COUPLES COUNSELING
You may feel exhausted, feel you’ve “had enough”, feel you “can’t go on like this”… but …- I see that you’re both very attached to one another, through anger, through dependency, through proving “you’re right”… etc.
- you [or one of you] says you still love the other;
- the timing sounds terrible [e.g. you’re about to get a job promotion, or a parent is terminally ill…etc. ];
- one partner is “floored”, or “devastated” by the other’s announcing that s/he wishes to separate:
- “I knew you were unhappy, but didn’t think is was t h i s bad”, s/he’ll say.
In cases like the above, I will recommend several counseling sessions to:- give the non-initiating partner a little more time and understanding to accept the news, even if s/he does not like it. [ It’ll make the next decisions go so much more smoothly.]
- clarify why you married in the first place
- help you to understand , and perhaps to accept, how and why and when you drifted apart
- and be really really clear that you do not want/ and/or cannot heal this relationship. This is The Big Question. If you both answer this honestly, then going forward, you don’t need to spend so much time and energy being unsure, ambivalent, angry, disillusioned … etc.
