Should our marriage counselling

[fridakahlo]

sessions really be about persuading me how lucky I am to have my husband?
After six years of marriage, my husband and I got to a place where we had to sort out the unhealthy aspects of our relationships. And he has made a real effort, I can't deny that at all but I don't feel I can be who he needs me to be in order for the marriage to work. If I stay then he and the kids don't loose anything, but I will be miserable, but secure.
If I go then totally disrupt our lives, he will have to give up his job (because we are living abroad and I can't stay unless I'm married to him, so myself and the kids would have to move home, probably to live with my mother in the shortterm and he would move back to be close to the kids). THe kids (especially dd would loose friends, the house, the lifestyle. So so much to loose and not much to gain but I don't love him and I'm only staying for the kids, he wants something from me that I can't give him.
Anyone?

I see where you're coming from.

When you say you've 'been here before', and that 'things get better for a few months then we all carry on as normal', are you saying that after a few months' effort on his part he stops trying or is that 'normal' means that you get less attention from him?

Where is the suggestion that you are lucky he hasn't 'washed his hands of you' coming from?

If it is coming from him. what are his reasons why you should feel lucky he hasn't washed his hands of you?

I would you say you're lucky to have a husband who hasnt kicked you out and got full custody of the kids,

you're clearly very unstable, single motherhood is complete no-no for someone with severe MH issues, you will inadvertently damage you're children. you know it and we know it. Sorry to be so brutal but I see the products of that upbringing every day.

Straight talking is frequently needed on this board dt, but as yet it has not been established whether Frida's mental health issues are such that they cannot be treated and overcome by medication/pyschotherapy, nor has it been established that her dc at are risk of any harm from her.

While I am cognisant of the fact that only one side of the story appears on these 'pages', nevertheless, I would suggest that Frida be allowed the opportunity toshare as much information as she wishes to reveal before anyone renders advice that may be contrary to her own and her dc's best interests.

You are not in a hot country with the military are you?

I'm not sb. I thought it was cold in Vt last week, but it's distinctly nippy here in London today.

Sorry Izzy that question was directed at the op

Izzy-previous to this dh had a problem with drinking (not an alcoholic, just drank every day and couldn't bear to think of going a week without it, celebrations being an excuse to get cracking on with the drinking from as early as possible) now for the first time since I've known him, he has actually sat up and taken notice, but I had pointed out to him many a time before how this was probably not a healthy attitude to alcohol.
And in regards to his work life balance, he spent the first three of our wedding anniversarys (two of which were on weekends) working, just as an example.
And there is more but I really don't want to spend the whole day going over them.
And he and the marriage counsellor are the ones telling me that I am lucky.
diffuculttimes-I would question why he has not to be quite honest, what does he get from sticking with me after the way I have behaved?
And as for being severly mentally ill, yes I do have mental health issues. I am well aware of those, but they mainly consist of long term dpression for which I have been seeking help since before my dd turned two as I knew if I did not it would impact upon her.
As for the 'acting out' over the summer, my mental health team are pretty sure that was due to the drug I had been put on in order to try and counteract my depressive symptoms.
When we moved to the states, my husband and I agreed that should I ever feel the need, I could go and get myself a therapist. Come this April, I stated the need and was told by my husband that I would have to do it out of my'pin' money. Needless to say at between one hundred and two hundred dollars an hour, I would not have had much left over.
He's sorry for this and has apologised, but we had made an agreement and when I asked for help I was (imo) rebuffed.

No, not in a hot country with the milatary, don't tell me there is someone else out there with similar things going on? Poor person, would not wish this shit on anyone.

Certain anti-depressants can stop you feeling emotional 'connections' to anyone. Regardless of all the other issues, now is not the time to be making those sorts of decisions if you are still sorting your depression out medically.

How long have you suffered depression?

Is it something that first occurred during your teenage years? Has it been sporadic, perhaps manifesting spontaneously or in response to certain events in your life, or has it been consistent - i.e would you describe yourself as always having been depressed or prone to depression?

