Counselling and food for thought

[Nottynosey]

I posted early December about how I had chucked my husband out because I was sick of his awful, selfish behaviour.

I got a lot of support here from you and you helped me see he was emotionally abusive.

Please don't flame me, but I did go against advice and attend relationship counselling with him. This was mainly to buy me some time as he was not giving me the space I asked for and I am stuck in the house until next week. I guess I have been going to tick a box and to make life at home more bearable. I mentally prepared myself to let any manipulation wash over me.

I told them both I wasn't there to work on the relationship, I was there to see if there was any chance he could change enough for me to consider it.

We had three sessions, which I felt surprisingly good about. I really rate the counsellor. A couple of times when He tried to tell me how to feel she called him up on it so I was impressed.

At the same time he decided to go to an individual therapist, as he recently admitted our dire sex life was due to the fact he compulsively masterbates. Plus he is so dreadfully unhappy in general. News to me, but hey ho!

Two weeks ago she said she felt he was not opening up and suggested we both have one individual session with her each to try and encourage him to be more honest. He didnt want to.

Last week she said she was unhappy counselling us together if he was having this individual "person centred" therapy because she still felt he was holding back and this might be a reason. She suggested I have a session by myself with her.

So I went on my own yesterday and she said she feels she can't really proceed with us because she believes he is bordering on emotionally abusive and he is not being entirely honest about his sexual behaviour. She said she feels he is there to win me back and not because he really wants to engage and deal with issues.

She asked if I knew if he had experimented sexually with men?

She said she feels there is something he is scared to disclose and is not engaged. She said she might be wrong but she has a gut feeling it is something of this nature.

This is obviously my ticket to walk away from therapy and walk away from the relationship, which I am going to do.

But it's all just playing in my mind. I always thought there was something more to him. I used to snoop but I never found anything concrete, a few strange things but nothing incriminating. It might be he is gay or something else.

He lost interest in me sexually quite early in hindsight. There was never really any "phwoar come here, let me take you" from him. He rejected me a lot. He has been very uncaring for a long time. Physical affection is not really his thing most of the time, although there was times he was affectionate and we did have sex. Although he did lose his erection a few times.

But he doesn't like musicals or any of the other stereotypes.
Why the hell is still so insistent I give him another chance if he doesn't really want me?

I just feel like I need answers so I can move on. Currently I feel like a big failure. Knowledge is power and all that.

Anybody any wisdom or experiences?

God I'm sorry, this is epic!!

He posed as a schoolboy on the internet ?

Are you fucking kidding me ?

Why haven't you called the police/CEOPS ?

How are you still in the same house/not handing his hard drive over to the cops ?

Fucking hell

This counsellor sounds great to me. No bullcrap about women having to make allowances, a great antennae and excellent judgement spotting that this was an abusive relationship with an abusive man, all within 3 sessions.

Aren't you tremendously validated that your own judgement is so sound?

Oh drat i missed that bit. Don't you think you should have reported that to the child protection agencies?

I would have reported it to the police if I had found anything other than the fact he had set this profile up.

There were no messages, no photos, no communications at all. They had sent him friend requests obviously thinking he was this boy (and by boy I mean late American high school so about 16/17) and he had accepted them.

Weird yes, very weird, but what am I reporting exactly?

And believe me I am not looking to protect him. This is a man I've been resenting for a good couple of years now.

He also hadn't logged in for 18 months, I've been looking for other things but haven't found anything. I posted on here about it in the summer and people came back with a few possible relatively innocent suggestions as to what it could be about.

OK, that was just a bit of a shock that you dripfed in what is actually rather terrifying information. Not your fault, sorry.

I hope you are feeling stronger than ever that this man is not someone you should have in your life.

I'm sure, very sure. I just feel overwhelmingly guilty though and I can't shake it off. He's very good at being the confused, damaged man who didnt know what he was doing and would do anything to change.

I just wish I understood what it was all about.

You will never understand

He probably can't explain it himself

All you need up know is that it isn't working for you and never will. The End.

I see the need to understand and make sense of things but I think the counsellor was right in her general summary. He kept secret a lot of his sexual behaviour and shared the sexuality that should have been in your relationship, with others. No relationship could survive that, so onwards and upwards.

How would he have pretended to be a schoolboy and befriended classmates...wouldnt the real boy have given the game away? How would he have known the name to use?

that is reallyy disturbing

it wouldn't make me think he was gay. It would make me think he was interested in school children

He said he's not gay. He said the Facebook account was when he was writing a book and he set up an account in the characters name and suddenly got lots of friend requests, so he left it alone.

He said he hasn't got any "weird preferences" bit just straight porn. He's struggling to be open because he's so ashamed. Apparently this all started when our sex life went off the boil. He'd taken redundancy and I was supporting us. I used to get annoyed when he wouldn't get out of bed and made him feel inadequate.

I know he's been a twat and I don't want to go back there at all but I feel like I have broken him. It's all come crashing down and I feel like I want to die, because the guilt is crushing me. I know I'm being pathetic though

It's not pathetic. You're going through a significant life trauma. Of course you will feel huge waves of every negative emotion possible - it's natural. Emotions just are what they are; if you can, allow them to wash over you. Each one will pass, leaving you a tiny bit changed. It's normal.

Take decent care of yourself now, as this is all very exhausting. Can you book some time off after you've moved house? Please make sure you're eating & sleeping. If you can't help feeling crushed or engulfed by your sadness, please do see your GP. These days, there are very good short-term drugs that will help shore you up whilst you get through this.

Porn addiction is, in itself, a relationship breaker. All addictions are incredibly sad. It might help you to get in touch with Al-Anon (even though you're not dealing with alcoholism) for the steady strength of their Three Cs - you didn't cause it; you can't control it; you can't cure it.

Did he write the book? How come these other kids friended his character, if it wasn't a real teenager?

That was Pete Townsend's "defence" wasn't it ? Nobody believed him either (allegedly)

If you have already decided the relationship is over, which it sounds like if you are moving out, then I don't think it is important to your future if he is gay.

It seems odd the counsellor was suggesting your husband might be gay. Could they have just been asking about what you think about your husband?