Bestie Couples Therapy: A Lesson in Fear

Jun 26

Last month, I spent five weeks going to couples therapy with my best friend of twenty-three years. Weird, right? Here’s how it went down.

Jess and I had a damn-near-perfect night of dining and carousing that took us from the bright lanterns of San Francisco’s Chinatown to the gritty streets of SoMa. We ate crispy duck bao, salted egg yolk prawns, and fried noodles until my pants felt too tight. We drank fancy, overpriced cocktails that tasted like lychee, pandan, black sesame, and café sua da. We ogled sweaty, scantily-clad go-go dancers under the dim lights of a legendary leather bar.

And the whole time, we bragged about how strong and special our friendship was, how rare it is to know and love and grow with someone for over two decades. I even showed off the tattoo of her name on my ass. (Mine is on her left forearm.)

Then it was time to call an Uber, and while we waited for our car, we had the worst fight of our lives.

It started as an argument so stupid I won’t even bore you with the details, because at the end of the day, the substance of the fight didn’t matter at all. What mattered was the subtext, the volcano of buried feelings and unaddressed hurts that erupted from the cracks of drunken carelessness. What mattered most was not what we screamed at each other as I stormed out of the car, but how we responded to the experience in the days to follow, and what therapy taught me about the way fear holds us back from pretty much everything—including creative fulfillment.

Ah, there it is! Bet you thought this story had nothing to do with you, huh? Well, it does…

Me and Jess at age sixteen: sweet summer Hot Topic children.

Without revealing too much about my personal history with Jess (I mean besides literally showing you my ass), here was the crux of the matter: When we first became friends, we were two over-sheltered, religiously traumatized sixteen-year-olds with limited social skills and absolutely zero ability to deal with conflict. Within a year, we became the most important people in each other’s lives, which meant protecting the friendship and avoiding fights at all costs. Unfortunately, the cost was sometimes our mental well-being.

Here’s the thing about me: I have severe abandonment issues and an illogical, deep-seated belief that if I am not perfect, people will stop loving me. On the plus side, this made me one of those type-A, blue-ribbon, gold-star honor students who succeeded a lot. (Have I mentioned my eighteen New York Times bestsellers?) On the downside, it means that historically, whenever anyone got angry with me, I would spiral into a debilitating abyss of anxiety and depression. (A daily dose of Zoloft now keeps that tendency in check.)

Here’s the thing about Jess: She grew up in an emotionally repressive home that gave her some damaging anger issues. She’s now one of the most badass, takes-no-shit women I know, but Jess is also deeply protective of me. Whenever I did anything that upset her, she usually buried her feelings to prevent my anxiety and depression, which only made her issues worse.

So my fear of angering Jess and her fear of hurting me kept us both from fully communicating our feelings and needs. Rinse, repeat for twenty-three years, and the surprising fight we had isn’t that surprising at all.

On some level, Jess and I already knew these things about each other; we were just too scared to discuss the complications they created between us. We needed a brilliant therapist (shout-out to Emily Chong!) to create a space in which we felt safe enough to tread what had for so long felt like dangerous waters—only to discover that our fear and lack of communication were the real dangers all along. Our relationship is now stronger and healthier than it’s ever been.

I’ve been ruminating on this experience for weeks, trying to figure out how it fits into the broader narrative of my life (and honestly, how to strong-arm it into the Copilot blog 😅), and it comes down to how much fear has held me back in general, for example:

I got into UC Berkeley, which would have afforded me better academic and professional opportunities, but attended a tiny Catholic university instead because the religious environment felt more familiar and less scary.
I wanted to be a writer, but worried I might fail, so I chose a “safer” career in publishing.
I was afraid of hurting my boyfriend and being alone, so I stayed in my first shitty relationship for ten years when I should have left after just one!

I’m happy with how everything turned out, so it’s not like I’m living in regret or anything, but it’s hard not to think about how much better my life could have been if I hadn’t let fear drive some of those Big Decisions. And funnily enough, a lot of my work now involves coaching authors through their fears about publishing and marketing their books. Here are the ones that come up the most:

What if my book sucks?
What if nobody reads it?
I’m always busy! What if I don’t have time to promote it?
What if I’m terrible at social media—or my friends think I’m a big, dumb sell-out for making TikTok videos?

…Well, sure. Those things could happen. But even if they did, you wouldn’t die from it. Just like my friendship with Jess, the real danger lies in the fear, in what you’re not doing: writing that book. The more important question is: What if you never write that book?

As I’ve said before, I don’t believe in much these days, which has paradoxically made life feel more precious. What I do believe is that the things you want to accomplish—the books you want to write—are worth pursuing, and allowing fear to hold you back is rarely the right choice.

Let us know how we can help you fight your fears and take the next step on your author journey. If you’re worried your book will suck, Eva can make sure it doesn’t. If you’re overwhelmed by the idea of marketing, I can make it feel easier and more achievable. And if you’re ready to bravely dive right into the whole publishing process, we’ve still got a few open spots at our next Big Leap retreat.