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Post by JMX on Sept 12, 2019 22:42:16 GMT -5
We have been to three marriage counselors - the last marriage counselor took on my husband by himself / and let him go after two months (no idea what happened) and I have another individual therapist I have been seeing for three years.
All marriage therapists we have been to have sucked. I wanted relational AND individual challenges. We got “some” with our last, however, I knew from the get-go he was anti-our belief system politically even though he didn’t name it (neither did we) and because he couldn’t help it. I think he felt safe enough with me, to think I was the same, and he was mistaken. He was also really ensconced in attachment theory and it was like he wrote a paper on it in graduate school and worked like mad to apply it to our particular problem. It wasn’t entirely unhelpful - it was more, he was trying to prove he was worthy.
I also figured from our time together that he had extreme daddy issues. He peppered his daddy issues into some of our talks. While I appreciated his perspective and listened at all times, I was acutely aware of trying to NOT roll my eyes. We also made a habit of counting how many times he used the word “germane” while he was talking to us. It was a sincere connection for us, actually, so I credit him with that.
How many times did you count “germane”?
15. You?
Shoot! 13!
The two before that were ridiculously ineffective, but mostly - their religious undertones just never got through to us. We visited those less than the last one. The things they concentrated on - were not “germane” to our particular issues, as it were.
My individual therapist sees a lot of childhood sexual and physical abuse patients. And I regularly make her laugh. I want to make her laugh and it is my goal every session. When she greets me, most of the time I see her try to transition from the last visit. She is bothered and uncomfortable. During our time together, if I don’t have her complete attention and making her laugh, I notice she is looking at the clock. It bothers me to NO END because I know that I got seen 10-15 minutes late because the last one was really, actually sad.
Does she give me insight? Sometimes.
Mostly, she just asks me questions. Although, I get more pushback here.
Also, she asks me questions that make me mad.
Are you looking for an excuse to leave your husband?
Which is brilliant and stupid.
🤷♀️
Maybe I have been here the entire time to do just that!!
Sometimes, this place is better, sometimes she is better. It’s still in a gray area.
At least she never says “germane”.
For the most part, therapists are just people. If you’re in couple’s therapy, you will have to find a way to find one that wants to connect people to each other. If you want one with your point of view - it won’t only be hard, it will be hard to have your SO see the light too, because YOU picked them.
If your SO picked another, they would likely pick someone that was not sex-positive in marriage and you would be the problem.
No idea at all how to go about picking one that understands both perspectives - which would be needed if you are trying to make it work.
Therapists are just people you can talk to who are not supposed to spill your secrets, that happen to have an education in doing so, and likely more debt in student loans than they get paid in one year.
Take it all with a grain of salt.
No one has your answers. Only you do with time and putting the work in.
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Post by ironhamster on Sept 13, 2019 2:10:38 GMT -5
I never did. My ex had some religious counseling to help her get over her sudden aversion to anything sexual. I remember the first strained handjob she gave me, seemingly struggling to go through the motions, and wondering when it would start to feel natural for her. Now, this was a woman that swallowed when we were dating, then after the wedding it was like a switch turned all the good stuff off.
My ex later got her Masters in Counseling, but, thankfully for all the prospective clients that got help elsewhere, never practiced.
Both experiences left me extremely skeptical of the field of counseling.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 13, 2019 10:44:50 GMT -5
Thank you all for sharing your experiences both good and bad. My employer has an EAP (Employee Assistance Program) that allows up to five visits without cost or obligation so I'm exploring the "shrinks" on that list. It seems to me that it's important to go in with a focused goal and I'm considering how to frame the initial conversation. This is for me only. There is zero chance, precisely zero, that my W would consider seeing someone together. 1-She does not consider our sexlessness a problem. 2-She is so intimacy avoidant that just talking about anything personal or feelings-related is taboo.
Besides, I'm not looking to "fix" us. I'm looking for some perspective on my own mental health.
As always, you folks are brilliant. Thanks.
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Post by Handy on Sept 13, 2019 15:41:36 GMT -5
One thing I did wrong when in a few counseling sessions with my W was to gloss over the problems so she didn't come out to be a really bad person, which she isn't. If I did it over, I would say more that might put more pressure on her. I felt at the time if I was more vocal about what I wanted in life, my W would up her complaints about me or justify why she was more correct-right than my version of our relationship. I mostly wanted to avoid escalation of any future conflicts.
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Post by northstarmom on Sept 13, 2019 18:26:20 GMT -5
Neither joint not individual therapy saved my marriage. That’s mainly because my now ex just went through the motions of marital counseling. Marriage counseling isn’t magic. Unless both partners work in it a marriage can’t change for the better.
