 OK, nice to meet you after this long wait. Hi there, Bob. Tell me what you'd like to change today, Rowena. I would like to be able to do some activity, some work, some pleasure, some something, without prevaricating. I'd like to be able to enjoy it more. So, for instance, I went to that conference, and I had to write my notes up and send them off. And I'm busy putting it to one side, and putting it to one side, and putting it to one side. Other things are more important. And I do the same with reading, or I'd love to sit down and read a chapter of a book, and I think, no, no, no, I'd better do so and so else first. I'm very, very good at surfing the web and not doing my work. And I'm fairly convinced there's some, there's some kind of, like, a little obstacle. There could be a psychological thing going on that's stopping me from achieving what I want. Sounds like what you want, is to be able to prioritize and take action. Yeah, I can prioritize beautifully. I can write a do list. So you want to mobilize yourself. I can do it for the years. The thing I've used in order to make myself do things, even though I want to do them, I start to make myself do them, is on the bottom of my do list, I put the worst possible thing I can think of. So I'll avoid doing that. I'll do the other things. It's usually mopping the kitchen floor. Hate that the most. So tell me again, in real terms, what is the change you want? So, for example, when you walk away today, how would you like to be different and spell it out to me? I'd like to be able to think, tomorrow's Tuesday, I'm going to sit down in the morning and do those conference notes and then do it. So you want to actionize yourself? I want to be able to take the action I've promised myself that I want to do, but somewhere along the way it gets blocked. Okay. So what stops you actionizing? That's the puzzle I don't know. Well, Irina, here comes a magic question. Okay. If you did know when you just guessed, what do you think it would be? I think maybe, and I don't feel this, but it's a thinking thing, that maybe it has to do with my schooling and my mother and not doing things on time became a way of thwarting, being rebellious. How is this a rebellious action? I think, but it doesn't feel like that. Sometimes it just feels like, oh, I'll just surf the web or I'll go and do something else instead. It doesn't feel rebellious at the time I'm doing it. But it's all my life, so it's not something that's happened recently. It's always been there. So do you see it as a passive action? Surfing the web or whatever, instead of actionizing? I suppose, as a whole, it doesn't get things done. It might get other things done. It doesn't get what you want to be done done? No, it doesn't get the thing that I've allocated to do that day done. It might get something else done. So it's not always passivity, it's sometimes activity, but it's not the thing I said I'd do. So it's as if the thing I said I'd do is forbidden. I can't do the thing that I promised myself. I have to do all the other things first. I've got a fantasy with you. Can I share it with you? If I got my pen and paper out, I said, OK, let's do a list of the things that you really want to do. I will stick it on your fridge. A nice big red letter, so you know they're there. I don't think you do any of the bloody things. I might. You probably watch it. I might do some, but I probably wouldn't do them all. I do really like crossing them out when I've done them. I get a lot out of that. Well, that's different. This is about you doing things that you want to do in your own time for you. Rather than, rather than, so I must do this, I ought to be doing this. You know, it's almost like a parent. You know, when you said that in the bed of your stuff, that's what it sounds like to me. It could be, yeah. Except it's not, I mean, it's ignored just as much as the things I don't want to do. So I just don't, I don't get that bit. Well, I was, what Jessica and I did was again, I'm going to bring in again, and she's practising to be a teenager, and she's often telling me exactly what you've reported. Even though she might like to do certain things, she wouldn't do it because I've told her to do it. OK. That's what it sounds like. You know, that's what teenagers do. They push the boundaries, and often don't do things they even want to do. Hmm. Because they're pushing those boundaries. Yeah. Yeah, I think I do that a lot of the time. Internally, and probably gets played externally out. Yeah. Yeah, I suppose so. Like, yesterday I was doing some computer work, and I could tell that my fella was irritated because I wasn't doing some house-type work, so what I should be as well. And there was a sort of free song for me of, I'm not going to, you know, I know what you want me to do, but I'm not going to do that. You're not going to do it, and you're not going to make me do it. Precisely. