Psychologist Monica O’Neal is an expert in relationships — but in her personal life, she finds herself struggling when it comes to saying goodbye.
Dr. Monica O’Neal is a Clinical Psychologist and Relationship Expert with a private practice in the Back Bay. Popularly known as "Dr. Monica," she specializes in the treatment of relationship challenges and interpersonal conflicts. When Dr. Monica isn’t at her practice, she is a lecturer at Harvard Medical School and consults for various local and national media outlets. Dr. Monica is an avid bike rider, and throughout the summer, you can find her in the Berkshire Mountains of Connecticut as a weekend “counselor” at the very first camp for adults, her favorite place on earth.
This story originally aired on December 14, 2018 in an episode titled “Science vs. Love.”
Story Transcript
There is this thing that I tell my patients all the time. A little saying that I tell them, “that is that it is much easier to say goodbye in anger or indifference, than it is to have to say goodbye in love.” What that means is that loss is really painful...and it’s sad...and there is no goodbye without loss. Sometimes we want to avoid that sense of pain and so we will turn somebody into a jerk or have a fight with them, at the last minute or the day before we leave, or we act like they're not important to us. What I do as a psychologist is I really try to help people confront and tolerate and nurture these difficult emotions especially, in the place of love and intimacy, so that they can have healthier relationships with themselves and with other people...because the other way is really destructive.
Now, this is my passion. I actually think it’s what I’m supposed to do. I feel like it’s my calling because I feel like I’m pretty good at it. But if you were to have met me at the beginning of my training, you would be pretty amazed that this is where I’m at now.
I’m going to tell you a little bit about me as Monica. I am a military brat, an air force brat in particular. I was born on a base in North Carolina then moved to Germany then back to North Carolina then to South Carolina then to the Philippines where I spent three of the most magical years of my childhood, then back to South Carolina. So, by the age of ten I was a continental, I was immersed in all this culture and I just really had seen a lot of the world.
The best thing about it is my parents actually made it seem like an exciting adventure every single time, so being able to leave was exciting. It was great.
Now, I’m going to retell this as Dr. Monica from the lens of psychology. I moved five times before the age of ten and each time we moved we could only be excited about it. There was no talk about sadness or the people that we’d have to leave behind. I learned to adapt to that and I got really good at it, moving on, new adventures were very exciting for me.
In high school, I decided to join different activities that allowed us to have weekend travel, like marching band, and I can recall being a little perplexed but not really too bothered when I would just take my bags and head straight to the bus and I would see my classmates and my friends like lingering goodbyes with their parents and hugs and kisses, and I was like, “See you later!” behind my shoulder, just throwing deuces as I just ran on the bus.
And it was the same when I went to college. There were no tearful goodbyes, there were no weekly phone calls home. My parents wanted them but I never was homesick at all. I mean, I was excited. It was a brand new adventure for me and it was exciting. It was so exciting in many different ways and, one in particular, I fell in love for the first time.
So I met this really, really nice boy during orientation, before school started...and we’re going to call him Sebastian...because I've always wanted to date a Sebastian...because I think it’s a really sexy name, and so this is my way to date a Sebastian. Sebastian and I met over the summer prior to starting school, but then when we got back on campus he and I both reached out to each other. We just really had a natural bond that just bonded us. We wanted to be around each other.
Our friendship was just so beautiful and so sweet and it turned very quickly into a loving relationship. And I loved him. I really did.
About six months into our relationship, I remember being in Sebastian’s room and finding this pretty little necklace in this pretty little box upon a shelf in his room. When I found it, immediately I was like, “Oh, what is this?”
His response as I freaked out: “Monica, it’s a gift for you.”
“Well, why haven't you given it to me?”
He kind of got a little quiet and shy and he said, “Well, I don’t want to tell you. You're going to think it’s stupid.”
I’m like, “I’m not going to think it’s stupid. Just tell me.”
So, a little uncomfortable, he finally relents and he says, “Well, I was a little uncomfortable giving it to you because, I don't know. I guess I felt like it would be silly. Because sometimes I feel like you don’t like me as much as I like you or that I’m not important to you, or you don’t need me.”
Now, I was listening intently and was really paying attention to everything he said but then when he got to that last point, I was like, “WHOA!” I was like, “That is stupid! I do like you. I like you a lot! But, of course, I don't need you. I don't need anybody.”
It was savage. It was awful. And you could just see the sadness and the crestfallen look in his face.
I did the very best that I could. The thing that I did well was I was able to make a joke, to kind of smooth it all over. It worked...and he gave me the necklace...and we dated for the next two-and-a-half years until I initiated what would be our final, but very, very mutual breakup, at the end of our junior year.
