Wife and I need counseling, badly. She needs her own individual therapy and I’ve been seeing therapists on and off for the past decade…though I’ve been going steadily for the last year. First, I’m undecided which would be best…if she gets her own help before marriage counseling or vice versa? She has a lot of issues stemming from childhood (as we all do) specifically her upbringing and family dynamic. I’m not trying to pat myself on the back because I am FAR from a perfect husband, but when we argue I do make an honest effort to take a step back and make sense of the situation before letting emotion get the better of me. She is unable to do that and just goes nuclear on me.
I’m worried that she is too set in her own mindset to try and see things from my perspective. I’m worried that if we go to couples counseling, she will be convinced that I’m trying to paint myself as the good guy (even while I’m admitting fault, that makes me the “good guy”) and she will resent me even more. I’m worried that counseling will just add more fuel to the fire.
7 comments
Sort of.
Our first marriage counselor was honestly not that great. Essentially, within a couple months, the therapist was being pretty direct with my wife about changes she needed to make. And the therapist wasn’t really doing the same for me. It made my wife depressed, anxious, bitter. “Maybe I really am the only problem”
We ended up doing some individual therapy which helped a LOT. We then found a new marriage therapist. In a 1-1 session I explained to him what happened with the last therapist…. And to please feel free to take the gloves off on me as well, when in “deep” sessions where she’s feeling picked on. He seemed to recognize that and we got a lot more accomplished vs the first therapist.
There are some issues (like addiction, abuse and some mental illnesses) for which couples counseling is contradindicated. But just being reactive/angry isn’t one of them. Any experienced marriage counselor has dealt with that dynamic before.
My husband and I were in a similar situation to what you described, and at first he really disliked our counselor and complained that she “made him the bad guy” but over a few sessions he came around and it has totally transformed our marriage. He is so much more patient and quick to listen and apologize and he rarely gets angry now (and I’ve worked on my own issues as well). One thing that was hugely helpful was each of us having a couple 1-1 sessions with our marriage counselor. I think that really helped my husband express his concerns and feel heard.
From what I have heard it makes it worse more than it helps.
Also It usually isn’t used until things have basically gone nuclear. And there is no saving it.
No.
My wife and I decided to go when things were going really well as a prophylactic measure. We’re both products of abuse , Im a product of divorce, and we recognized that we had never actually seen a healthy , successful relationship. We didn’t know how to fight, we didn’t know how to communicate well , and we had both been in “bachelor mindsets” for our entire lives and didn’t know how to do the whole partnership thing.
I was a lot like your wife in that I had a lot of issues surrounding my family dynamic that contributed to issues with my relationship. Relationship counseling helped me recognize that when we fought, I anticipated the build of the conflict and egged it on , didn’t control my emotions well, and pushed for knock down drag outs bc I was looking for an out of the relationship.
It helped my wife recognize that she was shutting down during conflict and avoiding it completely, and what some of those behaviors look like. She also got things to take to personal therapy to talk about how her family’s relationship with alcohol impacts our relationship, her own issues with addiction, and other areas of her life.
We got a lot of tools we could use to build the foundation of our relationship, and it helped in personal therapy as well. I stopped personal therapy bc my therapist got creepy , but I was still doing a lot of inner work and finding resources online .
The relationship counselor did encourage me many times when she felt like I needed to take something to my therapist- they’ll tell you if something may not be the thing to focus on in session. Ours was also really good at redirecting conversations or helping us rephrase things so one of us didnt feel like we were being blamed or having the finger pointed at us all the time. We had the worst fight of our relationship during counseling and almost divorced – it definitely came up “ oh sure take it to the therapist make me the bad guy “ . We had to work through it, and it was hard . Our counselor also ended up not being a good fit for us at all , partly bc she was SUPER new, but we still got a lot from it, which makes me think a lot of what she was doing was pretty standard practice.
People will tell you “counseling is useless and only for couples that are about to divorce anyway, dont bother”. That isn’t true. It all just depends on how much you BOTH want it to work and how much you BOTH are willing to put into it.
Yes, twice. My opinion on it, if people go to MC hoping the MC will help them convince their partner to change, it’s going to fail. If they go to MC hoping that the MC can help facilitate discussions that are going nowhere at home, then it can help.
My wife and I went to counseling because of an affair I had. I to blame for what I had done and my wife saw it was due to a dead bedroom. I felt the counselor was against me and blamed me solely for the affair. I was the bad guy so I never went back after two sessions. My wife carried on with counseling for a few months then stopped because she felt like it wasn’t doing anything to repair our marriage.
Counseling helped my wife and I save our marriage.
We were both ready to walk away. Crucially, both of us actually wanted to stay together, and we were both willing to do the work that was necessary to determine if we could.
Our counselor admitted after we made a lot of progress that when we first came to her and explained our situation, she was concerned that we didn’t have much to work with.
My wife went to IC first. I went after marriage counseling uncovered a few personal issues.
A good counselor doesn’t take sides. They facilitate a conversation between the two of you, and point out viewpoints neither of you might be considering. They help you realize the goals that you set. They help determine what tools you require to work together better as partners and teach you how to learn those skills.