Had a call from a friend/client this morning who said she was in trouble. I will change the names to protect the guilty. “Trouble” to Michelle meant she had accumulated a rather large balance on her credit card. Worse, she told her husband Saul she had been paying it down when in fact she hadn’t made a payment in months. A statement came in the mail and he, not being the trusting sort since she is not a year out of rehab, opened it.

She called me on her way home to face him and asked my advice. First of all, I said, ” He opened your mail? Well, that’s illegal.” She laughed and asked if she should press charges! Since this was probably not the best tack to take, we moved on.

She explained that because she lied to Saul about the credit card, he now assumes she is lying about staying sober and who knows what else. She is in fact doing really well in all other facets of her life right now. The money thing has been a problem for her in the past and she has deep issues around it that we were not going to resolve in fifteen minutes while she was sitting in her driveway on the phone. She told me she has been truthful with her therapist about not paying the bill and lying about it. Good, she can work on that with him.

But how to handle her husband now. My first thought was that she had to reassure him that she is a truthful and trustworty person in general. It’s just the money thing that causes her problems. We agreed that she needed to:

• Confess
• Apologize for lying
• Make a plan to prevent future occurrence

Michelle said that she is solution based (me too) and usually presents a plan to right things when she screws up. In this case, she decided to hand over a certain amount of cash each week to Saul and ask him to pay the bill for her. Unfortunately, Saul typically reacts to her plans for damage repair with scorn, saying, “that doesn’t make it all better”.

To which I responded, “Do you have a short skirt in your closet? Maybe you could suggest he give you a spanking.  Would that make him feel better? If not, I am afraid you may have bigger problems! ”

• Suggest a spanking

We had fun with that idea for a few minutes. Sorry, no more details. If you’re really disappointed I’m sure you can find plenty of raunchy on another site!

Michelle had to hang up. Her last comment was that she loves talking to me ’cause she always gets a dose of humor with the good advice. She doesn’t realize I needed that as much as she did this morning. From my clients, I always get back as much as I give, sometimes even more!

Sometimes all you can do is laugh. How can humor give you some perspective on your “trouble”?

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