Marriage Confessions Goes to Marriage Counseling: Phase One – Anger

This week, Chris and I are sharing about our experience with a marriage counselor over the past two months.  While we were in counseling, we decided together not to share anything with anyone about it.  Few people in our real lives even knew.  But I continued to write about the experience as it was happening, both with the intention of sharing it later once the dust had settled and of helping myself work through it on my own.  This is the first post that I wrote about a week after Chris told me he thought we should see a counselor.

*******

Chris and I have decided to see a marriage counselor.  The past few months have been hard on our family, but they have been worse on our marriage.  A lot of it stems from being apart with traveling and work and caring for Chris’s dad.  We have been away from each other during times of incredible stress and I think that has left both of us to deal with the stress separately from each other.  Now that things have settled for us a bit, we are still having trouble meshing ourselves back together.  There is tension and anger where there has never been before and we can’t seem to figure out if it is leftover from something specific or if we are just overwhelmed and having trouble finding our center again.  We both think talking to a counselor will help us get on the same page again.

That’s what I’m supposed to say about seeing a marriage counselor.

In reality, I’m livid that Chris thinks we need to see one (although, if I have posted this, then it means I have put enough of my anger aside to share this blog post with him because I wouldn’t post any of this without his blessing).  I’m angry that he isn’t able to move past our issues and make things normal again.  I’m angry that he doesn’t even seem to be trying to do anything to help.  I’m angry that he can’t talk to me directly but instead wants to bring someone else into our marriage to work things out.  I’m angry that our life and our marriage aren’t enough to make him happy right now.  I’m angry that he works all the time.  That he’s on his phone or his laptop all the time.  That he doesn’t seem fully committed to our family or our relationship and yet HE is the one who wants us to see a marriage counselor.  As if all of this is my fault.

But I’ll go see a goddamn marriage counselor with him because I love him more than anything and because if this is the path he has chosen to put our marriage first again, then of course I’ll go.  And I’ll go because apparently I do have some anger issues with him (obbbbbbbbviously) and it is exhausting to be so angry.  In fact, here’s a horrible thing to admit, I wake up in the middle of the night angry at him.  And I can’t get back to sleep because I am seething with anger at him.  For doing this to us.  For putting this label on our marriage.  For never being satisfied.  For me not being enough.

Perhaps, if I sit and think long enough about it, like I am right now at 5am in the morning when anger has once again woken me and I finally decided maybe if I write it out, I can let it out.  Perhaps if I sit here and think long enough about it, the anger in me comes from a place of fear.  How unhappy IS he, actually?  It’s got to be pretty bad if he is asking me to go to a marriage counselor.  And what if something horrible comes out in a session?  Like that he doesn’t love me anymore.  Or that our life isn’t enough.  Or that the source of all this unhappiness and unrest in him has not been our circumstances, but has, in fact, just been me.  What if we get in there and the counselor turns to us and says, “Yeah, I think you two are irreparable.”

I feel like I’m failing at something that I have always been really good at and that makes me angry and frustrated and scared.

(pause)

I just had to stop and have myself a good, big, ugly cry for a minute.  And things always feel a little better after a good, big, ugly cry.  (Deep breath.)  So, this is where we are right now.  Caring for our marriage in a new way.  Getting a new perspective and a different opinion.  Working our way back to center again.  Because my marriage is worth this anger.  It’s worth this frustration and fear.  It’s worth working on.

Even with a goddamn marriage counselor.