Let me paint you a picture. My husband and I have been together for 12 years. We met the night I graduated high school. I think it is fair to say both of us were essentially children who had no idea what the world would look like for us, or what we wanted from it. In those years, we have been through it all. Together we have been through multiple college graduations, addresses, career changes, health emergencies, and now have two kids.
Throughout all of this, we were growing up and growing into ourselves. Neither of us is the person we were when we met, but we have been lucky enough to have grown into people who balance each other out.
So, then why counseling?
While I can say without batting an eye that my husband is my best friend, at the same time I can tell you I’ve daydreamed many times of shipping him off to a deserted island to fend for himself. and I can assure you the feeling has been mutual. If you tell me you’ve never had slightly homicidal thoughts about your spouse/partner that you OBVIOUSLY would never act on, it doesn’t mean you have a better marriage, it just means you are a better liar than me.
My husband and I have been in couples counseling for the last 6 months. If you know me, this most likely isn’t news to you, because I talk about it all the time. When I say this to people in conversation, the response is never “That’s great!” (which it is, by the way). The response I get is generally uncomfortable silence, a general look of pity, or the worst – the apology. There is always an overwhelming air of, “oh, I didn’t know your marriage was in trouble” or, “why are you airing your dirty laundry?”. This is the reason why I have decided to be loud and proud about the situation. Ladies and Gentlemen, buckle in for this one, my husband is my best friend and therapy together is the best decision we ever made.
The final push.
Couples counseling is something we discussed for years, but it was always put on the back burner until things settled down (HA!). Fast forward to the summer of 2020, mere months after our youngest was born, my husband ended up hospitalized. What started as pushed aside symptoms, resulted in a health crisis that almost killed my otherwise healthy 29-year-old husband. Ultimately, he was diagnosed with a chronic disease that had gone ignored. This event completely changed my husband and I, but in very different ways.
My husband wanted to move on from the whole experience. He wanted to leave the worrying to the doctors and trust his health would be taken care of. On the other hand, I became obsessed with his managing his care and sunk into a downward spiral of blame. I couldn’t believe I let this happen. How did I miss the signs? I created expectations for myself that I could have done more to avoid it. Not to mention that after almost dying, my husband seemed to have just move on.
Finally, a truce was reached, we would try to meet in the middle. We agreed that I needed to loosen the reigns a little and he needed to be more on top of his own care. Ultimately, we decided we needed someone to help us balance our crazy.
Enter: Marriage Counselor.
Our first session was awkward and we didn’t know where to start. This may be the understatement of the year, but my husband and I are very different people. In the last couple of months, we have reestablished our relationship as a priority. Instead of holding in things and letting them create a larger issue, we have found a way to be more effective in the way we communicate. We have also learned to give each other more credit in things we do, both big and small.
Somedays we leave therapy laughing, holding hands, feeling good. While other days, we have unearthed something painful that we need to sit in for a little. But every week we have this set-aside time to talk, to connect, to invest back in us. We spend so much energy on our kids daily, but for so long wrote off the need to reinvest in us. Life can be so busy, it can be hard to take a breathe and remind us that we are doing this together.
