If you have been to couples counselling, can you answer this question for me please?

[BlueLipsBlueVeins]

Sorry this is so long.

Earlier this year, I discovered my husband had been hiding something he was doing from me that I view as a complete betrayal. I don’t want to go in to details, because I don’t want to hear that some people would be fine with this or, as I think the majority would say, that I should leave him. Rightly or wrongly, I am trying to work through it. He immediately and completely accepted that what he had done was awful and is trying to repair the damage he has done. He has proven in the past that he can cut out negative behaviour so I have some cause to be optimistic that he won’t do this again.

When I discovered the betrayal, the scales fell from my eyes about other aspects of our relationship and the life we were living together. I was furious and confronted him - I had realised that he does not put me and our children first and this realisation made me see clearly other decisions he had made which negatively effected us. He also instantly accepted this, admitted that he had been selfish and set about changing the things with which I was unhappy. I had realised that he did not listen properly to me, made assumptions about my thoughts rather than asking me or listening to what I was actually saying and that he did not communicate his own feelings effectively, even when I asked him. He agrees with all of this, says he is sorry and ashamed and will not do this again.

On the whole, after the initial shock and distress, our relationship has improved a lot since I discovered what he was doing. He has cut out the awful activity, changed his work and life balance situation and shares much more of his day-to-day feelings with me. Having said that, I now realise how much was wrong, even setting aside the horrible betrayal. I am less concerned that he will do that again, but I am concerned that he will stop listening to me, particularly if there is something he wants to do that I do not think is fair on me and the children, or that he will stop being honest and sharing his feelings with me and tension will grow.

To my question - if we go to counselling, will I be expected to take some sort of responsibility for what has happened in our relationship and what he did?

I don’t think I can do that, I don’t think I will ever be able to do that. I am not saying that I am or was perfect, but I was honest, fair and always put my family first. I am scared that if we go to counselling, it will be suggested by the counsellor that I should have done things differently and this would have stopped what he did. It wouldn’t have - if I hadn’t accidentally found out he would never, ever have told me. Also, he did this activity before I met him, before we married and for the duration of our 11 year marriage - his whole adult life. I know I am not responsible for it.

I am also scared that the counsellor will suggest that I was somehow responsible for him not listening to me, making assumptions about my feelings or that I could have done something to make him be honest and clear with me about his feelings. Again, I don’t see how.

His best friend is a therapist and when my husband told him what he had been doing and that I might end the marriage because of this, his response was that he shouldn’t blame himself, that husband had not been happy and that my communication was also poor. I do not accept this and my husband also says that isn’t right, I was communicating with him, he just didn’t want to hear what I was saying. I don’t think I would cope with going to counselling and being told this painful disaster has been partially my making.

I am not against advice and suggestions about what I should do if I see old patterns emerging, in fact, this is precisely what I want. But will a counsellor try to make me share responsibility for what happened in the past?

Thank you if you got though all that.

We went to a relate counsellor there was no blame or taking of responsibility just discussion of impact. In hindsight she was quite poor as he was obviously abusive I just didn't realise at the time

He told his friend, the therapist.

Are you saying his therapist was/is his friend? If so that’s a huge breach of ethics on the part of the therapist, you can’t possibly work therapeutically with someone you’re friends with, and really can’t befriend someone you’re seeing as a client.

No he has a different therapist, his best friend just happens to be a therapist also. I have felt that because he is a therapist and his first thought when he learned what H had been doing was that I was also to blame, I was concerned a couple counsellor would react in the same way.

I’ve now earmarked a couple of local therapists and I’m going to get in contact with them today to arrange individual therapy.

I wanted to respond to the following part of the OP's 19/10/2022 16:24 post:

"mathanxiety, I’m not entirely sure if this is gaslighting, but he wanted to do a hobby and was most put out that I was not keen and would not facilitate him doing it. In truth, there was no time. He had a full time job, he was also doing a further undergraduate degree at the same time, a part time job and occasionally a weekend job. He helps out a lot around the house also (although everything house and child related was ultimately my responsibility as he had so many other commitments) and he felt when I said that him doing a time consuming hobby on top of all this was too much, that I was really saying he did not do enough around the house. I would insist that I was absolutely not saying he didn’t do enough but that I was stretched too thin and not coping. His response was to say that he shouldn’t have to justify what he does, which doesn’t actually follow from what I was saying. I’m not sure this is gaslighting, but I do think he was trying to manipulate me."

It is concerning to me that you interpreted his response as manipulative or potentially even gaslighting. Obviously I wasn't there for the conversation so I don't know if there are important parts of it that I'm missing, but at least based on what you said in your post, his response sounds like an example of really good communication. If anything, it sounds a little like you were gaslighting him, or at the very least having so much difficulty with communicating clearly to him that you might benefit from counselling on better communication.

That is, at least in your above description, you (a) mentioned other demands on his time, (b) said his hobby would be too time consuming, and (c) said you felt you were already "stretched too thin" with "house and child related" things. Since you did not directly spell out how you felt his hobby would harm you or the children, this left him to make inferences about how you felt this harm would occur. I think it's pretty reasonable for him to have made the guess that based on (b) and (c), you felt he either wasn't contributing enough to house/child responsibilities or that he would fail at contributing enough if he developed his hobby. But when your husband tried to confirm that this was what you were trying to communicate, you insisted that you weren't saying this at all.

One form of gaslighting is when person A keeps strongly hinting that they think X is true without saying it directly, but then when person B says, "It sounds like you're saying X," person A responds with, "what do you mean? I wasn't saying that at all!" If it's not gaslighting, then at the very least it's poor communication on the part of person A. If you don't think that your husband isn't contributing enough with children or at home, then why did you bring up your own difficulties with child and home duties in a conversation about how he schedules his own time?

And then after that, based on the fact that you insisted your complaint about his hobby wasn't based on his child/home contributions, the only part he was left with (at least out of the reasons you mentioned giving him), was that you felt this would be too time consuming for him personally. But the thing is, it's not up to you to tell him how he spends his own time. You can complain about how that might impact you or the children (for example if he's behaving in a way that interferes with his home or family responsibilities, with your family's financial security, with your family's privacy, dignity, or safety, or with his investment in his relationships with you and the children), but it's not really your place to decide what choices he makes if it doesn't negatively impact you or your children.

If you insisted that your concerns about his hobby had nothing to do with how they impacted you or the children, then the only remaining reasons you gave him (at least as described above) had to do with his choices about how he spent his own time. As such, it seems appropriate that he responded by reminding you that he shouldn't have to justify such choices to you. This is an important point for anyone in a relationship to stand up for, since otherwise they risk falling victim to controlling behaviour.

Later in your post, you said he suggested finding a way for you to develop a hobby of your own. You say he later admitted this was because he felt if you had a hobby too then you might not feel as bad about both of you having hobbies. You seem to imply that that meant his suggestion was a selfish one, but to me it sounds like an empathetic and problem-solving suggestion on his part. That is, if you weren't concerned about his contribution to child or household duties and if you weren't thinking he needed to justify how he spent his own time, then his next guess was that maybe you felt left out at not having a hobby and that if you both had hobbies you might be able to understand and identify with each other better on this subject.

Again, I wasn't there for any of these conversations and it could be the most important parts were left out. Sometimes it's hard to work out what we're really upset about, and sometimes even when we do, it's difficult to communicate this effectively. Counselling quality varies so dramatically that many counsellors do more harm than good, but it's possible there's a counsellor out there who might be able to help with some of these communication challenges.