Individual therapy helped me become the woman I’d always wanted to be. I learned to identify people who were friends who cherished and supported me.I learned to pursue my own dreams. Finally, I became a happy, independent, confident person who had the courage to end a desert of a marriage.
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Post by baza on Sept 14, 2019 6:34:54 GMT -5
Neither joint not individual therapy saved my marriage. That’s mainly because my now ex just went through the motions of marital counseling. Marriage counseling isn’t magic. Unless both partners work in it a marriage change for the better. Individual therapy helped me become the woman I’d always wanted to be. I learned to identify people who were friends who cherished and supported me.I learned to pursue my own dreams. Finally, I became a happy, independent, confident person who had the courage to end a desert of a marriage. I think there's even more to this. Even with the best intentions in the world you and/or your spouse may simply not be capable of bringing the requisite determination, personal insight, or skill set to the table. You and/or your spouse may simply not have the capability to effectively "work on it" - even though you and/or your spouse are prepared to do your absolute level best. You and/or your spouses' "best" may simply not be good enough, irrespective of the intentions of you and/or your spouse.
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Post by misssunnybunny on Sept 14, 2019 14:45:46 GMT -5
Individual therapy helped so much. It gave me a place to talk about my issues and feelings in a constructive way, looking into my part of what was happening with my marriage as well as his refusal to have sex. Over time, the layers peeled back, and I was able to come to terms with it was more than just the lack of sex, it was his lack of trust in me, lack of communication, and emotional abuse of me that were also present. I can look back and see that much of it was due to his anxiety and insecurity, and I was afraid to speak up out of low self esteem. I learned to speak up and that led to asking for a divorce.
We then tried couples counseling, and I know we started way too late to fix anything. The first counselor knew it was over, but saw he wasn't ready to see it. She tried working with us, but he decided she was "against him" somehow and wanted to try someone else. The second counselor had sex therapy as one of her specialties. I affectionately refer to her as the crackpot, because she was so ineffective....At any rate, I started to notice that he was trying to manipulate my thinking to be like his, that sex wasn't required for a happy marriage, and at that point I had had it, especially when my feelings about that were discounted by him and the counselor. I'm thankful for individual therapy and this forum for getting me through such a rough time in my life!
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Post by saarinista on Sept 18, 2019 1:17:56 GMT -5
Here's the bottom line: therapy can only help people change if they WANT to change.
If they DON'T want to change, no amount of therapy will change them.
Pushing a refuser spouse into therapy, as I did, may be useful in helping a couple decide whether the marriage perhaps needs to end, or become an open marriage. But if you take this tack, don't expect if to fix your marriage. If the refusing spouse wanted to change sexually, odds are they would have gotten help on their own long ago.
Therapy is not magic. It can be of invaluable help but there's no one with a magic wand that will take away all of our pain.
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Post by angeleyes65 on Sept 25, 2019 9:23:00 GMT -5
We tried marriage counseling in the early parts of the spiral but he was only worried about defending himself. As far as personal counseling I went for over a year after I left it really helped. I wish now I would have went while I was still there I probably would have gotten out sooner.
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Post by elynne on Sept 26, 2019 17:26:14 GMT -5
We tried marriage counseling in the early parts of the spiral but he was only worried about defending himself. As far as personal counseling I went for over a year after I left it really helped. I wish now I would have went while I was still there I probably would have gotten out sooner. My experience was similar, my timing a little different. Marriage counseling was a disaster. Our therapist was well intentioned but wholly unqualified to practice relationship counseling. Looking back now, I can see it was disastrous to my mental health. The therapist was normalizing and tacitly approving of my husband’s abusive behavior. During the course of the year and a half of couples therapy, my husband’s behavior got worse. Everything got worse. And I was just barely keeping it together. At this point, my husband decided he didn’t like the qualifications of my individual therapist who I was seeing once a month. He gave me the ultimatum that I change therapists or he would divorce me. Ironically I ended up with a phenomenal therapist. After our first meeting she said, “I can help you. But be aware, that it will lead to your divorce.” She was dead right. And that individual therapy was life changing. The relationship therapy brought me to the brink of a mental breakdown. The individual therapy gave me the strength and insight to leave an unhappy and abusive marriage. Sexlessness was the least of my worries, but it was a clear symptom of the lack of intimacy.
