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.

Nope, not pregnant

AF showed up on Friday evening (as I was expecting). Sweets and I went out for an expensive dinner and split a bottle of wine. We then had several good, and several bad conversations in our inebriated state.

1. (Good) We talked about foster parent orientation. I have wanted to be a foster parent since high school, and it is something that we've talked about off and on for a few years. Sweets wasn't too keen on the idea, assuming that we would have our own kids "soon" and didn't want to complicate things. Now that our own kids might not factor in, we've decided to at least go to the orientation to see what it's all about. Sweets is still hesitant (rightly so) because things are so up in the air with us, but we'll at least have our bases covered when/if we want to pursue it.

2. (Good) Medicated cycle? I got an appointment with the RE for the 23rd. We will develop a game plan and see if we want to pursue a medicated cycle (we are leaning towards no here, but it's still TBD).

3. (Good) We decided our plan for the holidays. Our next IUIs will probably be the day after Thanksgiving, and Xmas day. So, we are going to sit out Xmas, because we will be traveling to my in laws, who do not know.

4. (Bad) I have mentioned to Sweets previously that Xmas will be hard for me this year and we revisited this conversation at dinner. Not only are we traveling away from my family, but we will be sitting out a cycle AND his sister is pregnant with her FOURTH child. She has had two pregnancies since we have been trying. She's also one of those people who I KNOW will pressure us ("when are you going to have kids???? you've been married FOREVER! don't you want them???" etc, etc)

This opened up "can of worms" conversation number 5, and I was "that" crazy woman at dinner, arguing with her husband and certainly ruining the dinners of the people sitting next to me.

5. (Bad, very EXTREMELY bad) I cannot stand my sister in law, and Sweets is very close with her. I, for the most part, keep my mouth shut about it, and put on the nice face and she "thinks I'm great," according to Sweets. I do NOT WANT HER KNOWING about our IF, and Sweets wants to tell her, because they are close. We'll call her Sasha.

There are several reasons why I don't want Sasha knowing, and why I don't like her (and this post would be extremely long if I decided to go into them all, but I'll try to just gloss over a few).

I don't like her for one main reason: she is extremely selfish. She did not attend our wedding, or my bridal shower because it was not convenient for her to be there. When we travel across the country to see Sweets' family, she can't be bothered to make the trip down to his mom's house to see us, and we then have to make the 3 hour drive (in addition to the 6 hour flight) to see her. There is much more to this story but it's whole-other-post-worthy. This is strike number one.

I don't want her to know about her IF for the same reason I don't want to tell my own mother: I don't trust her to keep her mouth shut. There is good reason for my trepidation. A cousin of theirs recently had to terminate a pregnancy (a very wanted pregnancy) for medical reasons. While they are telling everyone else that she miscarried, Sasha knows the real reason and talked to Sweets about it. This is strike number two.

Sasha is also close with their other sister (Fiona) who has a terrible gossiping problem. So, a common scene of drama in the in laws house is that Fiona spreads everyone else's gossip around (including Sasha's). Strike number three.

My worry is that even if she didn't spread it herself, that Sasha would tell Fiona, and it would get around to everyone in the family. And, while we may end up telling everyone some day, I do not want to feel pressured to tell everyone because people are suddenly finding out from the gossip mill.

Does anyone else have any problems with gossips in their family? It seems like I'm getting it from both sides and now I'm wondering if I'm just being overly sensitive about the whole thing. Maybe I'm worrying for nothing, and we should just tell people. Sigh, I don't know.

MMI (More Marital Issues)

A lot has happened in the past two weeks. I have been digesting everything and trying to figure out how to put it into a cohesive blog-posting. I'm also worried that he could find this blog and get very angry with me for posting about all of this, and considered not posting about it at all. But I think that the therapeutic value of doing this will be worth it. (I'm also thinking about participating in IComLeaveWe this month).

A week ago (Thursday) I had an all-out panic attack. I was VERY thankful that no one was around me when it happened. Preceding this attack was the realization that my husband is an emotional abuser. I came to this realization after reading two blogs about marriage and IF (whichbox.blogspot.com and jo-mojoworking.blogspot.com).

I should state here that I am a VERY independent person, and rarely let him get away with the behaviors that are abusive. But it does wear on a person, regardless of how strong.

I had never put it together quite like this before. I was a bit shell shocked, and went to girls weekend anyway, and got a chance to talk about it very briefly with my best friend (who is very grounded and gives great advice). She wisely asked me if I was overreacting because of everything going on in my life right now. I said I could be, and decided to think about it some more.

Then on Sunday, we went in for our first round of IUI. On the way there, we got into a ridiculous fight about something trivial. He belittled my ability to park, and then told me that he wasn't going to go through with the IUI while we were in the elevator going up to the office. We argued with the door of the elevator open for a bit, and were interrupted by the security guard, at which point, Sweets snapped back into the real world, and everything was suddenly fine.

I should also give you a little back story on Sweets' family. He was raised primarily by his wonderful mother, as his parents divorced when he was quite young. His father is/was a CLASSIC emotional abuser. His mom says "He was only ever happy when I was crying." He continues to be that way with his new wife, and he chooses uneducated and dependent women to marry so that they can never leave him.

Last night, Sweets and I had a very frank conversation (no yelling, yea!) about all of this, and I told him I thought he was being emotionally abusive to me. And he actually HEARD ME. REALLY heard me. We chewed on lots of issues, and at one point I asked him,

"If everything is so terrible and bad, why are you still here, and why are we still trying to have a baby?"

His response was, "Because this is my fault, and I want to fix it." And apparently he's considering quitting his all-consuming, crazy crazy job to do it.

I feel hopeful for the first time in a long time. We are going to find a counselor (something he has previously refused to do) and see if we can get everything worked out.