Have your mental health team given you a diagnosis and a prognosis? Are you undergoing psychotherapy at the present time, and is your therapist aware that you are also attending marriage counselling? If you are attempting to resolve issues relating to yourself and/or your marriage with a pyschotherapist, it may not be appropriate for you to engage in other forms of counselling until your treament is complete.

It's one thing for your husband to tell you that you are 'lucky to have him' but it's quite another for the counsellor to reinforce what is, in essence, his subjective view of your marriage. My concern is that either you are not voicing your issues about your relationship with your husband. or that your voice is not being heard by the counsellor.

What was the dynamic when you met him? Were you depressed at that time? Was he aware that you had suffered or were suffering from depresson prior to your marriage?

Im sorry it that caused offence but you do have to think how many spontaneous/promiscuous instances are likely to happen again.

being a single mum will increase the likelyhood of this happening infront of your children e.g bringing strangemen/women home I dont have to list the thousands of risks that could bring. thats my main concern. If that was a one off then I apologise but if it wasn't then noooo, .

This focussing on his good points and "lucky" position. It is perhaps part of a type of cognitive exercise where the therapist tried to get you to see if you are minimising the positive and maximising the negative? Can you tell the therapist in the next session how you are experiencing this as just being told what you ought to think?

Anyway, you are certainly not lucky to have this nasty illness and to have been sent into a mania by over medication in the summer.

Is your individual therapy helping at all?

I was wondering too if you identify with FridaKahlo? There's one turbulent life to live up to!

See Frida's earlier thread, Euro via the link of p.1 of this post re Frida Kahlo - I would have loved to have met Trotsky.

It seems that 'lucky to have him' is coming from the marriage counselling sessions and, IME, the counsellor is unlikely to be a qualified pyschotherapist.

The depresssion has been a factor in my life since the age of twelve or thirteen, consistently ignored and minimised by my parents.
The diagnosis is not too clear, between the pyschotherapist and the pyschiatrist they concur that I suffer from clinical depression and anxiety with elements of OCD and possibly some PTSD in the mix too.
I am just starting on a six month DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) course as we have decided between us that it will probably be the best way of tackling the depression and other issues. After the six months my therapist and I will decide if I need to do another round.
She is aware that my husband and I are attending marriage counselling (with a clinical social worker who is lovely but a bit too emotionally involved, she likes us both as people and frequently recounts personal ancedotes, mainly where they are in some way relevant but it still feels like the client/counsellor boundaries are a bit blurry).
And I do keep on saying to my husband that should we really be doing this at the moment and I would prefer not to but he always answers that it is more focusing on the way we deal with each other than anything else.
And she also thinks that some level of co-dependancy within a marriage is healthy?
I met my husband when I was 18, he was 30. It was within six months of the escorting and emotionally I was in a very bad place.
And yes, he knew I was in a bad place, gave me a shoulder to cry on and a place to run to.
difficulttimes-you didn't say anything that I have not thought of before and, yes, being a single mother as I am at the moment would not be a good idea.
Eurostar-that is exactly what it is but rather than being told what to think (I can see there are plenty of good reasons to stay with my husband for all involved), it's being told how to feel. Which is actually freaking me out.
And yes, the therapy is helping, I started this thread after a two week period of not seeing my therapist, saw her again last night and don't feel exactly better but reminded of what we/I am doing and why it is a good thing to stick it out for the six months of DBT.
ChitChatting- I will discuss that possibility with her next time I see her.
Thank you everyone, it is helping to be able to do this alongside everything else and Izzy I am slightly in awe of how astute you are.

I've heard really good things about DBT FridaK so stick with it and hope it helps you. Have you read Marsh Lineham's (DBT is her method) story that was recently featured in the New York Times? www.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/health/23lives.html?pagewanted=all
Definitely inspirational I thought.

Your "marriage counsellor" is not a marriage counsellor then. I'd have thought you would need to see someone very specialised in family therapy. Sounds like when you met your DH he was taken up in a hero/rescuer type of role. Now you are older and if you are well then that role becomes obsolete so he needs to grow with you.

