrong with the men? Here she was, the perfect girl: a good job, good-looking, no fool, healthy (she had even ordered two hundred ovulation tests online to make sure that her egg came out every month like clockwork), friendly, good around the house, no tantrums... and yet for some reason men chose exclusively young slips of girls with legs lengthened by stilettos and a load of hang-ups and problems bulkier than their almost certainly surgically enhanced breasts.
"Don't get so wound up about it, everyone gets what is theirs, maybe you don't even need it..." — Liza, the trainee, tried to console her. Liza was younger and about three times Katya's size, but she was the kindest, most caring soul on earth. At her size there really was no point in getting wound up.
But Katya could not help getting wound up. Now was the time to get married and start a family. That was the correct and logical thing to do. And so she drew up a detailed plan for reaching the goal, set deadlines and "milestones", as it is fashionable to call them nowadays, printed out several copies, laminated them and hung them up both at home and at work. The first version of the plan consisted of five global points:
- Physical shape: work on the glutes, and push-ups to lift the bust.
- Get used to stilettos and skirts. One month without trousers to work on femininity.
- Dating sites — at least an hour a day!!!!!
- Not a single Friday without a bar or a club!!!!!
- Do not crush men with your intellect!!!!
Over the following week her colleagues showered Katya with suggestions for new points to add to the list, but they were so illogical that Katya decided to stick with what she had. To most people such a plan would have looked deranged, but Katya was determined to carry out every point down to the smallest detail. And within a week point one produced its first result.
"Excuse me, miss, I have never in my life seen anyone do push-ups with such grim determination!" — said a rather pleasant voice from somewhere above her.
Katya raised her head to see a rather muscular and good-looking man watching her intently. And there was neither aggression nor dominance in his gaze — only sincere admiration.
"I..." — Katya faltered. Indeed, you can hardly explain to a complete stranger that you have a goal, a task and a deadline for building up your pectoral muscles in order to make quite sure of getting married!
"Oh, don't be shy. On the contrary, I'm glad you're like that. Most people come here only to find themselves a bloke. They train for show and flirt for all they are worth! I work here as an instructor, I should know. By the way, my name is Sergei."
"Katya..."
"Excellent! Katya, may I invite you for a water with lemon and mint after your workout? Coffee, you know, is not terribly good for you after the gym."
"Er..." — Katya simply could not refuse. So unobtrusively did he say it and so hopefully did he look at her.
After the correct water with lemon and mint and a short conversation Katya honestly tried to slip away, but it was not to be. Sergei somehow managed not only to see through her manoeuvres but to expose them outright, with such childlike directness that there was nothing to object to.
"I know, a fitness instructor is not quite what most girls are looking for. They want flash businessmen who know how to take everything life has to offer. I even understand them. But not everyone is like that. I have something to offer too, as it happens. I am a man, after all! And I know how to court a woman as well! Go on, tell me — am I courting you badly?"
"I... find it hard to say..."
"Come off it! I have been trying my hardest to make you like me for half an hour now. Surely it isn't that bad?"
"Of course not!"
"So I have a chance of inviting you to dinner as well?" — Sergei brightened. "Please, please, please say yes!"
And Katya simply could not refuse; she could not hold out against such pressure. Childlike, naive and sincere.
Sergei turned out to be extraordinarily romantic. He took Katya to all sorts of restaurants, always brought flowers, always made sure her glass was never empty and was the very embodiment of a true gentleman. Long ago Katya had wondered how she would court girls if she were a man. Back then she had invented the perfect behaviour for a suitor, and now the living embodiment of her fantasies was sitting in front of her. He gently stopped her whenever she reached for her purse, he gallantly gave her his hand as she stepped off the bus, he waited patiently for her finally to start trusting him and every time he marvelled at her womanly wisdom, her softness and her beauty. True, he was nothing like the classic suitor you could flaunt in front of colleagues and girlfriends, but the way he behaved, the way he courted her, the way he cared for her was surprising, unusual and endearing. Every time Katya decided he was not what she needed, and every time she could not hold out against him.