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm doing that to myself. Sounds like you're doing externally and internally. Hmm. Makes sense. So, my parent is telling my child what to do, and my child is basically being defiant. Sounds like it to me, Rowena. You caught me out. Got your ass. But every once in a while something comes along and I really want to do, and I do get to really do it. Hmm. And there's usually some sort of overriding factor, like I must do it for Bob because Bob will be pleased if I do it for Bob. Oh. I'd be honoured. Sometimes, not always. So, how's this going to change, Rowena? What's going to happen differently? Well, I'd like it to change. I'd like to be able to think I'm going to do this and then sit down and do it. This ain't going to change on its own. No. So, you know, what's going to happen, do you think? I don't know. What do you recommend? Oh, God, the pressure of asking me why. Just like toss it to you, you know. I tell you what. I tell you what. I tell you what. What about if both I recommend something and you recommend something and I recommend something and you recommend something and maybe together, we'll come to some sort of full options. Okay. Do you think about it? Okay. We'll share it out. You start, then. What do you want me to start? I'm happy to start. I suppose I could just make myself do it by... Forcing yourself. Yeah. Making myself up to the nth degree. That doesn't sound like a very good option, but I mean, I suppose you could force yourself to do it. Yeah. It's an option. Another one you could do is cause of somehow make the whole process fun. Because my friends say, I'm not sure with all these listed things that you've got to do that it may not be fun. I don't know. But somehow it becomes some sort of... It's usually all right once I start. So the starting could be made. So it's the start. It's the actual sitting down to do the thing. Yeah. You know, I can provaricate forever before that sitting down moment. So it's to be somehow to make that whole process fun instead of sort of a, you know, I've got to do it sort of thing. Yeah, okay. That's one of mine. How could I make it fun, then? Well, that's your... Over to you, then. Well, because everything I'll put in my list to do to make it fun, I'll provaricate and not do one. I say it's just circular. Is that an option? Is it my go or yours? That was my go. It's your go now. My other one, but you include your fellow in this. That's just a recipe for disaster. Well, it's an option. Okay. Somehow you two could work out a way where both of you can get your needs met instead of an iron or your situation. It's a remote possibility there. That would work. But it is remote because I think I'd probably just end up fighting him. You wouldn't work towards a system where you could both get your needs met from an adult perspective. That requires that both of us be an adult. And do you not want to be an adult? Well, yeah, I'd love to be an adult. But I don't know that I could get him an adult. I don't know. He could get him an adult. So that's a possibility. So there's another possibility. So you've got five or six options so far. Is it? Okay. No, we've got the option. You've got four. She's half to do it. Okay. You're going to make it fun. I'm going to make it fun. And then there's one that I wasn't quite sure about. But you were saying you could do something. And then there's the next one I talked about, which was including the other person. Yeah. Any more? I could not do it. At all? Yeah. I mean, that's great. Then nothing will get done, eh? Yeah. Eventually, if you leave things long enough, you don't need to do them anymore because the deadline's gone. That's a lot of work to do. Yeah. I don't think that will work with my next year's tasks for my training course, do you? I don't think I'd get passed if I didn't do anything. Probably not. Kind of productive then. I can't think of anything else. No. Well, I've got one. I think it would demand a piece of therapy now. Okay. So it's an option. That you tell your mother and father, either your mother or your father, or your father or your mother or both of them together, that you're going to do things but you're going to do them your own way. And that's fine. Yeah. Well, that was quick. Okay. Did that seem appealing to you? Well, I'm not quite sure how to do it. But there won't be much point in telling my father that he wasn't there and wasn't really involved anyway. So he wouldn't be the one... he wouldn't be... he wouldn't be involved. He wouldn't be involved either in the telling me what to do or not to do, or the result which was whether I did it right or not he wouldn't be involved really. So it would have to be my mother. So just when that by me again, so if you told your father that you were going to do this your own way and that's okay. Well, that wouldn't have very much impact. Because he wasn't involved. Oh, but he wasn't there. Oh, because he wasn't there. Well, he was there, but he went out to work really early and came back and, you know, we worked in the fruit trade so he went out to work at four o'clock in the morning. So he wasn't there through breakfast and all that sort of stuff and then in the evenings he'd come back and kept and then he'd be up for supper and we'd say supper but that would only be it and mostly he wasn't involved with sort of the running of the family and stuff like that. So did he have much involvement in you in terms of you growing up? Very little, I think, which is quite sad. But you know, you know those questionnaires that you get, you know, if your father was pleased with you how would he show it if he was sad with you or whatever and had come out with a list of blanks mostly because he wouldn't be there to show any of those things. Which makes me sad. A realization now that he wasn't connected. No. But that's the way it was. He was busy off, you know, earning the pennies and doing the things that blokes do. So he wasn't really connected to whether I did things or didn't do things. Maybe that in a way is a bit of a problem. Maybe if he had a bit more connected I might have had somebody to do them for. That's what I meant to say when one of my options about talking to your fellow about how can we both get on these met? No, because my fellow isn't representative of my dad. No, I know he isn't. No, but I mean his behaviour, he's not like him. He's not distanced like that. So that wouldn't be the same. Except you could talk to him then. And he might listen to you. He might. Maybe that's the difference, Rowena. Rich. That you're projecting onto your