“Oh yeah, it’s like a gigantic bucket of joy has just been poured all over me. Or like, I’ve been hosed down with liquid happiness,” Ashley said finishing us off with an over-the-top smile plastered on her lying little face.

…in. Reel it right in.

This therapist—no matter how terribly thick his Nickelodeon brand glasses were—was going to see right through us. We were absolutely, 100% fucked.

“I don’t quite believe you.”

 “You don’t?” she had the audacity to ask.

No, he’s lying to us, Ashley. For funsies.

Idiot.

“No, I don’t. You see, you two, when a real married couple comes in here they don’t do this.”

“They don’t do what?”

“They don’t mention being hosed down with anything, let alone happiness. They fight and they yell and they get their feelings out into the open. This way they can deal more honestly with their problems and learn how to face them together in the future. No one is happy all the time in their marriage. And that’s ok.”

“They’re not?”

“Heavens no.”

“Then what’s the fucking point, man?” Ashley asked.

I was going to wring her neck the second this guy blinked a moment too long.

“Because when you’re in love, even the fighting is good. There’s passion in everything. Not just when it’s all going your way.”

This guy had it all wrong. Marriage was about finally being able to combine your assets with someone and planning for early retirement. Not about passion. You want passion? How about being able to retire on a beach in Fiji and eating nothing but passionfruit and ham until you die of congestive heart failure in a medically incompetent healthcare system. How’s that for passion?

And…

Marriage is about having 1.5 children all with precocious tendencies that you help develop through providing them with as many lessons as possible and sending them to the nation’s best schools. This is marriage, people. This was supposed to be my life with Carmen.

“So ladies, I’m going to give you an objective for next week,” Dr. Gallin said with an optimistic smile.

Poor sucker. He probably didn’t even know what a mutual fund was.

“Like homework?” Ashley asked, eyebrows raised in horror at the idea of doing something that involved thinking.