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Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Couples Counseling for Everyone (or Not)

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A few years ago, a friend of mine got a divorce. About a year before the divorce, she took a one year work assignment that involved lots of travel. She and her husband would spend months apart, and the stress of separation caused fractures to appear in all the little weak spots in their relationship. During what was to be the last of these periods of away, she called to tell me she had decided that, even though this assignment was over, she didn't want to go back home again. She was looking into getting a divorce.

Her husband was a good person and also a friend of mine; he knew they were having problems but was thinking they would work things out now that his wife wasn't traveling as much. I was devastated that these two good people could break apart for what seemed like such small reasons. When the assignment ended, she went back home to him, waited a week or so to make sure she really wasn't happy, then packed up her stuff and left.

I tried to be supportive and listen. I tried in my helpful (read: codependent) way to give a little friendly advice. But I was secretly, quietly — ok, maybe actually just a little passive aggressively — really, really, really judgmental. I blamed her. I thought she shouldn't have taken that assignment that involved so much time apart. I thought she should have tried — really tried — to work on her marriage. I thought she should have gone to couples counseling, seen a marriage therapist, done something before she got so tired that walking out seemed like the best option.

I thought of her this weekend when my husband asked if I would consider seeing a therapist. Now, you might think that a couple who has managed to build a strong and happy marriage in the wake of a devastating sex addiction would already be therapy experts. But the truth is that Mark and I have been to a total of three joint sessions in the five years since he began recovery for sex addiction. While I was a very big fan of recommending therapy to my friend (and judging her for not going), the truth is that I'm not so much a fan of going myself. Past experience with a bad therapist combined with my own character defects have made therapy my lifelong Catch 22: the very problems that would make therapy helpful drive me away from it. And (in spite of everything) I have yet to hit bottom hard enough to make me crawl there with sufficient desperation for healing.

The particular problem Mark and I are having now seems, in the face of everything else we deal with in our relationship, a small issue. It is simply that I sometimes get crazy with anxiety and frustration when Mark asks me questions. You know, questions like "How was the meeting with Austen's teacher?" or "Do you know how this toy fits together?" or "Have you seen the electric bill?" I am bothered out of all proportion to the actual situation: my adrenaline surges, I feel like I'm not wearing any clothes while giving a presentation in front of the U.S. Congress, I ramble and get defensive. This problem has persisted for as long as either of us can remember, and while we have ways of coping with it, we've never gotten at the heart of the issues surrounding it.

So this weekend, when Mark asked me a question and I dove into a lengthy, panicked answer, we both recognized that I was "doing that thing again." So, Mark asked a different question: "Would you consider seeing a therapist about this?" To which I immediately answered, "Yes!" Of course, I would see a therapist. It would be silly not to see a therapist. Refusing to see a therapist would mean I didn't care enough to really work on my marriage, like my friend, the bad divorcée. Of course, I didn't feel I was ready to go see a therapist. I was pre-resenting the therapist and my husband even as I said yes. But darn it, I owed it to my marriage, to my husband, to my kids to try, right? What kind of wife, mother, human would I be if I said "I can't do this yet"?

But thinking about it all made me so sick and tense that I stopped for a second, then sobbed, "No. No, actually that wasn't true. If I'm really honest with myself, I'm not willing to see a therapist. I'm just not there yet. I want to force myself to do it to make you happy. I want to do it to make it look like I'm trying, because I don't want to have it written on the tombstone of our marriage, 'She wasn't even willing to see a therapist.' But those aren't good reasons to do it. If I start therapy, it should be because I want to, not because I feel I ought to force myself to. I'm scared that everything will crumble because I'm not ready, but I have to let go of that, because I can't make myself be ready now."

And maybe that's what my friend was saying too, years ago: that she was doing what she could, given her own weaknesses and anxieties. But I couldn't hear her over the sound of my own judgment.
Posted by at 3:50 PM
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13 comments:

  1. What I love about therapy is talking to someone with no agenda other than listening. It's also good practice for me, as I tend to want to figure out and solve everything all by myself.
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  2. Funny. When I read this my gut response was to think, "I would give anything for my partner to ask me to do therapy with him, or even by myself!". Then I explored that response and realized that no, what I would give anything for is to know that HE was working on HIM, and I would take that request as a sign of that. In reality, I would balk at someone else requesting I do therapy. I'm still so very caught up in how if everyone around me would just act right, I would be ok. I'm still very stuck in the perception that it is everyone else's responsibility to get better.

    I am in therapy, but even there I'm blaming all my problems on outer circumstances and other people.

    Thanks for holding up that big "ugly" mirror that I don't want to look in.
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  3. p.s. I also meant to say that I do that same thing of getting anxious and defensive over simple questions. I hadn't thought about it much, or rather, I hadn't explored it very deeply. I think for me that it is an automatic knee-jerk reaction to "feeling" attacked. The questions feel like accusations to me. Sometimes they are, and perhaps I've been conditioned to see them as attacks because of the times that they are attacks. So "do you know where the electric bill is?" sounds to me like, "What did YOU do with the electric bill?", which further translates in my subconscious as, "you did something wrong, and therefore YOU are wrong".

