What happened to Vicky and Glen, the characters in our relationship from the early days? We don’t know. They are, technically, fictional—composite characters we’ve been writing about since 2014, the patient-zero pair in our nonrelationship work. Theirs marriage finished That much is on record. After that, the trail goes cold because they were never real people and the people they were made up of have gone their separate ways.
But we have an unhealthy amount of time on our hands attachment to our own creation. So we allow ourselves fantasy. Somewhere, in one of those multiverses where Hollywood physicists hang out, there’s Vicki and Glen, who realized it right after they made a mistake. They are not bitter old ones. They are not performing friendship for children. They did not compromise. They did not get cold. They did something else, something else that didn’t have a clean name, something that most couples in their position would never find.
Here in the Twilight Zone they are at a tea cafe on the Lower East Side.
Vicky thinks the tea is decent. He spent time in Kerala after his 30s break up and has strong views on the ratio of cardamom to ginger, which he shares if asked, and increasingly more if not. Glen, who once would have taken it too seriously or turned it into a joke flirting and soft humiliationjust nodded. He’s heard it before. Even though he’s more of an espresso snob, she admires his curiosity and passion.
They walked together. Their child—the youngest, who had just graduated from high school and now lived in the neighborhood—had asked them both to lunch, and they had walked a few blocks and found a cafe. The eldest is in the state, at school. The little one now thinks about what to do and decisions have to be made, who does what, some financial stuff, etc., who their child is, what their world is like, and how to be there for them without being too much. And indeed, money unites people. It’s easier if you’re friendly.
They look to each other as they did in their youth. They also look completely different – and each can see the years they’ve lived on the other’s face. It’s one of those horrible things you can experience with someone who already knows you, and only if neither of you want to argue about who you are.
The conversation shifts. Vicky has an idea of what a child should do; The Glen has a view; views differ. 15 years ago, there’s a moment that would have been a fight – when Glen politely addresses his anxiety as a problem in order to calm down, when Vicky accepts to calm down, it all ends with one of them feeling invisible and the other feeling worthless, neither of them remembering what they actually talked about. That moment will not happen here. It cannot be processed, processed, or repaired. It just won’t happen. They don’t notice.
What makes them stand out is that they share their vision. Not as Gambit closeness or approve – share them. What was remarkable was how unremarkable it was. The most important thing was to spend time with the child, to feel better, or even to feel better about the situation, not to complicate it or to actively try to manage conflicts.
It was just tea and they were proud parents free of the tension between them. Very nice.
We have a name for the process by which two people can come to such a room. We’ve been writing about it for years: the DREAM sequence (discovery, repair, empowerment, alternatives, reciprocity). In the case of Vicki and Glen, the discovery revealed that their personalities—performer and audience—were closer to what Selma Fraiberg called “nursery ghosts”: their childhood selves, living in a marriage and running it from the back room. The renovation was partly a study of exorcism. Authority was finally the ability to share one’s point of view without being a gambit for nothing.
Alternatives is where the DREAM Team (that’s us) has been waiting for couples to arrive: the happy ending of being friends is obvious. We saw friendship as a reward for getting the job done. Turns out, we weren’t quite right about that.
The reward, if there is one, is the freedom to choose what comes next. Friends are one option. Functional parents who like each other are another. Intimate acquaintances who handle logistics via text are another. Ten years of distance and then something new is different. The opportunity is not in achieving friendship. It’s in the choice altogether, rather than moving on to the next song and dance with a different soundtrack.
For Vicky and Glen, it was difficult to define what was chosen in this world. There is no romantic spark. no nostalgia. They do not remember the old times because the old times are not the place of action. The movement is in the child, in the tea, in the unheeded conversation, still in later years.
Glen, near the end, looking at him: At the beginning of our friendship, I could feel how we were more together than we were trying to be together in all the wrong ways.
Vicki does not immediately respond. He tastes the tea. He decides it’s worth it. Not Kerala. But worthy.