fellow. What's his name? Jules. That you're projecting onto Jules what you expect from your fellow. It doesn't sit right. I hear what you're saying. I understand the point, but I think, actually, you're right but in the opposite way than you think. I think I would like to be able to project that father onto him, he refuses kind of thing. Why would you want to project an absent father? The distance element is more familiar to me. I don't like to be smothered. I don't like that feeling of somebody being clingy and kind of all over you. I prefer a better distance. Of course, with a father that is distant that would make sense. Yeah, it does. But it's a trap, isn't it? How can you get the intimacy that type of caring and support that you want when someone's distant from you? Because it's all the sadness you have just then. What are you thinking of your father? How can you have that intimacy and that support without perhaps feeling the sadness of the absence? I don't feel sad at the time. I don't feel sad at the time. No, I mean, I saw it. I've seen sad since. But that's a hindsight thing. I didn't feel sad at the time. It was just the way it was. No, I mean now. You look sad. Yeah, I'm sad now. But the connection between my father and my father just doesn't gel. It doesn't work. I couldn't talk to Jules and get him to behave like my father or even the opposite. It just doesn't fit. But he's acting differently from your father. That's what I mean. Yeah, of course. So the question for me is do you want him to act even more differently and be more intimate or do you want him to be more absent just like your father was? Yes, and that's the trap. Why is this trap? Because what I know about you and what you've worked on in therapy it had to be more intimate, had to be more close, had to show your feelings. And you deserve to be someone who would meet you that way even though you may feel uncomfortable and want to go back to the script of your father as part of you, but it desires to be different. I know that about you. It makes sense, but I couldn't slot Jules into that slot. It wouldn't work. Because? Well, he's the wrong sort of personality to slot into that. He just wouldn't fit. He's not a copy of my father in any sort of way. If you have the absent here and the intimacy's there, where would you fit? There's the absent father just like your dad and then there's a very intimate father maybe like your fantasies or what you've been working towards in therapy where would you fit? In that whole... Well, I don't want that. I would prefer that. I'd feel more comfortable with that. But Jules doesn't fit into either slot. Okay, on the spectrum, where does he go? There's Nor, that's the absence and there's 100, the intimate. Okay, his desire puts him this end. My desire would prefer him to be at that end. So there's a... In reality... In reality, there's a clash. Okay, where is he then, in reality? Put him on this Nor to 100 graph. Where is he? He's more at this end of the scale than that end of the scale. Maybe 80 or 80. If this is 100. Yeah. From the point of view of what he would like I'd put him somewhere around 90. Point of how it actually is. How it actually is, is nearer sort of 60. So it's about 60, in reality. Yeah, it's more than halfway but that's because of his desire rather than mine. So in reality it's about 60. Probably. Yeah, let's run with that. Let's run with that. It's difficult to quantify. We can run with 60. Okay. Can we? Alright, yeah. Yeah? Okay. Are you happy with that? Or would you like it to be different? Would you like him to change or you to change? Or would you like... Are you happy with that 60%? I'd prefer to put him on a completely different scale. You are wonderful at not answering the questions I asked. Okay. Are you happy with that? No, I'm not. You're not happy with that? No. Okay. Okay, right. So what would you like to change it to? Okay, if I had to run with that scale then I'd prefer to change it to the other more towards the distance. Where would you put it? 40. The other side of 50. Okay. Is that what you're working towards in the relationship? I would like to be able to work towards that, yes. But there's kind of a presumption about what you just said which doesn't necessarily apply. What do you mean? Well, if there's only one person working then... No. How come? There's a presumption... I've got an act of curiosity for you. When I had you talked about your father I could experience in the here and now that you were getting sad. Yeah. About that absence. Yeah. So how come you would want to be in a relationship with someone and work more towards that? Whatever. Okay. It's kind of encapsulated in a phrase I quite like which is somebody that has your best interests at heart. Now even when my dad wasn't that physically I was always aware that he had my best interests at heart and the rest of the family as well, not just me. He was doing his bit. It's just that his bit wasn't connecting with us particularly. So you were sort of connected? There was a feeling of being a part of it, yes. So it's a kind of benign looker over of whatever's going on. I spoke to my cousin David who's about ten years older than me who his father was not there from a very early age for him and he treated my father as his main father figure and I spoke to him only a few years back and I said what was it like and he said well he was great and he had a wonderful sense of humour but he was distant. That's how my father was, he was distant. You get the feeling of him looking off into the distance in a sort of romantic sort of looking off in the distance sort of a way. But I could identify with what my cousin said. I understood where he was coming from. I didn't mean to say he didn't feel loved and it