First Counseling Session

Sweets and I had our first counseling session together on Monday night. Things have been swirling through my head a bit, and I'm still thinking about everything, but it was over all a positive experience.

Some things surprised me about the visit in general. Mainly about how Sweets acted, and then about how I felt/interpreted them.

I feel like I create too many lists on this blog, and will work to fix that (aka become more creative), but for now it's just the easiest and quickest way for me to get everything.

1. Sweets talked a lot. Generally he is very shy unless he's extremely comfortable in a situation or with the people he's around. I am usually the much more talkative one, and he probably talked 70% of the time.

2. He acknowledged that both he and his job have a lot to do with the problems that we are having in our marriage.

3. He told the counselor that his reasons for going to counseling were exactly the reasons I HAVE been using to try to get him to go to counseling for the past couple of years.

4. He spoke repeatedly about how perceptive I am, and how perceptive he is NOT. And sort of about my strengths in general. (This is just not something that we had really talked about before, and not something I thought he would have registered).

Now, even though this sounds all very positive, I feel sort of pessimistic about it. Things seemed to me to come out in a way that I felt as though he was trying to make his case about everything, and preemptively "score points." This is not a side I have seen of Sweets, though we've never actually been in this sort of situation before so I'm not sure why I would have seen it. Normally I would put this off on myself, and I would think that I was being paranoid. But something my Mom told me long ago has been playing over and over in my head.

At some point several years ago we were talking about Sweets and my mother commented that "He's just SO COMPETITIVE with you." Now, she normally would never say something like that to me. She's a gossip, but she very much believes in the sanctity of a marriage and a marital relationship.

So what's that mean? I don't know. Maybe it's just his reaction to being in a stressful situation?? It's pretty uncomfortable to be sitting in front of someone who's entire purpose is to JUDGE YOU. (hee hee, ok, so I know not really judge, but you know what I mean...) I guess we'll see if counseling can help us through all the problems, and maybe once we get more comfortable in our sessions, things won't be so tense. I think maybe I should cut him some slack for at least a few more sessions.