Marriage counseling is starting to get real. We have passed the honeymoon stage and moved on to really trying to find out the root of our problems. Our marriage counselor is a dream. I love the way she works. My husband is a willing, but reluctant, participant and she has been able to masterfully get him to do something he does not like to do.
My husband has never been one to share his real feelings. He'll scrape around the surface, but he never gets down to what's really going on with him. Our counselor is a very gentle woman and it's very easy to talk to her. She has eased my husband down the path to realizing that his past has a lot to do with his present. His mother's alcoholism and parent's divorce have followed him into our marriage and has a lot to do with the person that he is.
During his teen years, when his parent's divorced, my husband had to become the man of the house and care for his mother, who had a drinking problem. He also had to become the father figure for his two sisters. They still look up to him as the man who can solve all problems. He never had a chance to be a teenager. He went from fathering his sisters, to having his own before the age of 20.
I guess the lack of teenagehood caught up with my husband and he decided he needed to get those years back. The only problem is he did it at the expense of our family. I've tried to make him realize this but he has always seemed to feel that the things he was doing were secret from our children. I think he was in denial.
Since we've started therapy I have been able to say some things to him that were hard for me before. Our marriage counselor's office is truly a safe haven. There's no anger and no judgment. We both lay it all on the line and have realized things we didn't know existed between us.
My heart and judgment of my husband are both softening. I'm learning to love him again. Trust has not come, and we haven't made love yet, but all things in time. When I am comfortable, it will happen. I still have times when I think of all that he has done and there are times when I second guess his words, but I do feel a lot better about our future and I never thought that would happen.