And then it went further. They say that with the right man a woman turns into a real Woman. Katya found that hard to believe, but she suddenly noticed that she took enormous pleasure in buying yet another summer dress, in cooking breakfast (even if Sergei had to rush in and rescue that breakfast), in knowing that Seryozha might ring her at any moment. Before long Katya shyly stuck her first selfies on her computer, the ones where she was kissing Sergei. Her colleagues jealously inspected the photographs and... admitted Katya into their circle of the un-single.
It was a completely new feeling. Katya was no longer an outcast, no longer the strange one. Nobody asked her any more to finish off somebody else's work on the grounds that there was no one waiting for her at home. Nobody was wary of inviting her to get-togethers, because she no longer counted as free and dangerous to other women's husbands. People looked at her differently and talked to her differently. On top of that Sergei genuinely worshipped her, admiring her taste, her looks, her manners, her softness, her femininity and her fragility. He intercepted everything she wanted to do around the house, explaining that he was the man, after all.
And at some point it seemed to Katya that she was losing herself, that she was becoming too emotional, too illogical. Sergei, it seemed, controlled everything in her life, leaving her only the choice of cocktail. A weak woman would have enjoyed that, but Katya did not consider herself one, and so she decided to take back control herself.
"Tonight dinner is on me!" — she announced, brooking no argument.
"Come on, why? I invited you," — Sergei objected gently.
"That is what I want! And anyway, we live in the 21st century! We have equal rights!"
"Mm-hm, and feminism, and all men are abusers if they pay for a girl."
"Oh, don't take offence!" — Katya suspected she had gone too far — "it's just that I am really not like that!"
"Neither am I. I am a man, and it gives me pleasure to be able to take care of the woman I love. Surely you enjoy it too?"
"I do, but I am not used to it!"
"And I am not used to anything else. I am a bloke, after all!"
"Yes, you keep saying that."
"And you don't like it?"
"I already know who you are..."
"Well then, relax and stop making a thing of it."
"Then it will not be me any more."
They argued for a while, Katya almost broke into a shout, stubbornly defending her position, and Sergei gave in.
"So you need me not to be myself? I cannot do that either. Give me a call when you have worked out what it is you want from a man!" — he said in the end, and calmly walked out of the restaurant, having first left the right sum with a tip in the leather folder. And Katya was suddenly alone.
The fairy tale ended as abruptly and as inexplicably as it had begun. And Katya had managed to drive away the very man who was "hers", the one whose photographs were now hanging on her monitor at work. She tried to sort it all out point by point, to understand at what moment everything had gone wrong, where and by whom the strategic error had been made, who had been more in the right... But logic has its limits in matters of love. The more Katya thought about it, the less she understood. Now, if only somebody had explained the rules of the game to her in advance, she would certainly have managed; as it was, she had to dive head first into the unknown, into a complete absence of rules and regulations... And even that pile of books about how to win a man, which Sergei had chuckled over for so long, gave no answers for her particular situation.
A week later Katya was close to going mad. She wandered around the flat with her hair on end, not knowing what to do with herself. It was clear to her that Sergei had left her too, and that no, she had absolutely no idea how to avoid this in the future. And then the auditory hallucinations began.
the authorJust picture all this world, this whole enormous world,
Exactly as it is, as it really is,
With fields and birds and flowers and people in it,
But with no love — imagine it, with no love at all.
There are oceans, and clouds, and cities,
Only nobody has ever heard of love...
It was Seryozha's voice, which meant that it simply could not be happening. Meanwhile a couple of desperate chords sounded on a guitar, and the chorus came:
the authorJust the same, on a blue night the stars wheel in the sky,
Just the same, in the morning the sun shines from on high,
Only what is it for? And who has any need of it —
A world in which people have no need of one another.