Good luck for the continuation of therapy and staying well.....

Can't read it now as I am about to go and make dinner but will do later. Thank you.

Good luck with the therapy, Frida. With so much help at hand I really think you should try to find some way of staying, that much help simply won't be available to you in the UK. You know that, don't you? Perhaps the reason why they are telling you in the session how you should feel is because with everything you've gone through, you're so far removed from how most people would feel, and they are more 'reminding' you when you are in an extreme low.

But having someone who knows you both personally is not really that great. While it's great to have someone you know who is supportive, they lack independence.

We didn't know her before we started going but now it has become very 'social'.

Pyschological and sociological perspectives can be two entirely different views.

Your present marriage counsellor has overstepped the professional line. This may be because you have a certain 'novelty' factor in that you are not Amercians and she may think English accents are 'cute' and could be evaulating your marriage from her mis preconceptions of how 'English people' behave.

As for her saying, implying, or agreeing with your dh that you are 'lucky' to have a husband like him. who knows where she's coming from? It could be that she's a creationist from Stepford or a spinster who dreams of having a 'husband like him' some day.

IMO you should not be engaging in joint marriage counselling with your dh at the present time which is not to say he won't derive some benefit in attending these sessions on his own with luck he'll get off with her which may solve some of your problems.

I would suggest that you don't attend any more sessions until you've explored their impact on your state of mind fully with your psychotherapist as you should be able to trust that any counsellor or therapist is acting/advising in your best interests in a non-judgemental manner.

If your husband continues to attend marriage counselling on his own with this particular counsellor I would suggest that, when you are ready/willing to resume joint counselling, you start afresh with a different counsellor and, in this particular instance, I would suggest you consider seeking the services of a male counsellor.

For the next six months, I would advise you put any thoughts of returning to the UK to one side until you have completed the recommended number of DBT sessions as advised by your mental health team.

In this respect I would suggest that you refrain from taking your 'emotional pulse' on a daily basis and reacting to the temperature unless you do so by way of writing a journal/diary of your thoughts/feelings and keeping it entirely to yourself - i.e keep it hidden and don't tell anyone about it.

It may be that you will benefit from meditation. As an aid to helping you resign yourself to the fact that it is in your best interests, and those of your dc, to remain in the States until next summer at the earliest, I recommend that you seek out a meditiation class at a Soto zen buddhist centre as I believe that zazen (sitting) meditation

I pressed the wrong button and whatever I've written above now stands without editing.

to continue: as I believe that zazen (sitting) meditation will, in itself, prove to be a valuable aid for you and may complement your therapy . In any event, from what you've said, meditation isn't contra-indicated and is unlikely to negatively impact on your therapy.

I've actually gone out and got two guided visulisation cd's, so kind of have that base covered.
And part of the DBT is keeping a daily diary of your emotions and rating them on a scale.
Well, I've been doing this for the past six years (the marriage) what's another six months.
Our marriage counsellor is very happily married unfortunatly

In some ways we seem to have gone full circle in that the consensus of opinion - including, I believe, your own Frida - is that it is in your bests interests, and those of your dc, for you to stay in the US and continue with your existing therapy.

However, without knowing your childhood experiences or the dynamic in your family home, I am wondering whether the manifestation of depression during puberty or post-pubescent years was caused by a hormonal or chemical imbalance that may have been easily treated at the time.

If any such underlying medical cause is overlooked, the 'label' of depression can be a self-fulfilling prophecy if we continue to manifest the signs and symptoms of a mental health condition.

It occurs to me that you are still very young and have not yet overcome your experiences in the sex industry which, unsurprisingly, would have done nothing to improve your sense of self-esteem and would have only led to a greater lack of self-worth.

Your recent acting out may have been triggered by an adverse reaction to a drug but, without wishing to enter in an extensive philosophical debate, it is unlikely that you would have acted out in that particular manner if you didn't hold unresolved thoughts about s&m.