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Post by Apocrypha on Sept 30, 2019 11:03:30 GMT -5
Anyway, the series of questions for the ILIASM forum today are: Have you sought therapy? Did you learn things about yourself that were a revelation? Were you able to address/confront the presented issue and move beyond it? Other? Yes. Across the course of my marriage, I saw 3 counselors as part of a couple, and 1 on my own. I learned several things about myself or what I thought - but that I couldn't SEE when I was in them. I also learned several rhetorical/discussion habits that limited my success in resolving issues. I learned to dial back hyperbole ("You ALWAYS do this!") and to practice restraint on that. I learned the futility of explaining to other people, what THEY think ("You think you are so ...") I learned to restrict my my claims to be observations, and to sift out my anticipation of motivations. A downstream result of this was that I increased my focus on the present state, and I accepted LESS responsibility for other people's behavior. The largest - dramatic thunderclap moment in therapy occurred in a very late game therapy session which - yet again - had gone awry. I was asked "What would happen if you stopped trying so hard." Without thinking, I responded, "There would no longer be a marriage." It was like a 2x4 across my head - what I said out loud. To this day, I don't know if the therapist arranged the conversation to have me utter what I felt was the truth, or if it was a total accident. But I turned that statement over in my head for a week, constantly, pondering it. It meant, I felt I was the only one actually in the relationship, and that I felt she was using the therapy as a tableaux to demonstrate her contempt and desperation to leave. Clarity arrived within a month or so of that self-revelation. I have had years of family therapy- couple's counselling. I found it useful in terms of providing a more productive conversational framework; however, it's the same toolkit I might use to have better group work in meetings at work. It doesn't cause attraction where none exists. If I was to offer general advice on the use of therapy in a couples situation - whether it was a waste of time or not - I'd look toward the "gist" of your relationship. Will the therapy be used by two couples trying to come together, or will it simply be a tableau for the departing spouse to enact the social proof and justification for their contempt or loss of attraction? There is a character to the way this is explored. As for individual therapy, I've found it tends to be reasonable at building up an individual, but that it doesn't necessarily help out much in a couple's dynamic.
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Post by ScottDinTN on Oct 8, 2019 23:00:32 GMT -5
We saw five therapists. All of them told me that she was very difficult, and they didn't know why I was putting up with her. However, I was really worried about being a part time father, and leaving my daughters with her alone. So I put up with her until both girls were out of the house. I wish I had asked for therapy before we had kids. Then I would not have lost my best sexual years. I think this is an aspect of "staying for the sake of the kids" that many don't consider. If we leave, the kids could be stuck with a difficult spouse and we won't be there to protect them. My wife can get very intense with the kids some times. I often serve as a buffer or at least just be there so the kids have someone to talk to afterwards. My wife is so messed up in the head about sex that she would not give my daughter "the talk" about it. So I had to. It's actually led to a very open relationship between my daughter and I. She asks me all kinds of questions. Some times she tells me more than I want to know about womanly things but I never push her away. My wife really missed out on that. I'm glad I was there for my daughter.
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Post by ScottDinTN on Oct 8, 2019 23:03:57 GMT -5
I've been to a few different counselors on my own since my wife would never agree to attend. Most ended by saying there wasn't a lot they could do for me if she was unwilling to attend. I guess at times it was good to talk to someone about things. But just getting things off your chest really doesn't change your situation.
The last time we "tried harder" my wife asked me to get counseling for my depression. I asked her to get counseling for her sexual abuse past. Of course, she never went but I did until I saw she wasn't going to go. That counselor was the one that suggested we consider an open marriage. Doubt my wife saw that one coming. lol
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Post by flashjohn on Oct 9, 2019 10:26:03 GMT -5
We saw five therapists. All of them told me that she was very difficult, and they didn't know why I was putting up with her. However, I was really worried about being a part time father, and leaving my daughters with her alone. So I put up with her until both girls were out of the house. I wish I had asked for therapy before we had kids. Then I would not have lost my best sexual years. I think this is an aspect of "staying for the sake of the kids" that many don't consider. If we leave, the kids could be stuck with a difficult spouse and we won't be there to protect them. My wife can get very intense with the kids some times. I often serve as a buffer or at least just be there so the kids have someone to talk to afterwards. My wife is so messed up in the head about sex that she would not give my daughter "the talk" about it. So I had to. It's actually led to a very open relationship between my daughter and I. She asks me all kinds of questions. Some times she tells me more than I want to know about womanly things but I never push her away. My wife really missed out on that. I'm glad I was there for my daughter. That was my main reason for staying so long. I would have only seen them every other weekend. If I had not been there, neither of them would have been allowed to get driver's licenses, have friends over, or go to events with friends. My ExRefuser was that controlling.
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Post by ScottDinTN on Oct 9, 2019 11:17:20 GMT -5
Leaving releases any influence you have in the kids life when they are not in your prescence. Also, if they get married or let someone else live with them in the home, you have no say in the matter. Then a stranger gets to see them more than you do. These are things people don't think about when all they are consider is finding their personal happiness. You have to look at the big picture. There are so many variables in play when kids are involved.
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