Are sessions together effective? Does your husband know what he does? How long did you move out?
Hello.
Apparently you're Mr Snowbunny, so I'll answer your questions straight up with introductions
They have been working for us so far. There are some areas where I know Ben still has blind spots, and it's driving me nuts waiting for his little lightbulb to go off - but he may feel the same way about me I guess. Most of the time we make progress though.
Apparently he didn't know.l When I walked out he was mystified - he knew he got mad, but he didn't know he got THAT mad. We think he was repressing the memories of his violent behaviour. Considering how irrational he used to get when we were fighting, with hindsight I don't find the repression surprising. It also explained why he never apologised.
I walked out on November 12, 2007. So 2 1/2 months ago now. I am now living in our family home, because Angus starts school tomorrow, and it's nice and close. Ben is living with his mum. Before that Ben was living at our house, and me and the kids were at my mum's.
The trouble with that is that all professionals rely on the excuse that it "takes time." I imagine at their billing rates it does take a great deal of time. I'm not stupid, they don't really care how things work out, they just want to make sure you show up so that the clock can start running. More time = more possibilities for things to get worse. They don't care - if things work out that's just good advertising, if they fail then it was doomed to failure, either way they can buy that new Audi.
Well, MC Bob is not like that.
Relationships Australia is partially funded by the government, so it has a sliding scale for sessions. Full fee is $50 for 1 and a bit hours (our longest was 1 3/4!) and it goes down from there. We pay $35 per session - and they are worth every penny.
I think I saw you say on another thread that you are worth half a billion dollars? I think your family is worth at least some of that, don't you?
The thread title said there are solutions here, what are they?
No, I was looking for solutions. This is the spinoff to my original thread, which had over 800 posts, where I came out about what has happening to me, and all these dead people helped me to see what was going on, and to do something about it. And they prayed for me, and they checked din on me and I kept people updated - but Ben was upset by it, and asked that it be deleted. So after a lot of thought, it was.
The solutions for me have been:
1. Putting physical space between us.
2. Not taking his calls for a while - he was irrational and saying really hurtful stuff.
3. Going to marriage counseling together, and talking though stuff in a "safe space", with a mediator who was a disinterested third party. After our first session, Bob got us to come in separately, so that we could speak "extra" freely, and he got to know exactly where each of us was coming from.
4. Getting personal counseling for me. I don't know if you've heard of Battered Woman Syndrome? I had it. (and I wasn't even that battered!) Basically it means that the person who is abusing you is your filter - if they say you're bad, you're bad. If they say such and such is true, then it is. I wasn't expressing myself because I didn't have opinions. Everything centred around not setting him off. I felt I had no value as a person. Etc etc. My counselor is helping me get me back.
It's not about money. It's about time. They have a financial incentive to keep telling you that you are making progress when you aren't, and to keep coming when it might not even be working. In fact, if you really do make progress they have a financial incentive to slow that down so they can bleed you for a few more sessions.
If that is your attitude going in to counseling, I wouldn't bother going. Until you can look past the money, and any motives you might think your counselor has for saying what they are saying, you won't actually be listening to a word they say, and hence won't make any progress.
When you're the kind of guy that just wants to get issues worked out for your family, you tend to make that a priority and get a little agitated that some PhD with dreams of Bora Bora Island doesn't make it their priority as well.
Deep emotional issues are not something you can work out in five minutes, mate. Or even two sessions. Particularly not if you have a blindspot. Ben and I have been making progress, and have been to counseling regularly (weekly/fortnightly) but there are still some things he just does not get, and I can't tell him, because he still doesn't hear me. And Bob can't tell him, because it's Ben's blindspot, so he doesn't see the problem.
Getting agitated will make it take longer.
Marital problems can't be fixed like headaches. There's no "take two of these after food' solutions for emotional issues. How well something works will depend entirely on how much effort both parties put into dealing with all the issues, from their entire past together, no matter how painful. Until all the crap people carry around with them in their pasts is eliminated, it's very hard to move forwards.
Ask yourself - how much are you willing to give to make things right? How much of an effort is Snowbunny worth to you? Both of you need to be on the same page. If either one of you is turning up and looking at your watch every two minutes, it's not going to go well.
I hope both of you are able to sort out your issues. Just don't expect it to happen overnight. Because it won't.