danger Thank you for your message. DH and I did go to see someone once, not relate per se but similar. I found their insights helpful, but DH didn't like the person, and it was bloody miles away. So I think we won't go to that person again, but I think we can go again sometime, to see someone different. Part of the trouble is that I am so, so used to therapy, I am sort of immune to being shocked by the therapist's insights, whereas DH is not the same as me, so he has a different reaction. I know a bunch of couples who have said they find something like relate helpful, and I think that we will go again, when DH feels he is ready. I do not feel able to drag him there if he is not willing.
In the bigger picture, I feel as if I buried things for decades, and now I found a language to speak about my feelings, I feel the need to express them all the time, and this is alienating for the people close to me who (a) end up with this person talking at them and sometimes saying the same things over and over again and (b) other people just are not used to it from me at all. It is a big change for me. My immediate family and I are distancing ourselves from each other for a bit, because I have become quite confrontational, and they are perhaps more in denial? Sometimes I point out that some past behaviours were abusive and then they express feelings that they are hurt by what I'm saying. Sometimes they are in denial straight away but then later on it settles down and they can understand why I am beyond angry at what happened in the past. They are very sorry - well, the ones who are still alive anyway - and they said that they are there for me, and I believe them. So I think some time and space for all of us will be a bit healing. I need to work through stuff myself now, and with my DH, my birth family will be there, they say they will be anyway.
My anger is so much at the moment; even so, our family are so so strong that I cannot imagine a situation where there is a total schism, just some distance for a while. It might happen, though, who knows? I know that in some families there does end up being a total schism but I don't think that it will happen in my birth family. Maybe I need to believe it won't for now, anyway.