I would see him periodically on campus. We would just kind of say hi from afar. But at one point he did actually reach out to me to tell me that he had gotten engaged. This was about a year afterwards. So he got engaged to the person he started dating after me.
When he told me I was like, “Okay. All right. Cool. No big deal.”
I saw him one last time. I saw him on the night of our graduation. We just happened to bump into each other at the same greasy spoon and watering hole. That’s why I went to school. A lot of travel.
But we were at the same greasy spoon. He was there with his fiancée. I was there with my friends. But he still made the effort to come over to introduce her...but really I think it was to say goodbye. I don't know if it was the revelry from earlier in the day and the drinks that were flowing but I have no idea. I wasn’t paying any attention to anything he was saying.
But I can tell you at the very end of it...after he said goodbye...I just kind of gave him this steely smile and just said to him, “Have a nice life.”
Yeah, I hear you guys. It was pretty savage. It was terrible. It was awful. It was really, really awful.
I found out the following October that he had gotten married, a year before he was supposed to get married. Much to my surprise, I cried myself to sleep that night and went through an entire roll of toilet paper. But by the next day I was in the office telling the story and thought it was really silly, and I couldn’t believe what was going on.
Three years later after all of that, I had started my graduate program working on my doctorate in psychology and I finally, at this point, decided to start my own psychotherapy thing going. So about a year into my psychotherapy, one of my best friends was moving from the DC area to be with his partner in Chicago. On the morning of his move, he called me over. I wanted to go over to say goodbye, which I did. There were hugs and kisses, and all the things.
I watched him lock their U-Haul, go down the road. I was waving goodbye, blowing kisses. I was doing goodbye pretty good. Then on my way home I was craving a little something, just a little snack. So I decided, “I’m going to stop in the little bodega here and just get a little treat,” which ended up being a couple of different desserts, some cheeses, some olives, some crackers, chips and dip. There was definitely chocolate in there! And then I went next door to the video store and picked up three of these sappiest rom-coms that you can ever imagine.
Then I went home, I changed into my PJs, closed the blinds, closed the curtains, took all the food with me in bed...where I remained for the remainder of the day. I ate everything and I bawled through all three movies.
About two or three days later, I was in therapy recounting this really bizarre Sunday to my therapist, and I capped it off by saying, “I don't know what got into me. I’m so confused. I was fine and then next thing you know I’m in bed and I can’t get out of bed.”
That’s when she kind of softens and she looks at me. Then she leaned in with a soft voice then she said, “Monica, you just had to say goodbye to one of your best friends. That is what goodbye is supposed to feel like.”
And when she said it, I felt like I got hit by a bolt of lightning. It really took my breath away. Then I started to sob and I was sobbing so inconsolably. It was as if every single truncated goodbye hit me all at the same time. That eruption just broke through so many of my emotional walls, which we call defenses, but it just broke through them and left me feeling so raw.
All my emotion was just so visceral and on the surface but it made it easy to talk about with her in the safe space. And that’s really where therapy gets started; when your defenses are down and you can actually access that emotion. Guess what? It worked. It worked and I’m so grateful for he..and I’m so grateful for the process...and it made me passionate about being a therapist...and it made me believe in the power that it can do to make your life better...to make my life better. And that’s why I love it today.
But I will tell you that even though I’m much more present and emotionally available in all of my relationships, in all parts of my life, there are moments that something will remind me of somebody that I kind of was dismissive of...and I will feel regret and long for do-overs. But we don’t really get do-overs...except last summer.
Over 18 years later, Sebastian came into town. He had business here. He was going through a divorce, and he asked if we could meet up and just have a chance to catch up, and we did. We talked and one of the things I did, obviously, was offer an apology for these two things: the necklace and the goodbye. And he remembered both of those, and he accepted my apology.
But then I went to go apologize even more, and just say to him that I was so sorry that I didn’t let him feel how important he was to me and how much I did love him. And he actually stopped me.
He said, “You know, Monica, I knew that you loved me but I also knew you were a tough cookie. I knew there was more to it. But I actually loved that about you too.”
When he said it, you can imagine my heart was just like… just wanted to explode. It filled me with all sorts of feelings: sadness, regret, peacefulness, just feeling contented and a real sense of, wow, this person loved me and I loved him and I wish that I could have known that.
But it’s okay. In the moment, it felt really bittersweet because both of us could really see each other for where we were...who we had been when we met when I was 17 and he was 18...and it was really a lovely moment.
The most bittersweet part was that, as with any relationship, at some point we had to say goodbye...and so we did. And when I got home, I went into my kitchen, I grabbed all the junk food I could find, I changed into my PJs, probably a onesie...let’s be honest, I changed into that...closed the blinds, closed the curtains, got into bed and cried. Because it was so clear to me, “that it’s much easier to part in anger or indifference, than to have to say goodbye in love.” Thank you.