Counseling...

My husband and I have tried counseling a few different times. The first was before we ever got engaged. We were having problems with his parents that we could not resolve and I thought counseling would help us get to the point to where we could move on and get married. This was not a good idea.


The counselor was good enough. We liked him. He was fairly young, had 4 children, was willing to see us in the evenings. We were happy with him in the beginning. But as time went on, our sessions began to get worse. I have blocked out a lot of our sessions, but the final one. This counselor had been telling me repeatedly that since my husband’s parents didn’t like me, I must be the problem. I didn’t love my husband enough and I hadn’t done everything I could to make him happy. One night, I had enough. I told him I was tired of him telling me that because he knew that wasn’t true. That I had gone through hell and back to stay with this man and I would not stand for him to tell me otherwise. He reacted very angriliy and we began a shouting match while my husband sat in shock. We left that night and never went back. I just couldn’t do it. After that, I just couldn’t bear to see him again. He had made things worse, as far as I was concerned.


The second counselor was saw was one that my husband had been seeing individually for awhile. His specialty was supposedly in families and my husband was sure he could help us. He was good, too, and really smart. My only problem with him was that he really didn’t give us any feedback, he just let us talk. So most of our sessions turned into an hour that we could vent. We never really got anything out of them. I think this counselor was obviously a little partial to my husband because of the time he had spent with him on his own. He continually said that it was my job to make things better with the in-laws and that my husband should stay out of it. I disagreed. I had always read that in conflicts between the parents and the spouse, the blood child was supposed to iron things out. They know the parents better. But the child was also supposed to stand united with their spouse and my husband cannot do that. He has been so brainwashed into thinking that going against his mom is betrayal, he refuses to stand by me.


So, as far as counseling goes, we haven’t been in several months. About 6 to be exact. So far we have yet to find a counselor who can give us an unbiased opinion on the problems with my in-laws and help us work through them. Maybe one of these days we’ll get lucky.