Sessions always start with a recap from me of the fortnight proceeding. From that there’s usually a bit of a discussion about what happened, sometimes it’s a laugh, sometimes it’s very serious. Richard (my counsellor) is very open with his laughter when I say something funny – but is funny that I don’t always recognise a funny situation until he throws his head back and laughs!

Today was less laughter and more concerned looks. The two times with my husband seemed to raise eyebrows (a meal at his and a trip to the pictures). Richard is concerned about my boundary setting with him and whether there’d been any pushback.

There hadn’t – both occasions had gone well with nothing emotionally loaded discussed.

On both occasions I had wanted to share about times I was enjoying with friends (that’s friends, not sexual liaisons – sex is certainly too much of an ask at the moment, whereas I feel that friendships should feel safe for both of us), but Richard has his doubts whether my husband was ready to hear it and whether I was ready for any fallout. I suggested that perhaps I could at least say to my husband that when he was ready he could say that he’d like to hear about the friends I’d made.

Richard wasn’t enthused by that, but conceded that it might be OK, however I should not push my agenda: sharing is what I want not necessarily what my husband wants.

Which leads on nicely to what we’d already agreed to discuss this session – managing boundaries assertively.

Richard had brought some Assertive Sentence Starter ideas for us to workshop, a kind of cheat-sheet:

• “I’ve noticed that… and I’d like to find a solution.”
• “l feel… when… and moving forward I need…”
• “l understand your perspective, however, I am not able to…”
• “I’m happy to discuss [Logistics], but I’m not willing to discuss [Personal Topic].”
• “That sounds difficult. How do you plan on handling that?”
• “I’m going to take some space and we can reconnect when we can focus on the facts.”
• “It’s important to me that we keep our Communication focus on…”

The second was a little bit like a formula a couples counsellor we’d once seen had suggested to us (“When you do… I feel… and instead I would like…”). We had used it quite a bit, but it had fallen away because my husband didn’t like the unemotional quality of having a fixed structure for discussing issues. I rather liked it and still use (actually, I have adapted it as a template for testers and customers to use when reporting software bugs).

We tried a couple of examples. but I kept thinking how my husband would object to them as either too formulaic, too unemotional, or too controlling.

Richard’s view was “yes, so what?”

Which kind of broke my brain.

His interest is keeping me emotionally safe.

And I shouldn’t be continuing to caretake my husband’s emotions.