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My wife and I are very very different, I'm a nature person and she's a city girl; I'm happy to drive a 20 year old pick up while she has to drive a new BMW; I'm just happy to go to our near by beach in California (where many people vacation), but she has to spend $4K to fly the whole family to Hawaii every year. she insisted on buying a house 5 minutes from her parents, as opposed to buying something with greatest appreciation potential (15 years later the difference is near 1 mil). Every few weeks she takes the kids to someone's birthday party in our suburban neighborhood, which seems like a waste of time to me, especially when we have to host ours. I can go on and on and on. I can summarize this way: she spends a lot of our family's time and money resources but get very little out of it from my perspective.
For 20 years we resolve these issues by me yielding to her, including agreeing to go to this counseling which I thought was useless from the start, and I feel I was right again. So while we bicker, marriage and life goes on. I am confident I can survive her lifestyle and still attain mine; I just wish someone with a fair mind can drive some common sense into her.
My wife and I are very very different, I'm a nature person and she's a city girl; I'm happy to drive a 20 year old pick up while she has to drive a new BMW; I'm just happy to go to our near by beach in California (where many people vacation), but she has to spend $4K to fly the whole family to Hawaii every year. she insisted on buying a house 5 minutes from her parents, as opposed to buying something with greatest appreciation potential (15 years later the difference is near 1 mil). Every few weeks she takes the kids to someone's birthday party in our suburban neighborhood, which seems like a waste of time to me, especially when we have to host ours. I can go on and on and on. I can summarize this way: she spends a lot of our family's time and money resources but get very little out of it from my perspective.
For 20 years we resolve these issues by me yielding to her, including agreeing to go to this counseling which I thought was useless from the start, and I feel I was right again. So while we bicker, marriage and life goes on. I am confident I can survive her lifestyle and still attain mine; I just wish someone with a fair mind can drive some common sense into her.
I ... don't ... even ... I can't ...
Look, OP, what you're describing is just "your side of the story," and a prejudiced one at that.
Your wife could easily have come here and written, "I drive a reliable vehicle while he insists on beating around town in a ragged old truck. I want to take our kids to new and interesting places while he makes us "vacation" at the same old beach every year. I wanted our kids to grow up near their grandparents, while he tried to insist we stretch beyond our means for a McMansion...."
Get it?
It sounds like you're being rigid and ONLY seeing things from your point of view, and if you continue to refuse to let down your guard at all in counseling, you'll be divorced or crazy soon, take your pick.
I have gone to counseling on and off for 30 years for my anxiety/depression but sometimes my spouse comes along if he notices something in my colorfully evolving anxiety he feels he needs to talk to the counselor about and I have found that when you start ,, OR start back after not going for awhile it gets worse before it gets better .
Kind of like it initially stirs things up a little that needed to be stirred of loosened up to talk about or get to the bottom of .
It's always sort of rough when you start , keep trying .
Look, OP, what you're describing is just "your side of the story," and a prejudiced one at that.
Your wife could easily have come here and written, "I drive a reliable vehicle while he insists on beating around town in a ragged old truck. I want to take our kids to new and interesting places while he makes us "vacation" at the same old beach every year. I wanted our kids to grow up near their grandparents, while he tried to insist we stretch beyond our means for a McMansion...."
Get it?
It sounds like you're being rigid and ONLY seeing things from your point of view, and if you continue to refuse to let down your guard at all in counseling, you'll be divorced or crazy soon, take your pick.
If those are your feelings, you could tell this to your wife in counseling. These are the kinds of things that the counselor could help you resolve so neither you or she feels put upon or powerless. If you are angry about something, you can explain this to your wife in counseling calmly, and she can do the same. Hopefully you can begin to agree on life decisions without having a winner and a loser.
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"I don't understand. But I don't care, so it works out."
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rhbj, you married a woman who doesn't share much in common with you. By your admission, both of you are rational.
You just don't share any tastes or behaviors or preferences in common.
Before Catholics marry, they have to go through a "Pre-Cana" program where they discuss all these issues up front. If they attend all the sessions, they can marry in the church and no one will judge them for their responses during the classes (I guess unless they began slugging each other during a session). All you have to do is ATTEND all the sessions.
About half drop out of PreCana midway because they aren't matches and they discover it through the discussions offered. You two aren't a match. And now you went to therapy hoping the counselor would say "you're right, she's wrong", which therapists don't do unless one of you is a nutjob. But neither of you are.
You just aren't alike. How long did you date? Did you have any discussions at all about the issues that are now giving you such division before you got married?
I kind of blame both of you for this mismatch. Were NEITHER of you paying attention while you were dating?
It is one node of counseling therapy, which is typically part of graduate level counseling psych programs, yes. Often, it is combined as marriage and family counseling.
