It's been very hard for me to accept all this. My thirty-five-year marriage was a messy disaster, a chaotic, slow- motion drowning of the man I loved. As I continued trying to fathom who Tom really was, the only concept that seemed to make sense and explain what had happened was that there had to be literally two Toms. One was at home Tom, a man who was married, seemingly happily, with a son. This at home Tom never betrayed any hint that there was another Tom. The other Tom spent his days in sexual pursuit of powerful women at his job, full of angry resentment that he needed love and was tied down to his wife. Also, I think this hidden Tom couldn’t control his troublesome sexual submission to any interested, powerful woman, much like his terrified submission to his abusive mother.

The sexual interests that were aroused on the set is shown in this next dream movie. This dream very graphically portrayed the nature of Tom’s secret vice. In this dream, we are at a Hollywood party. As I walk through the rooms full of people, I see the woman who Tom allegedly was unfaithful with, as well as many other women and men. The party is in a shabby boathouse by a grey and gloomy ocean. The rooms and people are dreary and bland. There is a woman lying listlessly on a couch, fully dressed with her breast exposed. Tom is staring at this woman with great interest. Then he talks to another woman. He’s not only ignoring me, he wants me to go away. It’s very obvious he feels comfortable here and is enjoying himself. He doesn’t want me and doesn’t care where I am or what I do. I leave alone.

What is most striking about this party is the louche, debauched atmosphere that prevails. The guests seem like tired and faded roués for whom the juiciness of sex has been denatured down to sexual voyeurism.

Could it be that in the deeper recesses of his unconscious, love was something pure and separate from sex, like the mountain snow he compared it to in his California trip letter? Did he see the world as a dirty, tarnished place? Did he schmooze with certain women in the business, because they shared his taste for the cheap thrill of emotionally undemanding, ‘naughty’ sex?

It’s as if, as a child, Tom developed a jaded sexual precocity from the scary spectacle of his parent’s marriage, which was like being ringside as a pair of Parisian Apache dancers slapped and slung each other furiously around the dance floor. He’d lost his innocence way too young, and his sexuality seems to have been permanently compromised.

Due to his childhood abuse, love and sex are a dangerous combination because they make him feel unbearably anxious, needy, and helpless. Love was an existential threat to him. For Tom, love is best experienced from a distance, like California or Paris. Promiscuity is a sexual thrill that doesn’t threaten his survival.

Now, that strange letter from his very first California trip makes sense. He writes: “I hope I don't sound like a crybaby when I tell you all the things I am feeling or all the things I fear. What I am about to tell you is pure truth. I stress this because you may doubt what I am about to say. I have never in my life let anyone see me weak or terribly afraid like I have you. I confess all to you, my fears, doubts, jealousy, weaknesses. I trust you like I've never trusted anyone before."

What he’s describing here is being in love. In the safety of love, we all feel free to confess our doubts and show our fears and weaknesses, because we are with someone who loves us and will understand and help us. That’s what everybody feels when they’re in love. But in Tom’s world, love feels like being a weak crybaby.

Emotionally, he’s in an impossible dilemma. If he’s with the woman he loves, he’s happy, but he feels acutely and terrifyingly vulnerable, needy, and weak. He’s also in danger when he’s in love, because he can’t control his needy secret self; that self will act out sexually to make him feel strong and free, but that acting out risks losing the love he needs. The result is he feels trapped and angry. However, when he’s at work, he reverts to his compensating sexual behavior in a safe environment with women who he imagines can do great things for him; things that will lift him out of his deep well of despair. In an ironic way, in Tom’s emotional universe, love is a weakness, and promiscuous sex on the set is his secret power for success, a way to prove he doesn’t need any woman, especially not his wife.

When we first met and fell in love, it’s my guess he briefly believed he could really love and be faithful. He was doing okay, except for the bolt to California. But when he got the soap opera, where he was under constant stress, his secret self panicked. His insecurities and lack of confidence overwhelmed his at-home self. He went into survival mode and quickly fell into his old pattern of a secret life; he convinced himself that his schmoozing was essential to his success. But, every time he gave into the impulses of his secret self and schmoozed some woman at work, he made himself look ridiculous and demeaned his own talents. That’s why his career never got any momentum.