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Alice sat next to her husband in my office. Her face was cold and unfeeling, like a stern statue set in fine but unyielding stone. Hubby appeared more like her attorney than spouse.
“It was my idea that we come to see you,” he began formally.
“Alice seems depressed and checked out, but she doesn’t want to talk about it. I suggested you, and she agreed.”
While hubby delivered a long, technical-sounding discourse on his wife's melancholy mood, Alice remained silent. She just looked at me with eyes intent on revealing nothing yet somehow desiring connection.
I suggested Alice and I speak privately, and her husband grudgingly obliged.
“Looks like you're working hard to keep something under wraps,” I told her.
“So, when you look at me, what do you see?” she asked.
“Maybe despair. Clearly nothing I'd call happiness,” I replied.
“I'm not entitled to happiness. I traded away my heart a long time ago. I sold it for security,” she blurted out.
“So, did you get what you paid for? Are you financially secure?” I asked.
“Yes. I'm a smart hooker. I give my husband sex and companionship, and he gives me money, a fancy house, cars, diamonds . . . the works. It's that simple,” she replied with an auditor's aloof analysis.
Selling Our Integrity?
I recalled an old college buddy who was fond of saying “We're all whores.” His premise was that each of us must sell some portion of our integrity in order to get what we want from the world. Perhaps, but Alice’s portion seemed pretty hefty.
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She is not unique. Frequently, people trade away their dreams, passions, autonomy and principles for promises of money, security and success, small comforts that rarely compensate for losing or repressing key elements of one's character and identity.
“The only difference between me and a whore on the street is that I have one john instead of many. Otherwise, it's the same transaction. I get his money, and he gets my body and my looks to show off to his friends,” she concluded.
“But not your heart,” I added. “Nobody gets your heart.”
Alice's stony mask cracked and dissolved into tears. She sobbed, I imagined for the love she had squandered and the shame she felt over her self-betrayal.
A parade of faces flipped through my mind. I recalled a former client who abandoned his lifelong dream of running his own business to obtain the sad safety of a steady job doing what he disliked under an oppressive boss. And there was the woman client who gave up her budding musical career to mollify her ultra-conservative, controlling husband.
These persons, and others like them, often became bitter, self-loathing souls who feel they have betrayed themselves by listening more to their fears than their hopes. Of course, some unfortunate folks are dealt a hand in life’s poker game that leaves them little choice but to appease and accommodate in order to survive.
Life and Compromise
Regardless, all of us make compromises. Life demands them. Without some flexibility, a willingness to bend and give a little, we become emotionally brittle and rigid.
But compromise is not the same as selling your heart and soul.
Compromise can leave us feeling better about ourselves because we have embraced “going with the flow” and shown sensitivity to the needs of others. But when we barter away our integrity, hopes and life visions for a few lifestyle trinkets, we feel cheapened, fake and defeated.
Like Alice, many mental prostitutes succeed in acquiring some bogus existential insurance policy commonly called “security,” but in the process they forfeit something of greater value, the opportunity to live their own lives.
Each of us comes into the world as a unique person, and we are given one life to discover and become ourselves, not somebody else’s version of who we should be. Carl Jung said: “The gift of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”
Don't sell the most vital aspects of yourself.
Ultimately, they’re all you've got.
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