Is It Ok We're Going to Couple’s Therapy?
We went to therapy before and it feels like everyone is more open about mental health, so why do I still feel ashamed?
The title “What does it mean if we go to couples therapy?” overlayed onto a picture of a couple sitting on a log on the beach. Written by Marie Shanley on the bottom right
How Did We Get Here?
I’d spent so much emotional effort not wanting to become my parents, especially in scenarios where my under-two-year-old child was present. Yet, here I still was, screaming at the top of my lungs in our kitchen instead of looking for common ground, practicing empathy, literally using any of my other emotional skills.
As soon as the angry, spiteful words came out of my mouth I regretted it. My husband, my partner of fifteen years got quiet. He had just added his own fuel to the fire but my last remarks apparently took the gold in this awful Olympics I didn’t ask to rank in.
We’d run out of emotional, physical and social capital months ago and with our little one still needing so much, there was no way to replenish it with anything that wasn’t resentment. There’s no help immediately around that we don’t need to pay for, no village to help ease things to help us find time to rekindle our own flames. So there’s been plenty of anger to go around. Resentment that I had to quit hobbies. Postpartum anxiety and a tumultuous pregnancy had already started putting us to the test.
Here come the Four Horsemen of the divorce apocalypse: Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling. I fear them, but yet I am helpless and too exhausted to stave them off.
All the evening catch up walks, all the drives for a quick ice cream or 10 pm grocery fun-runs to add silliness to tough days — gone. Replaced with compassion fatigue and burnout from always being on. And the weird, unrecognizable feeling of wanting to devote every second of your life to make sure the tiny person you created has the best experience while also having no reserves to draw from to replenish the limitless amount of energy that requires.
So, you resent, but never the child of course. So, you resent your partner asking for an hour away to see his friends. You resent yourself for asking for two hours of frivolous shopping. You resent your partner’s work trip for four days because you know you’re sleep deprived, but he will potentially also get uninterrupted late-to-wake sleep. You resent going away for your second job when your child might be home missing you, and especially because you miss them. You miss them so much after wanting nothing more but just a moment alone to breathe.
Let’s Do This
We had gone through couple’s therapy before we even got married, as a way to talk out our big decision. Both of us have individual therapy under our belts too. And yet, all I could think this time around was, this is it, the last step before divorce.
What does it say when someone who has been through therapy and is on medication with updated diagnoses as late as 29 years old thinks that couple’s therapy marks the end of a relationship instead of its improvement? I don’t know any couples who divorced after couple’s therapy personally.
Where did I draw that from, socially? I feel ashamed because I like to think of myself as someone open to constant self-betterment. And yet, when it comes to my pairing it seems I feel like I failed to practice my best knowledge if we need to do therapy together.
But we did fail. In the BIG, dubious sense. But not in any way I would judge someone else.
Would I expect someone else with a child to always find time to talk, perfectly, and calmly after three sleepless nights in a row? No. Would I commend a friend who said that all of their old tools to communicate are not working so they need help from a knowledgeable third party to help find new ones; especially given that this is a new situation? Yes.
Having a baby changed everything.
After acknowledging that, it feels unreasonable to expect people to not ask for help.
But when it’s me, the bar is incredibly high. I should be able to keep a perfect house, follow all of my hobbies, cultivate and keep friendships, maintain a job and a hobby and more, all while attending perfectly to my child’s needs. Not too much, not too little. Just right. And did I mention, perfect?
I’m tired just writing that out.
We’re Trying
The moment we both agreed it was time to start the arduous process of selecting an in-insurance-network couple’s therapist was a turning point for both of us individually and us as a couple as I’d never seen before.
Resentment replaced with relief. Stonewalling replaced with a new resolution to stay and try harder. Defensiveness replaced with patience, contempt with extra empathy.
The amount of fights we had had that included the words “that’s rude! Be nicer!” shouted loudly or were wholly dripping in sarcasm. It turns out that instead of yelling about it, resolving to try better tomorrow works as a way to humanize your partner once more. Who knew? I swear I did at one point.
I went to the internet and found all the horror stories. The doomed before you try ones. And instead of just sitting and stewing in them, I went to my partner and told him how afraid I was that we would become part of the 10–30% statistic. I expected dismissal. An “I’m busy” or “can we talk about this later[never]?” Instead, I got a hug and a reminder that we are not just anyone.
We are the same people who fought through suicidality, post-traumatic flashbacks, panic disorder, emetophobia, and post-partum anxiety together and ended up victorious on the other side. We did it before, and as long as both of us were ready to keep fighting (which also was the opposite for those couples I read about on Reddit), we could do it again. I wish we didn’t have to, I wish it was all as simple as just recognizing the problem.
What I’ve Learned
I wish it didn’t mean we would have to learn new coping skills, dig deep into ourselves or rethink how we currently talk to each other. But you can’t recognize that you don’t like where you are, want things to change, and do nothing. There’s no skipping the work you need to do to get to a new place if your current circumstances aren’t working for you anymore.
I could not keep pretending the problem didn’t exist. I could not continue to make myself busy instead of dealing with it. I could not drown myself in work instead of thinking about it…unless I wanted my worst fear — having to let go of someone who used to make my life have a purpose — because I gave up on us right as it could have gotten better.
Where We’re Going
I’ve been working hard to let go of the expectation that either of us can raise our son perfectly. When he was born, I scoured through books, articles, and research with the intent to “fix” everything wrong with my parenting. My default was to assume I needed to fix it. The same way my default before we got married was to assume I’d mess that up too.
I didn’t start with a good example for parenting or coupling, and I wasn’t sure I had anywhere to turn to for that information.
I’ve learned that I absolutely was not alone in these fears and feelings, but they are also very much in line with thousands of first-time moms and even mothers with more than one kid.
Neither of us is going to be perfect. But life is made worthwhile by two struggles:
Trying every day to be a better version of yourself than you were yesterday
Being kind to yourself in order to encourage yourself to keep trying.
It’s not about approaching parenting or marriage from the perspective that you’re already doing everything wrong. It’s about trusting that your intent to make reparations once you fall short will always supersede your pride. And it’s about showing your kid that shouting, anger, mistrust, and being the worst version of yourself, is still worthy of someone else’s love because you’re both doing your best to be better.
