We finally went to couples counseling and I finally met the therapist my husband has been seeing solo for a few weeks, my first impression was: seriously, da-hell!?
This guy was the poster child for eccentricity. I spent the first hour seriously distracted by his fidgety body language, side-bar stories that didn’t seem connected to our conversation, and shady judgment towards my husband for choosing this guy.
Seriously, ten minutes into our scheduled 2-hour session I was like: “what da-hell husband, I can’t even trust you to pick a counselor”. I spent the first 45 minutes of my first round of couples counseling thinking, “maybe I should start considering divorce?” Mind you, I entered thinking: “This is nice, a little emotional tune-up for our marriage…”
This man somehow, via MANY not-so-subtle hints and at one point stating: “before you decide if you should stay together” planted divorce in my mind. I spent like an hour talking HIM off this ledge of recommending WE end our marriage. How the hell did this happen? Is he overreacting to our marital opportunities for improvement or is he attempting to Jedi mind trick us into a resolution?
I must clarify by saying, I like this guy as a person. He is so quirky. Legit scattered. Cool personality. Though, most times he was hard to follow when trying to make a point and had almost no attention span. I think there may be a ton of brilliance just under the surface of his general air of distraction. I think in-between his seemingly off-topic tangents and random as hell food for thoughts were some solid nuggets of wisdom. I could be friends with this guy in everyday life. But here I am, coming to him to mediate my marital growth opportunities and I spent the first like 45 minutes thinking: where the hell-fire did my husband find this man. Of course, OF COURSE, this is the guy he has been trying to get me to come in and see for weeks now.
After an almost three-hour session, we went into overtime because he thought we were legitimately the most interesting, engaging, and self-aware couple he has ever sat with (flips hair), I left feeling so emotionally drained and kind of done with couples counseling for a while. But I realized after, that somehow, having another person in the room mediating our crazy corners, made my husband understand some things about me that 10 years of elegant and precise monologues never could. Having someone else tell him: “sh*t did you hear what she just said?” Really made him HEAR me. For the first time in FOREVER! Maybe EVER.
It took captain crazy to help him get to the cusp of being almost understanding where my major grievances are concerned.
Update: I went back y’all and it GOT WORSE, click the image below for my next post:
What did you say?