As Eurostar has implied, if you chose your dh because you believed that he was an 'adult' who was offering you a 'safe' refuge from yourself or from the sex industry, it may be that you resent what you may perceive are his 'controlling' ways in much the same way as a child may resent a parent laying down boundaries to protect its safety.

In addition , you are presumably financial dependent on your dh which state of affairshas been known to upset the balance of harmonious relationships and can impact more severely on those where imbalances already exist.

In any event, a Soto zen zazen meditation is very different from a guided visualisation in that there are no anchors to impede direct self-realisation.

You can read the book 'Sitting Buddha: zen meditation for everyone' by Daishin Morgan at www.throssel.org.uk which is the website of a zen buddhist abbey in the north of England.

As you are already recording your feelings on a daily basis, I would suggest that you rate them weekly or fortnightly rather than rushing to grade them at the time of writing.

It's part of the DBT to rate them on a daily basis, I have no intention of (re)-acting on them on a daily basis.
I've had various blood tests and ECGs over the years, out of which nothing really significant was found, apart from a sensitivity to flashing lights but not to an epilectic degree.
I am currently being assessed by a sleep clinic for sleep apnea and have an overnight observation to see if being on oxygen helps me to get more restful sleep. This has come about because even though I am stabilised on the anti-depressants, I still have very high levels of tiredness irrespective of the amount of sleep I get.
And yes, on the SandM front, I did (and probably still do) have unresolved issues, I've always been into bondage and spanking but over the summer went far beyond those levels, some of which was enjoyable, some less so.
I was also continuing to self harm when I returned but have found since the medication has kicked in my 'masochistic' urges are gone, totally.
One of the things my therapist and I have been looking at is the way in which I was introduced to the concept of adult sexual relations, the discovery of a book by Xaviera Hollander (at the age of twelve) that I would be quite happy for my daughter never to read, even as an adult.
I lacked the abilty to go and talk to any adults about what I had read, which would have been a sort of fact checking process. So yes very warped values and concepts, reinforced by the reading of books such as Nancy Friday and Madonna's Sex, which my friends and I found at my mothers house and their parents houses
The day before starting escorting, I tried to kill myself albeit in a pretty lame ineffectual manner. When I told my father a week later what I had tried to do, he turned around and said "That was stupid". We never discussed it again until a couple of years ago, when I was undergoing my first round of therapy, I told him in no uncertain terms, that if any of his younger children have issues like that, he is to take them very seriously indeed.
But that was his attitude to most things I did as an adolescent. As for my mother, she was one of those women who difficulttimes talks about in her first post, she still sinks between one to two bottles of wine a night, but that is normal and controlled (in her opinion) because she does not do it during work hours. And she is a narcissist most probably as well, she is coming over for my dd's birthday fairly soon but has arranged her flight back for the evening of my dd's birthday and is probably expecting my h to run her back to the airport. Fairly typical behaviour on her part.
And nothing is ever her fault.
Basically adolescence was a very confusing traumatic time with no adults around that I felt I could trust and confide in and a peer group who had similar attitudes (though not as extreme) to sex.
I don't want to go into anymore because quite frankly I'm boring myself now.
The H and I have had a relationship that runs along those (Parent-Child rather than Adult-Adult) lines but having never felt capable of being on my own (I have tried) there was not much I could do or it was easier not to try to change those roles and I don't think my H had ever entertained the idea that those roles could change. He is now but it really feels too little too late.
And until recently, even he himself has admitted, he was a controlling bastard, both to myself and my DD.
But priority is sort myself out and then figure where the relationship can go, if anywhere.
I shall look at the website you have recommended, the guided visulisation was waxed lyrical about by the intensive outpatient therapy people.
We are also attending Quaker meetings with the intention in the long run of joining, possibly.

If you don't want to be with your husband it's OK to leave him. End of. However wonderful he might be (and I would have doubts about a man who marries a woman much younger than him with probable or confirmed MH issues - almost certainly a predator or a 'rescuer' who expects lifelong gratitude and obedience), if you are not happy in the relationship, you don't have to stay in it.