John thought about what Stephanie had said before he decided what to do about his houseguest. She had a point, it was incredibly selfish of him to simply dismiss this woman simply because he was interested in someone else. It was more then selfish, it was the antithesis of everything he had tried to put into practice about human interactions. What was her perspective about this? Was she embarrassed? Hurt? Confused? Did she even want to talk about his? He realized this last thought likely came from a selfish desire to avoid a difficult situation. He was a therapist. He was trained to talk about difficult things, and didn’t let himself off the hook so easily.

Despite being in a big hurry to get back to work, it turned out she did in fact want to talk. Her name was Kristin and she had recently lost her father. She had been drinking a lot, staying out late, and had been with a lot more men then usual lately in an attempt to feel closer to people and to forget for a while the pain that came from losing her father, who she had a great deal of unresolved issues with.

The whole thing made sense from a psychological standpoint. He was an older man, emotionally expressive, and likely said all of the right things at 2 in the morning to get this woman to agree to come home with him. There was a psychological precedent here that went all the way back to Freud called the “repetition compulsion” which explains how a person will repeat a problem from childhood over and over again trying to achieve a different result.

All of these thoughts were intellectualizing however. In this case John had at least on some level used his knowledge of psychology for his own personal gain, and now he wanted to do his best to deal with what he had done. After talking for nearly an hour John gave her a recommendation for a female therapist he knew who he thought would be a good fit. He also informed her she could call him if she wanted to talk about this more, and even be friends moving forward. It was what he had to give right now.

After she left he thought all day about the situation he had created, and what he could learn from the way he had behaved. He had always considered guilt an essentially useless emotion, but he always knew that people had to take personal responsibility for their actions. More importantly, he wanted to think about what it was that made him keep repeating this behavior over and over, and what problem he was trying to solve from his own past life. It was certainly not a new question and he was pretty familiar with the answers, now he had to figure out what he was going to do about it. Something deep inside of him told him he had the chance at something spectacular in his life if he could somehow begin to put some of his own demons to bed.

His first instinct was to call Dr. Paul, but he knew he was taking advantage of that relationship, and wanted to think outside the box this time. Besides, he rhad followed his advice last time. He had “found the girl” whatever the hell that really meant, but clearly that didn’t solve any of his immediate problems. On the other hand he knew and believed that there was no such thing as chance encounters, and that perhaps this latest sequence of events in his life would make more sense when he had the luxury of looking back.

He thought back to one of the first things Stephanie ever asked him. What was an empath exactly? He had spent his whole career dating back to his time as a student thinking about the idea of empathy, but the term “empath” had a bit of a different connotation. He decided he wanted to find out more about what it is this term exactly meant, and decided to do a little more research on the subject at the local bookstore.