Tired

I was very tired when I got home last night. After tea and walking the dog, I went for a lie down and did some short but deep hypnosis – it really did help.

I have previously said to my husband that, provided I know when a conversation is coming up, I am responsible for making sure that I’m in as good a mental state as I can be.

I still didn’t feel good after the lie down, but we had agreed to talk and I was at least feeling calm.

Discussing the plan

I sat on the floor and précised the writings I’d made the day before.

It seemed that he was quite resistant to the little four point plan I had for making sure that I looked after the things he talked to me about. However, when I asked him to clarify, it turned out his frustration was more about the broader ASD accommodations I’d asked for, rather than the checklist itself. He actually thought that the little checklist I intended to do at the end of a conversation was a good idea.

I realised that I needed to rephrase and reframe my ASD needs: I said that I was asking for his help. I think that might have felt different to him.

Both feeling inadequate

Conversation then moved into the direction of historical problems in our relationship, he focussed on how he perceived that I controlled how he expressed himself. At one point I said that I also felt that he had made me feel that my communication style was inadequate. He shut me down by telling me that he was talking about him and how I’d made him feel inadequate.

I went quiet, fiddling with my beads, but there was no sign of the glue-brain that signals an oncoming shutdown.

I think that I have to come back to how he has shut me down in the past, and how he had made my natural communication style feel inadequate (I used to cry when he told me something upsetting, and my natural instinct when somebody is upset is to hold them, but he somehow stopped both of those nonverbal means of expression).

What do we hope for from couples counselling?

Eventually, the discussion moved onto what we hoped to get from therapy.

I hope that we can find a way to both be happy and fulfilled, both as individuals and as a couple. I also need to understand how to balance the relationship’s needs against my own.

He doesn’t know what he wants from therapy – I guess that means that he doesn’t even know whether he wants us to remain together.

Understanding that would seem to be a priority outcome for therapy for us!

Wrapping up!

The last thing I had to do was agree when we would next talk. I suggested going out for pizza on Friday. He said that we couldn’t afford it. Poo. Well, we’ll just have to do on Friday what we did tonight.

I wasn’t overwhelmed at any point last night. It felt like a long conversation, but in reality it was less than ninety minutes. I’m still tired, but it felt like a good conversation.

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Thursday

When I went back downstairs, having jotted down my notes from my talk, I was accused of dictating when we next spoke.

“Friday was a suggestion!” I protested, “we could talk Thursday, Saturday, whenever!”

He pulled a face, I don’t know what it meant, and said “Thursday”.

Fine. Thursday it is.