didn't mean to say that he didn't love my father and I think that was the same for all of us in slightly different ways. So I guess that as a role model means that somebody who wants more intimacy is actually kind of uncomfortable. You seem to have stopped. I seem to have stopped or you seem to have stopped or we've both stopped. Okay I stopped and you're not saying anything in return. Well do you like me to say something back to the start? I don't know where to go with that or any further with that. Oh I can see that. Can I come to a full stop? Yeah. And is that the same in your relationship with Jules? Sort of a full stop? No. That you want more absence and he wants more intimacy so nothing goes. No that's just a constant battle. Or you constantly battle. I think like Jules is more like my mum in fact. But coming back to the original thing I don't think I'd pervericate because of my dad. So although he wasn't there and it would have been nice if he had been there and it would have been nice if he'd have been somebody that I could have done things for I don't think it was him that I was pervericating because of I think it's more likely my mum. I get the feeling that you want me to say more but I don't know what to say. No. I was just thinking about you and how you were this intimacy, absence, spectrum and how my friend is who would be if I was to be with you. How do I want to encourage you all? Support you. Ask her how you're getting on. I didn't get that you see. I would want to battle. I would be absent. And my mum would spend her entire time sort of doing her duty. She still does. She does it very well. She'd look after us physically well but she wouldn't emotionally connect in that way. As long as we were going to school and doing the right thing and she wasn't getting any flack from the teachers about not doing our homework or something then that was always fine with her world. She didn't really, she didn't want to know what we were doing, how we were doing. She has her own sort of potted image of each of us and who we are and how we are which she still carries and it could be completely wrong. In most cases it is in fact completely wrong but that potted image hasn't changed over the years at all. It's like a caricature. So it would have been nicer if there'd have been more connection there. I think also, I mean, I learnt very early on to be how much I could get away with. I learnt to be rebellious because there was no point doing work if nobody was ever going to check up on you. Nobody was going to ever ask you what that French declension was. There was no point in learning it. So, so, if your mother was here now and you were to ask her and make a demand to her, what would you demand of her? That she actually spent some time sat down with all of us but obviously me particularly. Stay with you. That she would sit down with me and show an interest in what we were doing. So show an interest in me, mother. I've done some pretty good things here. Show some interest in me. Spend some time. Spend some time with me. Spend some time with me, mother. I've done some really interesting things here. Just come and spend some time with me. I didn't want to have to ask her. I said make a demand. Okay. Talk about asking. No, I would prefer her to have spontaneously asked me. That was the problem. She didn't, did she? No. Which is why I'm suggesting you make a demand of her. But you're right. It wouldn't work as well. I mean, yeah, maybe if I had a done, she might have done for a bet. So you don't think she would have listened? She probably would have for a bet. She would have perhaps paid a lot of service to it. But she wouldn't really have been interested. Well, would you like to have her go or perhaps we should talk to her? How come she wasn't interested in her daughter? Well, we could have a go, but I'm fairly sure I know what the answer is. What would the answer be? Well, because she would just be too busy. She would be doing whatever jobs she had to do, making supper. So if you shouted really hard to her, what about me? Spend some time with me. How come you're not spending time with me? Do you think she would stop being so busy? Probably. But she'd have wriggled out of it if she could have done. But if she hadn't wriggled out of it, if she'd have been feeling generous that day, yeah, she'd have come and she'd have sat down. And I don't know, work with me on something. But beyond that, she wouldn't come back later on and say, how's it going or what's happening next? Or the next day she wouldn't particularly say, how did that go? I don't think she ever really paid much attention to whether we did any work or not, other than, as I say, she knew it was okay if she didn't get complaints. Distanced, very distanced. So what you really needed was somebody to pay attention with you. Let's play some time with you. So you felt you belonged. Yeah, instead of just sort of go out and play a dear type attitude, you know, get out from under my feet. Those sorts of phrases. Too busy for you. So my option, way back, one of them was, how can you and Jules both get your needs met, do you remember? Very likely. Good job, everybody, because I remember. Good job, you've got a good memory. That seems to be one of my favourites at the moment. How both of you can sit down together and talk about how you can belong together and how you can support each other. It would be a way forward, I think. That would be quite good. Now, one thing that my fantasy is with you is you're likely to give up pretty quickly. Is that true? Hmm... It depends what you mean by give up. Your father was obstinate. Your mother gave up pretty quickly. See, you haven't got models of somebody who'd stayed with you. Well, I've been with him 20 or...