After writing about the luxury of mental health, I kept asking myself: Why do I want counseling? While I had been in a coupled relationship recently, I had trouble with emotional regulation, especially regulating anger. Now that I was no longer in that relationship, I haven’t raged. Krishnamurti’s quote kept bubbling up. Where these two related?

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

Was I trying to learn to adjust to a sick way of living?

As I was asking myself that question, I realized that this had never come up in counseling. Ever. None of the counselors I have ever worked with had checked to see if maybe I was single-at-heart and my distress came from being forced to be someone I am not. Although I am not convinced that this would explain everything, at least it was part of what I was struggling with: I couldn’t figure out how to get what I want in a way that suited me because there were no models.

Worse, the subtle message – that I was even giving myself! – was that I better fix myself so that I could live happily ever after in a coupled relationship. Whether that is a desirable goal for me was never questioned. Nor did I notice the confusion that had arisen in me: On the one hand, I was very much enjoying having companionship. On the other, there seemed to be something oppressive about it. Of course, all that was complicated by whom I was with, so who knows. My point here, though, is that questioning my desire was not even a part of the process! I was not guided toward exploring “what is the right way to live for me?” Instead, I made an assumption about that – and never questioned it because, you know, everybody couples. That’s couplemania.

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