While our marriage may not be recovering as fast as I would like, it is moving forward, and is much better than where it was this time last year. For instance W is under considerably more stress this week since she has started back to work and the kids have just this week gone back too. Wednesday she came home late, literally barking orders to the kids from the moment she set foot in the door. In spite of this, there was no argument and the kids even confronted her on her crabbiness (after I did so as well). She didn’t apologize or really acknowledge it, but she did settle down. So things are better.
I know I should not try to “fix” her, but it is important for me to understand how I would fix her if I could, since that knowledge gives me the roadmap to follow in our growth. Without this understanding, I feel like I am just randomly trying one thing after another, hoping something will work. Know I feel like I KNOW what is wrong and that with persistence and time, we can eventually recover. This is very reassuring to me and is helping ME to better hold on to myself (though I still do my share of backsliding).
Heather,
I just had a thought about why you seem to be stuck in your recovery. What type of counselor are you seeing? Is s/he a relationship counselor, focusing on validation and affirmation between you two versus focusing more on each of individually and not trying to focus on “the marriage?”
My curiosity is for the same reasons I discussed in my thread here. Since you and your H both seem to have a TON of work to do, it could be that you two are TOO dysfunctional to do any sort of relationship counseling? This was exactly the problem my wife and I ran into. Up to a point the counseling helped. But when larger individual FOO issues and resentments began to come up, it became very difficult to dig deep and find the compassion to keep validating each other. We hit a brick wall and so did the counselor.
That is why I mentioned that in some Rs, an individual approach like Schnarch uses may be better first. Then as each of you become more self confident and secure, other validation can help to smooth other the hard feelings and re-create a bond.
When I speak of FOO analysis, I think I am really focusing on the individual, Schnarchian-type growth, the individual counseling approach. What Corri and GEL (and Blackfoot) are saying regarding m/f dynamics seems to me to bring in a mix of other validation, or the relationship counseling approach. Only recently have I felt my W and I are knowledgeable and secure enough to do this. Maybe your counselor is putting the cart before the horse?
One consequence I can see, and that I experienced with my W, is that by going to a relationship counselor, both you AND the COUNSELOR are now dependent on your H for progress. You have handed to him the power to now stonewall TWO people. My W did this and that is when our counselor threw up her hands and gave up. Perhaps you should find a counselor with a different philosophy?
