Last night

I asked my husband whether there was anything he wanted to talk about before our couples counselling on Wednesday – especially since he’d said on the weekend that he didn’t see the point in our joint therapy. he is feeling pretty hopeless about our marriage.

His feelings hadn’t changed since then. He seemed to think that we’d not spoken much since the last couples counselling, I think we have spoken two or three times (if I look at the notes I’ve made in the blog, I can see three distinct conversations that I wrote about in the week since our first session, and another three the week before – not that I’m being picky or pedantic!).

He challenged me on why I haven’t felt able to trust him, saying that my reasons were hypothetical, which (I am feeling now) rather minimises the effect of physical and verbal attacks have had on me.

I also found myself thinking today about all the times that my husband has used words that feel like threats to our relationship – they might be fair enough (“if you don’t change your behaviour / listen better / talk more then we are over” kind of things). I am wondering whether I remember these things right? Or was my brain catastrophising?

But I do remember being told that if I didn’t make myself more available for sex, that he would look elsewhere – that’s a specific threat to the relationship as I understood it at that time. There have been times, every few years, where I felt like the relationship’ was ‘s continuation was being questioned by my husband because he was unhappy. Perhaps, after so long together I could have had more trust in the marriage?

He has said many times that he wonders whether its his fear of being destitute that keeps him with me – he says that if it is that its not fair on him or me. I have said every time that we would split what we own 50:50 – I would buy him out of the house, or we would sell it and split the proceeds.

I don’t want to sell the house if we separate because that’s a whole load of extra stress and breaking up would already be stressful. That’s not a reason not a reason to separate either.

We do love each other, but not in the ways the other needs.

Maybe I am just feeling hard-done-by and tired. I shall need to have a bit of a reset before tonight.

Counselling

Checking in

I started again. I felt tired, sad, and irritable.

Roxy then asked my husband. He felt somewhat similar to me in that regards. He talked a bit about trust, both the end of his trust for me and my lack of trust for him.

Burnt out?

Something that my husband had just shared triggered a memory of sitting that is wanted to discuss from our last session. Last October, my husband took an overdose. He has made more attempts on his own life than I can remember, and each time I have called ambulances, chased doctors and mental health professionals, and generally worked hard to get him cared for.

This last October I am afraid I acted very poorly; I said”are you playing the suicide game again?”, which was very unkind – and extremely dangerous. He’d taken enough pills to cause him to bleed from his anus the next day.

Every time he takes – or anyone takes – an overdose should be treated with the same sense of urgency as if it was their first.

Last week while my husband was sharing, I noticed Roxy becoming emotional. I felt emotional when I saw it in her – what concerns me is that I cannot seem to feel it directly from my husband myself.

I cannot care for him any more.

I shared this in counselling.

“This means something very significant,” said Roxy.

“I know,” I replied, “but I don’t want to face it.”

I found that I could barely talk, my throat was constricted, and I was crying heavily.

I do care for my husband. I do love him. Why cannot I be caring for him any more?

But maybe James didn’t do what you need because he can’t

Roxy said this to my husband. She was checking to see whether that changed his feelings about whether I was intentionally cruel towards him or simply incapable of being what he needs. It didn’t seem to make much difference to him.

I am not certain what I felt when she said that. I think that she really does understand my confusion around emotions, both my own and his.

Why have we stuck together?

The discussion moved on and she asked “What percentage of our relationship was good or bad?”

I really struggled with this. How does one sum up a lifetime together into percentages? How does one factor in the intensity, the quality, the value of certain times over others?

She saw me churning, trying to think, so she asked the same question of the husband. He found out much easier to answer: “seventy-five percent bad, twenty-five percent good,” he said. He added that he very rarely regretted meeting me, although at times it has come close over the last eighteen months. He said that he would never stop being grateful for all the wonderful things that we have done together, all the things that he never dreamed would be possible given his upbringing. That did mean something to me.

When she returned to me, I still struggled to answer the question, despite thinking about it while the husband was talking. Eventually I said “in a bad year, maybe six or even eight months could be hell, and two to six weeks would be good. But I have almost always felt that the quality of the good outweighed the bad.”

“So that’s about fifty-fifty,” she said.

“No, I’m not trying to make it as up to one-hundred percent because there a lot of time where it’s just ok, neither good nor bad.”

The husband’s question

He said that he wanted to ask me a question: “if there was a way we could still be friends, would it make letting go easier?”

“I don’t know the answer to that,” I replied, “I’m going to have to think about it.”

He then added “because I couldn’t do that, I would have to make a clean break.”

Roxy questioned that, perhaps she thought it was a mean trick since my answer would never really mean anything in terms of any agreement we could reach.

“That’s why I had to say that I couldn’t do that,” he said.

Again I started to get very emotional. My brain was already like glue, but years came again and I said “The thought of never seeing him again fills me with horror.”

I realise that fear of loss isn’t an adequate reason to stay together, and I said as much.

Haunted by things I’ve said

The husband thought that he’d been grieving or relationship since the time after I came out as needing surgery to fulfil my non-binary needs. He was stung when it’s said “this is happening, like it or lump it”. He said that statement told him that I didn’t care what he thought or what he felt.

I wanted to explain it a little, what I’d meant by it was that my testicles were going and that I could not stop it from happening. It would either be via surgery … or if be cutting them off myself. Nothing he could say would change that, so in some ways what he understood by it was true, but not for the reasons he felt – it wasn’t that I didn’t care what he felt, but that I couldn’t take it onto account and that it could not change the outcome.

What do we want?

At the end of the session, Roxy said that she didn’t want us to have any heavy conversations this next week but instead to process what had been said in the session.

I wondered how my husband would help about that, especially since her previously said that he wouldn’t agree to “no talking” weeks.

I wouldn’t mind a week off lessened intensity! This constant talking about our fucked up marriage is draining all my resources!

I could feel that a full on shutdown wasn’t far off. I found moving and getting up difficult.

When we left, hubby said that he’d catch the bus home because he needed some space.

I have had to sit in the car and write to try to capture what was said before it all fades … and in order to get my mind into a state where I am safe to drive.