Does anyone have a good experience with marriage counseling? I hope so. In my experience, marriage counseling actually made things worse than ever.
I’ve been in marriage counseling twice: Marriage #1 and Marriage #2. I can’t say I’m a big fan. In fact, I can probably say I’m a huge advocate for not going to marriage counseling at all. It’s like paying someone to referee a knockdown, fist-flailing hate fest where saying anything to each other, even truly horrible statements, is supposed to bring you enlightened understanding and emotional intimacy.
To me, our weekly sessions were a flogging where I would have done anything, including chewing my own leg off, to escape the trap of that room. Through the months of listening to my every flaw I would gaze out of the window of our therapist’s third floor office and wonder if it was high enough for me to run and jump to my death, just to escape the emotional beating Husband #2 was unleashing on me.
I don’t blame Husband #2. He had a lot pent up inside of him. His method for dealing with conflict was much different than mine. We are like two different kinds of volcanoes. When I erupted, my emotions were the fast moving, liquid lava that freely pours out racing towards the sea. Husband #2 was a violent volcano, dormant for years with emotions buried inside before he finally let things erupt in the “safe” environment of counseling.
We went for months.
I can say that I understand his point of view and he might even be able to say he understands my point of view, but all of that understanding took us nowhere. I can’t speak for him, I can only say that I didn’t feel more loving towards Husband #2. In fact, counseling was like a wedge that drove us further and further apart. I no longer remembered what I specifically loved about Husband #2. I loved him…I just couldn’t remember why.
And our 60 minute ride back home was suffered in silence as I sat pressed against the passenger side door mentally licking my wounds and struggling to get my tears under control. We were beating each other up at a time when our relationship was at its absolute weakest.
It turns out that I’m not alone in my opinion of marriage counseling. I recently stumbled across an article titled Does Marriage Counseling Really Work?
It turns out that “a lot of marriage counselors have no idea what they are doing.”
Surprised? I’m not.
So Husband #2 and I agreed to try something different for a while. After 4 months of not seeing each other and communicating sporadically by email, we decided to meet for a weekend halfway between here and there. No relationship talk, no divorce filing talk, just topics that we were strong enough to handle in our broken state.
It wasn’t easy and I agonized about our trip. Little things would throw me for a loop. For example, Husband #2 asked me to book the hotel. The questions swam in my head. Should I book one room or two? Should I get two beds or one? Should I be prepared to leave at a moment’s notice or should I mentally commit to stay for the entire time? What about sex?
So I took a leap of faith, put myself out there emotionally, and booked a king suite with a two person tub. Yeah. It was a huge risk.
And through all my fears, things worked out for the best.
For one weekend, we were ourselves again, the two people who fell in love so many years ago. The ones who laughed and flirted and kissed and cuddled. In some respects our separateness is still evident, but our one weekend was a step towards remembering the reasons that I fell in love with Husband #2 so long ago.
Our problems are not fixed. Divorce papers are still somewhere in Filing Land. But we were able to build up enough goodwill to plan for a second weekend in anther 2 ½ months.
Right now, that’s a better result than we ever achieved in our months of marriage counseling.
Well, I’m a therapist and a divorced woman who has been through marriage counseling. The problem is that people come in with different agendas. Usually, one of them come in already checked out And there is rarely any way to get that partner re-engaged in the marriage. the hardest part for the therapist is to find the real agenda there. Very unfortunate that you weren’t warned to drive separately so you could have space after. I needed my space after. And unfortunate that your husband was allowed fee reign to go off on you. Seeing that much pent up lava the counselor should have referred him to private sessions To help him work out why he couldn’t emote until he erupted. I hope that the weekends help but I fear he still has an agenda and that can be so hard for your self esteem. I had a BF like that once. He lovid me but I always felt a ‘but’ coming. Killer. Take care
Thanks for the input, Cuckoo Mamma! It’s good to hear the therapist’s side of things.
I’m at a strong enough place now where I can handle the weekends. That doesn’t mean there aren’t tears…it’s more like crying for the past. I can’t change it but I can still be happy, sad, or missing it.
I’ve committed to doing my very best for the time being. I know I won’t continue with this level of “visitation” forever. Eventually the fork in the road will appear. It’s just not right now.
At this very moment, I can commit to a January visit. I can’t speak to what happens beyond that timeframe. Nothing stays the same….ever.
No, nothing stays the same. Ever. I think it’s great you guys are still trying and open to each other. Wishing you the very best.
Thanks, girl!
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Hi Annie, DejaVow is away on vacation. I would be happy to contact other Divorced Moms bloggers for you about the possibility of doing a live segment or, you can email me at [email protected]
I had mixed dealings with marriage counseling. The first time I got exactly what I thought I needed. I was right, my husband was wrong, and he got a list of things to improve on. He took his punches and got to work on the list. Several more sessions, but I still wasn’t happy. He did everything that was asked of him and frankly it pissed me off. He agreed to go again, but under the condition that we go to anyone else. This one listened to us both this time. Had us do some homework and come back for a second session. At the end of the session, she essentially told me that I was the problem (my tumultous relationship with my mother and my parents divorce) and that she’d happily continue to see us both, but thought it would be best for me to go alone for a while. We came to the conclusion that I was no longer in love with my husband and was being unfair to him, projecting a ton of stuff on a great guy. I did a bunch of work on myself and found that I was in fact living with a great guy. He was a good husband and a great father and simply I wasn’t in love with him anymore. We’d been together since I was 15 and his mom was my “real mom”. We have children, so he wasn’t willing to let me go without a fight, so we went to a sort of marriage boot camp where we were encouraged to reconnect and such. We did, but it was essentially finding our friendship. He decided he could let me go and we could have peace and be friends and co-parents. We actually worked out a basic custody and property agreement. And conceived our third child. It took us quite a while to actually separate He was worried about bonding with our daughter if he wasn’t in the house and I frankly was pretty freeked about going it alone. We continued to use the second councelor to help with coparenting issues, at first living in the same house and eventually with the kids splitting time equally between our homes.