? for the guys regarding therapy/support

? for the guys regarding therapy/support
B

beautifuldisaster

Registrant
Happy Holidays everyone!

Being 8 months into truly looking at therapy, and 7 months past the first appointment my husband has decided to move on to a new T. He trusts and likes his first T, but the T takes a more gentle approach and my husband is at the point he is asking point blank questions and not really getting point blank answers.
I found in our city a T that is on the list from the forum.
He has had one appt but has had to report for 3 months 800 miles from home for work training.
When we discuss this new T, he seems like he keyed into my husband more and has a style that he feels may work for him which makes me happy.

My question really revolves around this. If you do have a S.O, do you prefer they be apart of the T?
I felt like my involvement regarding some of the issues in our marriage with the T made some things better and some things worse.
Would you prefer to have two separate T's. One for yourself, and one for the relationship?
My husband has just come to the gates of the real issues. He has put a lid on the acting, but still has the urges (infidelity with women)and is so out of touch with his feelings he cant really answer many questions at all when asked.

What would be the preferred thing for me as the support person to do?

At this point it is like he is almost lazy because he has the behavior temporarily under control. Our intimacy issues, the infidelity issues etc are still HUGE.

I just want to make this piviotal transition as correct for him as I can...
but I feel I am ignorant to what would be best.

Thanks guys!!

xo
 
beautifuldisaster,

I am not directly involved with my partner's therapy in any way. We have discussed this issue a bit and if we were to go to therapy as a couple, we would find a separate therapist.

I don't think it's the responsibility of my partner or his therapist to spend their sessions working on what is important to ME. According to my partner, they spend very little time talking about "our" issues-- but it all seems to be getting better just the same.

I also know that some of the most valuable things he's done in therapy would have been impossible with me participating.

It just comes down to trust and to letting the survivor determine how and when he is ready to heal.

This might seem harsher than I mean it to sound-- but when you talk about these huge issues, they are all issues that affect you or the relationship. Where is there room for him to work on "his" stuff with you involved?
 
Beautiful Disaster,

Your husband has done well to change Ts if he finds that he is moving forward and needs someone who will relate to him in a different way. It's a good sign that he sees that need and is acting on it.

If he is out of touch with his feelings it seems to me that this is what he has to work on. He won't be able to relate to your pain, needs or expectations if he still can't come to terms with his own.

On joint as opposed to separate therapy, I guess that will depend what the issues are and where you both are in dealing with them. And different couples will have different ways and ideas for approaching their problems. A good T will be able to recognize these and suggest a way forward.

Different Ts may also have different ideas about working with the two partners separately - won't each wonder how the T can remain objective? I recall someone saying something here once about how Ts don't like to take on couples as separate clients.

Much love,
Larry
 
I know you said one for the guys but just a quickie. D was also serially unfaithful and is in therapy. We also go to couples councelling with a different woman.

Our couples councellor, who has experience of CSA, does not entertain any discussion about the CSA and how it affects him as an individual other than to leave him with the concusion that maybe thats something he needs to work on with his T if it affects us achieving health in our relationship.

Although this sounds harsh it is she and she alone who has made him admit that actually he is a great partner and gives a lot to our relationship.

Neither of us want me to attend his T sessions.

This "system" works well for us.

Good luck

Love

Tracy
 
Well, My wife and I use the same T. Sometimes we go together to work on issues, sometimes together for mairriage counseling, sometimes separately working on our own issues.

It's a system that has worked out really great for us, Possibly because we don't have any really serious marriage related issues.

John
 
I appreciate all the info...
I guess for now he will go to him and I will wait to see if he asks me to attend and go from there.
 
I just noticed that half my post was missing! And that woudn't have helped at all! It should have read something like...

We found a great family therapist that would take us individually or as a couple...one of the kids at a time... whatever we needed most at that moment. It was only after a year with her when things were still hard that we finally mentioned the abuse and asked her if this could have anything to do with the issues we were facing :rolleyes:

At that point, she asked if I wanted to see someone else while I worked on that issue but after thinking aobut it I realized how comfortible I was with her and decided it would be best to stay with her. As I said, she saw me alone sometimes and my wife other times and many times she saw us as a couple. It turned out to be the best decision because she was able to hear both sides of an issue and let us know if she thought either of our views was skewed in any way.

See, if I felt things were not fair and my wife was making me upset, she could get my wife's side of the story during her session where she could speak freely and our therapist could pretty much figure out what was really going on. I look back and think that if I had had my own therapist that he may favor me a little too much and that woudn't have gone well if my views were not rational... I feel as though I would have been enabled and some of my destructive feelings validated rather then challanged.


Hope that helps.
 
Yes, as someone who has been in couples counseling before getting individual T, the things I go over in individual sessions are things I have to be apart from my SO to get to. In couples therapy, the dynamic was just wrong for me. It made me extremely edgy and defensive, which is not a prime place to be when you're trying to develop a sense of safety sufficient to actually process the abuse experience. My T is my T; if my SO and I ever go for more couples therapy, it could again be with the T we used to see together or with a new T, but it will be with my present individual therapist over my dead body.

Hypothesizing the ideal situation, I'd love it if I had and individual T, SO had an individual T, and we had yet a third T to go do couples work with. Pocketbook won't stretch that far, but it's fun to dream sometimes.

But really, truly, it is wonderful of you to be thinking enough to frame your questions so well. What he wants from you and what he needs from you might be two different things. I want my SO to clean the house, make my meals and not have intimacy issues. What I need from my SO is his trust and the ability to trust him, I need him to listen well and to talk honestly to me, I need him to let me be emotional with him and to share his emotions with me. If I get even a little close to this rosy scenario a few times a week, then I know we can deal with the messy house, I can share the cooking and clean-up duties, and we can work on our intimacy issues together. And really, those other things are the smaller, lesser aspects of life together -- it's the bond and the trust that we both need to feel and experience to help us know the small stuff is all worthwhile.

John
 
I am the only one in our relationship that has been through therapy, although my wife knew it was there if she felt the need - either with my T or another one.

But we both felt that my issues were best dealt with on my own with my T, and I have to say that I 'claimed' the right to have it that way.
I felt that it would probably have slowed down, or even worse completly disrupted my therapy to have concerns about second guessing what I was disclosing, and my reactions to everything that was going on in my life at that time.

I wasn't exactly hiding things from my wife at the time, but I like to work at my pace and think clearly before telling my wife something.
That wasn't done to minimise the nasty stuff either, but rather to ensure that what I told her was right first time and clearly understandable.

I feel much more comfortable talking once I've spent a little time thinking, either to the therapist or my wife.
I'd think all week between sessions and then see the T with something fairly clear in my head to talk about. It certainly wasn't resolved before I got there, far from it. But I did go into the session prepared.
And I did the same with my wife. It was usually 2 to 3 days after the session before I talked to her about what went on, by that time I'd hopefully made some kind of sense of what went on and was therefore in a far better place to DISCUSS it with my wife rather than stumble around thinking on the fly.

Dave
 
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