Counselling

It’s usual in counselling to recap anything significant that’s happened in the period since the last session. Often, I have specific things that is like to explore, which probably arose during the week and is like to explore more.

This time it was the bad meal on Friday last week and my subsequent conversation with my husband on Sunday.

What was real?

The first points that I covered were:

• Our marriage was a lie.
• I’ve lied to him about who I was.
• Was any of it real?

On Sunday I had tried to take my husband to moments in our relationship and all him whether he felt that they were real. Moments such as a golden Christmas just the two of us and our dog, or other times we’d spent.

The husband wasn’t willing to cooperate. Richard (my counsellor) thought that I was doing exactly the right thing and feels that my husband is overreacting to the big coming out last year.

There might be aspects of our relationship that weren’t completely “real” or “genuine”, but they were slithers if time and do not constitute the majority of it.

Sex

I then moved onto the next things that my husband had brought up:

• He only went along with opening the relationship for fear of losing me.
• That I’d manipulated him into giving me the kind of sex that I wanted.

Richard thought that my husband wasn’t being fair here. He could have said no. Did he even try to say no? I know that I wasn’t up for discussing this like this until now recently, however it wasn’t until my husband actually said that sex between us had changed and that he thought we needed counselling that everything actually came out.

At no point before that time in early October last year had I indicated that there was any kind of ultimatum or final choice to be made.

After that October, I did start to say that I felt that I needed to explore that darker side of myself and to consider opening the relationship up or I might need to “think of alternatives”, which might have meant the end of the relationship.

From then on the night have been that spectre of separation, but it wasn’t talked about. I still see my husband’s point though that there was a metaphorical gun to his head about opening the marriage.

Secrecy

My husband’s next point was that I was secretive.

This comes from a few things:

• Initially, I asked him not to look at my blog after I came back from Mexico because there things that I wanted to speak to him about first.
• I did have conversations with other men in secret about my sexual fantasies, kink, and sexual identity before I spoke to him.
• That I still talk to people in secret.

Since that initial coming out I have increasingly talked to him about these online relationships. Even back in November last year we were talking out because of told him that I’d talked about Dom/sub dynamics with a friend.

I don’t share private information with my husband, but neither do I completely freeze him out. He knows about my friends.

I have even asked for advice on some subjects with regard to my involvement with the community (for example we discussed interviewing somebody for the blog and his advice was not to).

It was all about me

The period from my initial coming out to my surgery I was very much wrapped up in my own crisis. It was an immensely difficult time for me, although it did have some highlights. I’m going to write in it later this week.

Even in that difficult time I was doing my best for my husband: I was calling ambulances, chasing doctors, mental health professionals, and medical prescriptions – despite, at one point, having just come out of hospital myself. I was clearly in my own crisis.

Throughout our marriage I have called ambulances for his overdoses and chased around for prescriptions. I have done my best with the tools I had at my disposal.

Somehow, the conversation with Richard turned to how my husband won’t look at his own words and actions. I said that he did and he’s taken ownership of them.

Richard then asked “had he ever asked you how it was for you?” The answer was “no”. But then I think I told my husband how horrible he was quite enough, using shame and guilt to punish him.

I was aware that I was hurting now though.

I have received countless beatings and endless verbal abuse while he was triggered. He was ill. I can can let him off that – he wasn’t responsible. However, I have those feelings, and the fear of anger and violence they triggered connected directly to the “back of the hand” threats and actions from my dad, and the bullying at school.

They are not without consequence.

My dad

I said that my husband has accused me of being a hypocrite with regards my father, whom I will not tell that I’m a eunuch. I’m open with everybody else, but not him.

I realise that this angered me because nobody should be forced to come out. You do it when you’re good and ready … and feel safe.

If it were my mum, it wouldn’t even be a question: she would know.

He’s eighty. I know there’s not as much time left as I’d like. If it went tits up, there might not be time to resolve it all.

Richard fully supported me with this assertion.

Aggressive

My husband had also said that I was more aggressive.

Richard asked for examples. Am I being snappy and short tempered, or is this my husband being unused to my asserting boundaries and voicing needs.

Next steps

Obviously, I need to talk to my husband about all this. That’s going to be fun. Not.

I have also said to Richard that I want to work more on my boundaries. Perhaps, in view of my husband’s last point, I also need to explore how I say what I need – perhaps it is coming across aggressively, which I do not want to do.

I also want to work towards being ready for couples counselling. Maybe that is something to think about for January.