Therapy

My husband had told me he would not do couples therapy with me while we were “trying”. After I was in the hospital I told him I needed to do therapy together. There were too many things left unsaid. My mind was too jumbled. I was too lost, hurt and confused without him. He agreed to do it.

The hard part about doing therapy? The system is broken. Finding a therapist to take us was a daunting and unforgiving task. Out of some sort of protection for him, I did not look directly in our area, but outside of it. In the era of telehealth, there should have been so many more doors open. There just weren’t. Places weren’t accepting new patients.

I finally found someone who was accepting patients and we had to book out a bit of a ways. I told my husband about it. He agreed to the date. He proceeded to cancel and reschedule three times because he kept forgetting and made plans with his girlfriend. He had agreed to do therapy to help me because I needed it to move forward. I was stuck. I had to schedule an appointment with the therapist on my own otherwise we were going to lose our spot.

I struggled a little whether I should tell my husband or not about my meeting with our therapist alone. If I didn’t meet with her, we would permanently be removed from her schedule. If he stood up the next appointment, we would be regardless if I met with her that time. I ultimately decided I should. He swore up and down he would not mess up the next appointment and he would be there.

My individual appointment with her went like a “normal” therapy appointment. She got background history on our relationship, our kids, and our parents from me. Her paperwork was a bit lackluster; there was just one form to fill out despite it was for couple’s therapy. She seemed empathetic and like she knew what she was doing.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. The day of our therapy appointment came. I was nervous. He was too. We had to be in the same room. We met in the most neutral place we could come up with; his office at work. Amusingly to me, we both had started with a similar nervous habit of rolling something around in our hand. He used a rolled up tissue. I actually had a prayer stone I used. I had gotten them for my birthday from the youngest kid; they had been part of a “self care kit” they had given me. There were two; one I kept in my coat pocket over the winter, the other in my purse.

The therapist turned in a week from empathetic to against me. Anything my husband said, she sided with. I became public enemy number 1. Nothing I said mattered. Everything he said mattered. It was like he grew more confident with every sentence that came out of his mouth. He cried throughout the session. I started crying toward the end and I couldn’t control it. Loud, choking sobs. Crocodile tears streaming down my face.

I couldn’t hold my head my up to even participate. I was able to nod my head a few times. I was able to get my husband to answer for me a few times. I was so overwhelmed. I had been crying like this a lot, but generally in private. Certainly not in front of my husband. Even if it was messed up, I appreciated someone being able to speak for me, even if it was about something so hard. That he knew what I was trying to say when I couldn’t speak.

When the session was done, we sat and talked for a little bit. We hugged a few times. I miss his arms around me. He told me that he missed things about me. There were things that bothered him about her.

He also told me that he was starting to be happy. He was missing that he was sharing a person with someone else. That “happiness” he was referring to wasn’t going to last. If there were things that were bothering him already, they were surely going to drive him crazy. He was lying to her about the time he was with me at therapy, at least that time. He told me we would do whatever we needed to do help me get through it. I should have known better. I didn’t though.

The next day the therapist texted me and berated me. She told me over and over again it didn’t matter what my husband said. I just had to get over it. I was well aware I needed to get over it. The problem was I blamed myself myself. All I knew was that he blamed me to other people and took no blame on himself. That was why I wanted to go to therapy. Because of the guilt I felt. The blame I held. What I didn’t understand. I had to hear what happened from him; just a piece of what fell apart. What I know is very little from him and then a little from his girlfriend’s boyfriend about what he said. Then I’ve seen texts between the two of them together. He points all blame at me. He plays the victim. So, how can I not blame myself? That therapist wouldn’t schedule another session with us; she felt that I was the problem. I didn’t deserve any answers.

I showed the text messages to my therapist and psychiatrist. They both said she was out of line and that we should have therapy with another therapist. I continued on our search. I got us in without group; it seemed much better, very promising. They moved people around to fit us in. Then he refused to go.

He said he had gotten everything he needed out of that one session. I guess he forgot the reason we were going. That it was supposed to be for me. That I was carrying this immense weight around with me. That I had the guilt of a scarlet A burned into my soul, yet I wasn’t the one who strayed. I had in my mind all the failures I had and why it was my fault. That was why we were supposed to go.

He promised me he would help me through it. That he would talk to me and help. He said he understood why I felt that way, though it wasn’t the case. I wanted someone else there to discuss with that I knew he villanized me. That he portrayed me as so many things I wasn’t. He promised to help me through my feelings of self worth and loathing.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he stopped talking to me all together. Which made it worse. This man had gone from my best friend, my confident, my everything, to someone who wouldn’t even speak to me. Who will turn and walk back down the hall instead of coming toward me.

I’m sure that was some sort of help to him, but I’ll tell you what it did to me. If I felt devastated before, that just solidified it. Any broken piece of me was then shattered into microscopic pieces. My insomnia got worse. My stomach got worse. I threw up often. I had diarrhea upwards of a dozen times a day.

I looked cachectic. You could count every rib on my body. My hips jutted out at angles that looked almost broken. My face was gaunt. My eyes looked hollow. My arms and legs were wrapped in layers of clothes too big for them begging for warmth. I cried because my elbows hurt so much. I cried anyway because I was so broken. Broken beyond any reasonable repair and the one person I wanted help from wouldn’t speak to me, let alone look at me.

I had found out through out all this that last summer he paid to get her car fixed. I asked him why. He said in the meekest voice “because I like to help people,”

Those words stung. The still sting now. I don’t know who he is fooling. That’s not true. I do know who he is fooling. He is fooling himself. He doesn’t like to help people. He wrecks people. He lures them in and he does this. Maybe not people, maybe just me. He wrecked his family. His kids. Our kids. Our parents. Our cat.

His life has been affected least by his affair. Everyone around him has suffered greatly. Since he told me he would do therapy and backed out, I felt I didn’t have a choice but to try and figure him out myself; or as much as I could. To see if I could give myself any closure. To help ease the blame I was carrying around.