Disappointing Counselling (Feb 2024)

Today Sarah and I had our first counselling since December. She shared that we'd had some positive time as a family over Christmas and on our day hiking trip to the Big Hole and Marble Arch (cave). However, she expressed concern that since the last session she was getting mixed messages from me because I she had seen both positive things and inconsistencies. She had seen that I was seeking empathy, yet I hadn't followed up on something we had agreed to at our last session, which was to meet up to discuss how the kids were going and how we were going. I expressed to her that would seem very confusing and frustrating (practicing my empathy). Then she continued, I  resisted explaining, but expressed empathy to her frustration, and she continued again, and again I resisted rationally justifying, but expressed empathy to her confusion. 

Sarah expressed that she was getting exhausted holding space to hear about what was going on for me. ←although that sentence is not as harsh as how she expressed it.

Finally the counsellor asked what was going on for me, and that she felt Sarah wanted to know too. I explained that I'm extremely confused. Firstly for missing something clearly very important to Sarah, and secondly that Sarah has both expressed that she wants to hear from me together with also that she's had enough of hearing from me. I expressed that the whole 10-months of separation has been extremely confusing to me. Sarah had she didn't want to see me at the house, then she complained she wasn't seeing me and also saying, "You're always welcome here". I said the "rules" are very unclear, inconsistent, and lopsided, such as: Sarah was very clear she didn't want me doing washing if I visited the house, yet she asked if she could do her washing when she visited once. So I wasn't sure whether Sarah really did want to know why I had missed the plan to meet up outside of counselling.

So I finally answered the question to why I hadn't met up with Sarah outside of counselling and our weekly family dinner. I explained that I'm angry and disappointed at myself for missing something that was clearly very important to Sarah. Sarah had said that she'd messaged asking if we could catch up to talk to the girls about the extended separation, but I didn't understand that she wanted to meet up just the two of us. I had thought she was asking to meet up, which we had been doing each week anyway. As we had recently met up and had another meeting with the kids in a few days, I had been confused as to why Sarah hadn't raised talking to the girls about our separation extending (it's been 10 months - 4 months over the 6 months we'd told the girls). I shared that it was Sarah's decision to extend the separation, so it was her news to share that with the girls. Yet I wanted Sarah to know that I understood that the whole separation was because of me. I realised that it doesn't matter to the girls who's decision it was to extend the separation, and that we just need to tell them.
 

So we discussed a statement that was true and true to what the girls were experiencing, and came up with:

“We are continuing out separation with the hope of reconciling, but there are some barriers that we have to work through. It’s taking longer than we thought.”

“We’d love you to feel heard and want you to have an appointment with the school counsellor, so you can talk about what’s happening with someone outside of us.” and

“We have had great time as a family and we hope to have a lot more of that. Our marriage maybe be very tricky, but our family is not.”

Sarah originally proposed meeting on Wednesday, which will become a very busy day for me from next week. I said the only time I could meet on Wednesday would be 0800, and reluctantly agreed. Sarah noted my "meh" tone and suggested that we could meet on another day. I said Friday would be better. The counsellor stopped us and said she noticed that I had "collapsed" instead of being assertive and say that Wednesdays would not work for me. So I practiced saying that. Sarah suggested Friday, and I proposed 8am, which we agreed upon. So we'll meet at 0815 this Friday morning and probably every second Friday morning.

Our next counselling will be at 9am on Monday 4th February.