I think anyways. I don’t have any experience with this. It started with my husband sitting with his eyes closed refusing to talk for the first half hour. Then, when I was telling the therapist some of the ways I show I respect him, he suddenly jumped in with something that was a huge trigger for me which immediately set me off and we ended with me yelling w some cruel things at him and him yelling more triggering things at me. The therapist didn’t even want to schedule another appointment until we had thought about whether we actually wanted to continue the relationship. Is this normal for a first session? I would like to continue therapy with him, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but I don’t know if he will be willing. He’s given me the silent treatment for the last 24 hours now.
Edit: I don’t know why everyone is assuming that we aren’t getting individual therapy. We’ve both been in therapy for over a year. We also both have cptsd from different issues. He likes to trigger my ptsd. I have a hard time with emotional regulation when I’m triggered in this way.
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The man is giving you the silent treatment. A stage most emotionally mature people grow out of at 4 years old. Because COMMUNICATION MATTERS and not just verbal. He’s non-verbally telling you he’s done and doesn’t want to make things better. Listen to him.
When à therapist Who is supposed to help you save your marriage doesn’t even want to make money on your back, I think it means there’s nothing to save…
Not normal at all. This sucks. He’s stonewalling you (look up Gottman’s “four horsemen”.)
And what’s with the closed eyes during the first half of therapy? Did he not want to go?
Evidently he was “triggered” by how you feel you show respect. That’s a very big deal. Needs to be fleshed out. That lead to a reaction from you that created a huge breakdown. Idk what all of these triggers are but when you enter the counseling session you have to be open to hearing things that you aren’t going to like and allowing the other side to fully communicate before responding. If I knew my true feelings are going to “trigger” my wife I wouldn’t be interested in any form of communication. He’s shut down for now. If you go back to counseling ask to start with learning proper rules of engagement and how to fight fair.
**Edit: You left out the part about your husband being born into a family of literal meth heads, being bounced around abusive foster homes as a child, and spending much of his adult life in prison. That’s not an excuse for him stonewalling and yelling at you in return, but yea that’s why he has serious issues. This man needs intense mental health intervention ASAP.**
Nope, definitely not normal. It sounds like the therapist was taken aback by your behavior and doesn’t want to work with you, which is uncommon because it’s their job to help couples navigate difficulties so they usually don’t shy away from conflict. The fact that the first session went to badly that they essentially told you not to come back… definitely a testament to how bad things really are. I’m sorry.
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>we ended with me yelling w some cruel things at him and him yelling more triggering things at me
I just want to gently point out that yelling is considered, by most professionals, to be a form of violence. It’s abuse. It’s really not ok to yell at your partner, period, especially when you’re combining that with hurtful words.
You both have big issues to deal with. His stonewalling, you losing control of yourself during conflict. If you truly want to save this marriage, you’ll need individual therapy first. You can’t work together if you can’t control yourselves.
I’m so sorry, but no, that’s not normal.
I would take the therapist’s advice. Do you actually want to continue this relationship? Someone intentionally triggering you is not great, but that doesn’t mean you get to scream cruel things back at him. He instigated, but it sounds like he didn’t want to be there in the first place, which is not the best way to start therapy. You’re both engaging in some pretty toxic behaviors here. I think you should take the therapist’s advice and really reflect on that.
Possibly the best for both of you, would be to go to individual therapy first or ask the marriage counselor to give you each a separate appointment to discuss what you are both looking for in counseling and what issues you want to resolve and then you can meet together and the counselor can take control over what is discuss and not yelled about. The counselor should have stopped your husband and controlled the situation and allowed you to speak. Maybe look for a new one.
Our marriage counseling started with both of us completing a questionnaire only the therapist could see that discussed where each of us perceived as problem areas and what we wanted form each other and whether we wanted to continue being married. Idk if we could have answered as honestly out loud at that time, and the work we did to improve our communication meant that by the end of it we could have civil discussions about our problem areas. We did not dive right in, that would have gone poorly I think.
Therapists don’t recommend couples therapy in case of abusive marriages because it never works. Going by what you described, it’s abusive marriage regardless if both parties are abusive or one (silent treatment, yelling, screaming at each other, passive aggressiveness etc). I recommend individual counseling in your situation and I am sure you can find a therapist for that
When a *therapist* doesn’t want to continue with you (knowing they’ll make money off the sessions), the relationship is over. The therapist likely saw this relationship as abusive (silent treatment, yelling, naming calling, etc).
So your husband would not talk the first half hour, then he said something and you started yelling terrible things at him. There is a shortage of therapists of all kinds now, they are not going to put up with you both acting like spoiled children. You need to split up I think.
I don’t think that’s normal.
Both of you seem to be highly reactive to each other to the point of complete communication break down. Therapist are not miracle workers. If you both can’t even speak calmly to each other about important things then the relationship is basically dead.
I don’t think I have enough information. I’m in school to be a therapist, so I’m no expert—but I think the first few sessions should be about learning who you are and establishing goals. That sounded way too into the weeds for a first session. If you’re already out of resources with each other, the first sessions should be about making you feel safe and maybe building some resources. You can’t fix problems from relational poverty.
Have you tried individual therapy yet
What was the topic of the first discussion? Usually the first session is a time to bring couples together …tell me how you first met…tell me what first drew you to your partner….
My husband walked out of a therapy session and decided to walk the 5 miles home.
