"Hold on there," he said, rolling back in the recliner, looking at the balls in the corner that were obviously a prop to use when a child sat in this room, "There's no problem with our marriage." He looked at his wife, whose expression said "What the F are you talking about?"
He continued: "There's no more problem with our marriage than any other marriage. There's no more problem with our marriage than that of my parents, and they've been married for 4000 years."
Without realizing it, he was leaning leaning forward in his chair, an indication, perhaps, of his passion.
"So," Dr. Helen Lockhorn said, "Then why are you here?" She was a corpulent lady with aged lines around her face eyes, rounded out by a large gray bun of hair, perhaps representative of years of listening to the problems of married folks. Her exuberant personality, her deportment of cordial delight, was perhaps a token of years of practice, a habit, per se, more so than a sign of what she was feeling or thinking.
"Because my parents didn't have access to the Internet and Facebook," he continued, "a constant barrage of people trying to convince her there's a problem with their marriage. I remember my dad storming out of the house because my mom was mean to him, and then life went on. Of course I saw the opposite many times too. Men and women have been getting married for thousands of years, and they have never seen eye to eye. But now all of a sudden when a husband and wife don't see eye to eye it's abnormal?"
"Well..."
"Then you have lawyers and divorce counselors who thrive on this."
"Well...
"The problem with our marriage is the constant barrage of too much information. Or, better, yet, too many opinions. There are people like you -- no offense -- who thrive on conflict. Liberalism thrives on conflict. hey like to convince people there's conflict -- like the war on climate change and the war on women -- just so they can be perceived to be the people with the solutions."
"I've never heard of it put that way."
"I'm not saying you do a bad job, because this is our first appointment. I'm just saying that our marriage isn't any different than the union of any other intelligent and highly opinionated people."
"Then why are you here?" she said.
He leaned back on the couch and realized the conversation occurred in his mind. It was a euphoric dream, the kind you wished you didn't have to wake from.
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