Just the same, the summer fades and the cold comes,
And the earth under the snow waits for a new spring,
Only I have no need, do you hear, I have no need at all
Of a world where you and I have no need of one another.
Katya went shyly over to the window. Luckily, it was the second floor. She had to press her forehead to the glass and shield the light with her hands to see anything at all. And the auditory hallucination acquired the status of a visual one.
the authorJust picture all this world, this whole enormous world,
Exactly as it is, and that there is love in it,
When it is filled with the breath of spring,
And dreams in colour the whole night through.
And if something in your life goes wrong,
Picture again that world in which there is no love
Seryozha smiled happily when he saw Katya, nodded, waved his hand at somebody and struck up the chorus again with new enthusiasm.
the authorJust the same, on a blue night the stars wheel in the sky,
Just the same, in the morning the sun shines from on high,
Only what is it for? And who has any need of it —
A world in which people have no need of one another.
Just the same, the summer fades and the cold comes,
And the earth under the snow waits for a new spring,
Only I have no need, do you hear, I have no need at all
Of a world where you and I have no need of one another.
Only I have no need, do you hear, I have no need at all
Of a world where you and I have no need of one another
Out from behind the bushes came several heavies with an enormous ladder, which they propped against Katya's building so that it rested on the wall just below her window. Sergei slung the guitar on his back and climbed up. Before long he was knocking at the window of a thunderstruck Katya. By the time she had gathered her wits and opened it, a police car summoned by some vigilant old lady was standing below, and the old lady was shrieking out of her window that somebody in the next stairwell was being raped and robbed. The policemen, who could see the whole corpus delicti from below, were all giggling together.
"Every real bloke should climb into the bedroom window of the woman he loves at least once in his life!" — he announced proudly.
"This is the living room..." — Katya objected feebly, but Sergei gestured to her to be quiet.
"I hope there will be no objections to the woman he loves?"
And there were none.
Counsellor’s commentary
Katya is the compulsive personality type. In her worldview, her actions and her thoughts — in everything — she leans on the traditions, canons, logic and rules that already exist (those of her family, of society). It matters to her to understand which system she is living inside, what the rules of the game are and how to meet them, and to have everything predictable. Without that kind of reliable, stable footing she is usually tormented by doubts and by the difficulty of choosing "the correct way". Compulsives have a need for outside guidance.
Sergei is the epileptoid personality type. People of this type typically fear direct attention to their own person while subconsciously craving that attention. They are very sensuous and flexible people who often look at the world emotionally, through rose-tinted glasses. Women of this type are the living embodiment of femininity, but in our culture men of this type often shy away from that femininity in themselves and try to play the real macho. They are emotional and have a need for a partner who takes the lead, which they sometimes compensate for by playing the strong, confident man.
He is romantic, she is proper. All the classic canons of courtship are observed, although he is a little wooden about it and courts her by the template. On the one hand, he hates women. On the other hand, he admires them. He brings her into harmony, makes her more feminine. She is so proper that she cannot refuse if she is courted correctly.
This is a partnership union of the female type. In a union like this both partners will be building their shared little nest and will not much need anybody else. These will be calm relationships in which nobody gets in anybody's way, everything can always be agreed and the rest of the world recedes into the background. At the same time, the union of these two personality types depends heavily on agreements and on an established set of rules. Sergei, like all epileptoids, tends to want to receive more attention and closeness than he gives, to take offence easily and to withhold closeness and sex from his partner in order to teach her a lesson. Katya, like all compulsives, tends to romanticise sex very strongly, to doubt her own gender identity and to ask herself all sorts of global questions about relationships.
There will be no vulgarity in this relationship, everything will be beautiful, romantic and correct, but both personality types are led rather than leading, which can make the relationship less reliable. We call this a second-best marriage: the two are able to find a common language and develop each other, but they need a certain set of ground rules and rules of the game for the marriage to last longer.