Quote:
In any case, my wife and I argue over a lot of things (finance, kids, where to vacation, etc), last year we had a bigger dispute, and since her work benefit included a few sessions of marriage counseling, she insisted that we go see a marriage counselor.
So we went, and the counselor asked that we talked to each other, in a calm manner. And she listened on the side. Every time I tried to tell the counselor my side of the view point (as usual my wife insists on her view point), she said "don't talk to me, talk to her". I had hoped the counselor to be like a judge and can tell us from an objective perspective who should change what, but that never happened. All the counselor did was reminding us to speak in a calm voice at each other.
Seems to me that counselor is more like the referee in a boxing match.
Is that how a marriage counselor works? If so, I really don't see value in it.
How marriage counseling works depends on the theoretical orientation of the counselor (there are many different theories, methods, and schools of counseling, so individual approaches and specialties differ according to the therapist's particular training). It also varies based on the couple, their issues, specifics of their style of communication with one another, what their ultimate goal is.
No counselor who is practicing appropriately is going to take sides and lecture one person and champion the other. The counselor's job is to look at the entire family system and dynamics and help identify where the breakdowns in communication and interaction are occuring. Not possible to do without observing the couple interacting and assessing how they do so.
If you want to liken it to, say, auto mechanics, it would be like trying to diagnose a complex engine problem without running the car and observing how it is working.
Depending on the individual situation, there may be times when the the therapist will directly engage a single individual to ask questions, clarify a point of view, clarify a perspective, etc. Other times, they will do what you experienced, which is encourage communication between the couple, because that is typically where the problems are rooted.
If you're looking for a therapist to take on the role of saying, for instance, "You need to stop spending so much money, your partner is right," yeah, that isn't going to happen. That WOULD be playing referee. And it isn't counseling. You're looking for backup to say to your wife, "He's right, you're wrong." But a counselor isn't a hired gun. They are in the business of facilitating better communication between parties to reduce and respond more productively to conflict as it arises, help couples better understand and practically negotiate their differences if they are struggling, etc.
It also isn't accomplished with a one and done setup. Even the most short-term theories of counseling (see Insoo Kim Berg and Steve de Shazer's solution-focused brief therapy, a very specific form of systems therapy) typically take more than a single session.
Last edited by TabulaRasa; 05-21-2017 at 07:39 PM..
My wife and I are very very different, I'm a nature person and she's a city girl; I'm happy to drive a 20 year old pick up while she has to drive a new BMW; I'm just happy to go to our near by beach in California (where many people vacation), but she has to spend $4K to fly the whole family to Hawaii every year. she insisted on buying a house 5 minutes from her parents, as opposed to buying something with greatest appreciation potential (15 years later the difference is near 1 mil). Every few weeks she takes the kids to someone's birthday party in our suburban neighborhood, which seems like a waste of time to me, especially when we have to host ours. I can go on and on and on. I can summarize this way: she spends a lot of our family's time and money resources but get very little out of it from my perspective.
For 20 years we resolve these issues by me yielding to her, including agreeing to go to this counseling which I thought was useless from the start, and I feel I was right again. So while we bicker, marriage and life goes on. I am confident I can survive her lifestyle and still attain mine; I just wish someone with a fair mind can drive some common sense into her.
You spend 20 years trying to drive "common sense" into your wife and still are not successful? The wife is winning the war of wills, if what you say is true. It's a darn shame you can't force her to have the same perspective as yours and make her into a carbon copy of you. Why in the world did you marry a senseless woman?
So why does she want counseling if you always give in? Another question is why do you bother to bicker if you always give in? I don't think a marriage counselor is going to tell your wife that only you have the common sense in this marriage and that the wife should think exactly like you. Just because you don't get much out of her choices doesn't mean she and the kids don't. Your life doesn't sound all that bad to me, but if you don't like it why do you stay?
She has a job - a good enough one that it has this sort of benefit, which suggests the pay is reasonably substantial. It's not reasonable to expect her to not have any say in the household budget, or never to spend anything on "splurge" activities or purchases once the regular bills are paid.
You're apparently carrying a grudge about a house purchase from 15 years ago, and complaining that she lets your kids go to too many birthday parties. There's frugality, then there's A Christmas Carol. You're painting a picture of yourself that errs more toward the later.
Not much value to me because we are rather sane people; while we may raise voice we don't escalate to anything beyond that (at least I don't). So, the result of that session was not any different from our bickering at home.
Ok. How's your way working for you? I wouldn't judge counseling by one session. If you really want to solve your problems, continue counseling with our without your wife. A counselor isn't there to solve your squabbles but to help you figure out ways to communicate with your wife. That's why she's telling you to speak to your wife and not her. The counselor isn't going to tell you're right and your wife is wrong. That solves nothing.
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