    We can really internalize things in such a way that it's hard to root out. Even though I've begun to recognize the pattern, I still have a hard time not responding immediately as though I'm under some sort of attack.
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  4. Yes, VV. Part of the problem for me is definitely that I feel attacked by certain questions, because I see them as an inherent criticism. Mark says, "Where's the electric bill?" and I hear, "Why can't you keep track of anything?" I know where that comes from and am working on that.

    But part of the problem is something I can't even articulate clearly yet. I sort of know what it is, but it's very hard to describe. It has to do with not knowing the answers to simple questions and feeling uncomfortable with that not-knowing. And it has to do with the timing of questions and my brain's inability to shift gears smoothly. There's some feeling there of being a not good enough question answerer.
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  5. Therapy is hard. Like you, I am a huge advocate of therapy for others. It's useful, I've seen it work for so many people, I've harboured a dream since I was very, very young of being a psychologist myself. I was in therapy many times over the course of my childhood. The truth is, it's not for everyone. I learned a lot in therapy, and I believe I owe where and who I am today to that early therapy, but it's also true that I'd dig my heels in if I were asked to go now. Though, I'd be the world's worst wife and flat refuse. :)

    I will say, though, that a good therapist will help you articulate the thing you're having trouble putting words to. Unfortunately, it's like finding any other good doctor: you have to do some searching, and can't necessarily rely on the first one you find.

    Love and luck to you, whatever you do.
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  6. I get upset when the Hubs questions me about stuff. I feel like I do SO much and that he is criticizing me. It pisses me off. Therefore I yell or "go off" on him. Then I feel bad for it later.
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  7. I think it's wonderful that you were honest with Mark about not wanting to go. It might be something you need to work out on your own before you explore it with him. And you're definitely dedicated to doing your own work right now, so I'm sure it will all come out.

    My gut reaction when I read this, based on the situations in which I react this way, was that it could be an "authority figure" issue. I could be totally off, but I'm just thinking of it in terms of the main issues we're looking at in our step work and how I feel in authority figure situations.
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  8. My husband and I went to therapy together for 18 long hard weeks - once a week right after I kicked him out er I mean we seperated because he had a fling over a weekend of drunk blindness. It was dreadful, it was as if we argued with a referee. We did say things that needed to be said we were able to get passed what had happened and in some way become closer, but nothing changed he still drank and my world still sucked - so 18 weeks later I decided I did not want to continue any longer.

    If you are not ready you would be doing a huge disservice to Mark and yourself by forcing it. Just my two cents.

    Cat
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  9. My future-ex and I tried couples counseling 3 times. He didn't like the first therapist because she was fat, so we stopped going there. The second was a man/woman team who were fixated on our sex life to the exclusion of all other issues. They convinced us that if we felt real passion for each other at one point, we could feel it again. We pronounced ourselves cured after 3 sessions and didn't go back. The third therapist (last winter) seemed more concerned about keeping us in therapy and not doing anything (homework) that would shorten the process. We stopped going to that when it was decided that I needed individual therapy and medication for my depression.
    I have yet to meet a decent couples' counselor.
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  10. And then there's the possibility that the other is asking the questions in order to trigger the expected response.

    I mean instead of asking "where's the electric bill," one could, um, you know, look for it.

    xox
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  11. Oh lady, you do challenge me sometimes. (In a good way!)

    There was so much of me in this post. The voice of anxiety and frustration, the judging people for not sticking at it, working 'hard enough' (by my own judgemental definition) at their relationships.

    But I'm such a therapy lover, it's hard for me to get past that bit where your friend wouldn't go. It's a little different with you as you're not about to divorce Mark, but there too I just want to nudge *do it, do it, do it* purely off the back of my own positive experience.

    Thank you for encouraging me to be a bit more understanding, to see that it's just not that simple for everyone.

    And thank you for opening up and sharing a problem that is current. I know how much harder it is that writing about something you've been getting better at.
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  12. great post!

    when my ex husband and I went to counselling it made me realize how screwed up he really was and how done trying I really was....maybe your friend wanted to start living her life before it passed her by....but I am only speaking from my own experience....it was the best decision I made in a long time when I left....positive for all of us, the grrlz and me, and even my ex who finally hit bottom and went to rehab
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  13. I, too, have always been a big fan of therapy for others, but not for me. I'm very self-analytical. I have read books. I know what my issues are! (That judgmental friend re: divorce thing is also me.)

    But I started trying to convince Paul to go to couples' therapy with me BEFORE WE WERE EVEN ENGAGED because I wanted the third party stamp of approval, that we knew what we were doing, going into this with our eyes wide open, discussed all the important topics in advance, etc. He wasn't ready/willing. He wouldn't make the appointments and he wouldn't say that he wasn't interested. It just dragged on and on and nothing happened except that I talked about it occasionally.

    In the meantime, we got engaged, got married, and had some children. All the while, we had FABULOUS communication, were best friends, and very happy. I thought. Until the big WHAMMO.

    Since then we've been to three excellent marriage and family therapists and have both gotten so much out of the experiences. A good MFT is worth her/his weight in wedding rings. I'm thinking we might stay in therapy forever, even if our visits become only occasional. Our current therapist is an academic, scary smart, and completely, perfectly fabulous. At least for me. (We're still working on Paul identifying what's good for him, then eventually sharing that information.) But he makes the calls, requests appointments, even arranges childcare for some of the visits. Which is FABULOUS. We go out to dinner on the way home and call it a monthly "date night."
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