What happened to Vicky and Glen, our relationship heroes from the early days? We don’t know. They are, technically, fictional — the composite characters we’ve been writing about since 2014, the patient-zero couple in our work on relationships. They marriage has ended. That much is on the record. After that, the trail goes cold because they were never real people and the people they were made up of went their separate ways.
But we have time on our hands and unhealthy attachment to our own creativity. So we allow ourselves fantasy. Somewhere in one of those multidimensional worlds that Hollywood physicists hang out in, there’s Vicki and Glenn, who figured it out right after the mistake. They are not bitter exes. They don’t perform friendship for children. They did not compromise. They didn’t go cold. They did something else, something that doesn’t have a cool name, something that most couples in their position would never do.
Here in the night zone, they’re in a teahouse on the Lower East Side.
Vicky thinks the tea is decent. He spent time in Kerala after his 30s divorce and has a firm opinion on the ratio of cardamom to ginger, which he will share if asked, and as much as possible if not asked. Glen, who once took it too seriously or turned it into a joke designed to land somewhere in between flirting and gentle insultonly with the head. He had heard it before. She admires his curiosity and passion, even if he is more than espresso.
They walked together. Their child—the youngest, who just graduated from school and now lives next door—asked them both out for lunch, and they dragged themselves a few blocks to find the coffee shop. The older one is in school. A young person is figuring out what to do next and decisions to be made, who does what, some financial stuff, etc., who their child is, what their world is like, and how to be there without being too much. And indeed, money brings people together. It’s easier if you’re friendly.
They look exactly the same as when they were young. They also look completely different – and each can see in the other the years they have lived. It’s one of those scary things that you can only experience with someone who knew you before, and only if neither of you are arguing about who you are.
The conversation is moving. Wiki on what a child should do; The Glen has a view; opinions differ. There was a moment, 15 years ago, when it would have been a war—when Glen had gently managed his anxiety as a problem to be calmed, when Vicky had calmed down when she was alone, when it all ended with one of them feeling invisible and the other feeling unsettled, neither of them remembering what they were talking about. That moment is not happening here. It cannot be operated, operated, repaired. It just doesn’t happen. They don’t notice.
What they notice is that they share their opinions. Not as a gambit for proximity or approval – just share them. What was amazing was just how unusual it was. Most important was having fun with your child, feeling decent or even good about how things were going, rather than making it more difficult or needing active efforts to manage conflict.
It was just tea and proud parents, free from the tension between them. Much better.
We have a name for the process by which two people can enter such a room. We’ve been writing about it for years: the DREAM sequence (Discovery, Repair, Empowerment, Alternatives, Reciprocity). In Vicki and Glen’s case, the discovery was that what they thought were their identities—performer and spectator—were closer to what Selma Freiberg called “ghosts in the nursery”: figures from their childhood, living in a marriage and managing it from the back room. The renovation involved learning to exorcise ghosts in part. The opportunity was the ability to share ideas without it being a gambit for anything.
The options were where the DREAM Team (that’s us) was waiting for the couple to arrive: the perfect ending to staying friends. We thought of friendship as a reward for doing a job. It turns out we weren’t right about that.
The reward, when there is one, is the freedom to choose what comes next. Friends is an option. Functional parents who like each other is another. A bona fide connoisseur who handles logistics by text is another. Ten years of distance and then something new is different. There is no chance of making friends. It’s about being able to choose completely, rather than going to the next song and dance with a different soundtrack.
For Vicki and Glen, it was difficult to show what was chosen in this world. There is no romantic spark. no nostalgia. They do not remember about the old times, because the old times are not where the action is. The action is in the child, in tea, in casual conversation, in the past years.
Glen, at the end, looks at her and says: At the beginning of our friendship, I felt like we were more apart than when we were trying to be together in all the wrong ways.
Vicki did not immediately respond. He will taste the tea. He decides he deserves it. Not Kerala. But worthy.