The therapist asked me “why am I staying, and he understands if I don’t want to.” I honestly don’t know why I stayed, but we did continue therapy and we worked on ourselves.
I’m very happily married 15 years, but old me doesn’t know how we even got married.
You’re yelling at each other like children. Just take the relationship out back and put it out of its misery already.
What’s really the end goal here? Is this salvageable? What do you want the relationship to look like at the end of this? You need to think about if it’s even possible to get to where you want to be.
If you’re getting “set off” to the point that communication breaks down in a couples counselling session, you have individual therapy work to do and should not be making big decisions about the relationship unless it’s literally to protect yourself.
Between the two of you, you are not exhibiting the patience, skills, or desire to work through your shit together. If you want the relationship to last, but you both need to work on things to make that possible, then you both need to head to individual counselling with the goal of improving yourselves to better handle adult relationships.
I have my first session in two days and I’m very scared now
My husband I have been in therapy for over a year and we rarely miss a session. Sometimes we go twice a week. We started off with couples sessions and after about 6 months, we transitioned to individual sessions with the same therapist and both did trauma therapy and work on the relationship individually with her. We will do a couples session every so often to get on the same page. This has worked gloriously for us because we both have a lot of childhood trauma and after a point, our therapist advised that a lot of the continuing conflict was really us just acting out our trauma from childhood on each other.. we were triggering each other all over the place and it was tough to understand. Still, we value ourselves and each other enough that we really want to heal and be the best we can be for one another. It’s very sweet, but we have definitely had our share of loud sessions and stonewalling… still, we go back. When times get hard, our therapist will always say that she can only help us if we both have the willingness to do whatever it takes to repair the relationship. Once one person no longer has the willingness, the relationship is over. This works every time anyone has doubts. Therapy saved our relationship and we have grown so much individually and together through the process. Don’t let anyone (besides your husband) tell you that you can’t do it. You can do it. It’s hard but the juice is worth the squeeze. Good luck.
It’s normal for therapy when the couple are abusive and immature.
Therapy is not there to save your marriage, it is there to create a space where you can decide whether you want to save the marriage. You two shat all over that space.
You both sound miserable. Why do you want to save this?
We went to MC years ago. My wife got out a yellow legal pad filled with details of my mistakes over most of our marriage. She went for maybe 20 minutes and I listened quietly. The therapist finally stopped her and asked me to respond. I said “Wow, your husband sounds like a complete asshole. Why do you stay with him?”
Therapist started laughing, calmed her self and gave my wife a one year rule. Except serious things like adultery and abuse, she can only go back one year with her grievances. I think that saved our marriage.
Yes having your eyes closed is a non confrontational and disrespectful at the same time. Can I ask what he initially said that triggered you? Did he warrant what you said to him?
There are some positives:
* Both of you were there at the same time. Both of you spoke.
* The therapist got to observe the two of you in action, *real life action.* It wasn’t role-playing, it wasn’t “what-if”, it was down to earth real.
* The therapist gave you some homework: Think about whether the both of you want to continue the relationship.
As you said, therapy is hard. It’s real hard. Twice in our 40 year marriage, my wife and I have had couple’s counseling. Once she was ready to give up, once I was ready to give up. Neither of us wanted to give up our relationship without doing everything to save it.
Unfortunately, what your husband is doing is called “stonewalling” – completely shutting down and ignoring the partner. In couples therapy, this is literally called the death knell of a relationship. Some couples, with great difficulty, can work from this stage but both individuals have to be open to changing their communication styles. From your post and from the reaction of the couple’s therapist, you both may be beyond the help of what therapy can solve. Triggering each other is not healthy or helpful and stonewalling is a very extreme reaction. Listen to the therapist and reevaluate what can be saved on the basis of what both of you are willing to do to save your marriage.
I think you have to ask him if he even wants to try and participate. If he refused to speak for the first half, than he didn’t show up to help fix your relationship. If he isn’t interested in participating than I would say that’s a clear sign he’s given up on your relationship.
Sometimes people will say they don’t want to give up on your relationship because they want you to end it so you become the villain…. They stop trying but can claim you’re the one that gave up on them, because you give up on waiting for them to show up for you.
“he likes to trigger my ptsd”
What the Actual Fuck.
Reread the phrase you wrote as many times as you need – to understand how fundamentally fucked up your relationship is.
You also said he sat in therapy for 30min saying nothing – and then he said something to trigger your ptsd.
He has ZERO interest in fixing this.
Sonce saying NOTHING didn’t stop you from telling the therapist your ‘problems’ he just waited and found a different way to sabotage it.
Stop kicking him.
Stop letting him kick you.
Just drop the rope already.
I’m not a couples therapist, so I can’t say whether this is normal, but I’m not sure where you want this to go if you are still triggered to the point where you can’t listen to him in a structured setting with a trained professional, but instead yell cruel things at him. I’ll be honest, I wouldn’t talk to you for a while after that either. Why would I when you’re probably going to scream at me?
I think you should continue the work in individual therapy and perhaps replace the couples counseling with more individual therapy sessions that are focused on emotional regulation (perhaps with somatic awareness or other body-based work). If you are unable to emotionally regulate, and he’s got issues that contribute to the problems within your marriage, no amount of couples therapy will fix that. So I think I understand somewhat why the therapist did not think continuing would be productive.