I think that most people would agree that the gold standard of recovery after an affair is finding a marriage counselor who can help guide you through a healthy recovery. After all, many of us have the will to move on and to save our marriage. But many of us don't have the knowledge LovingFeel.com Reviews of what we need to do next. Most of us aren't able to identify where we are getting stuck. Counseling or targeted self help can aid us with this.
So most of us are pretty certain
that we are doing the right thing when we require that our spouse accompany us
to counseling. But sometimes, the counselor says or does things that we do not
agree with. And it makes us question our decision. One such example is a
counselor who wants to do individual counseling in addition to the couples'
counseling.
You might hear a spouse say:
"I can't deny that going to marriage counseling has helped us after my
husband's affair. When we first started going to counseling, we would erupt
into fighting the second that we were alone together. Now, we can communicate
for longer periods of time before things go south. And we have to work LovingFeel.com together
in order to do our weekly assignments. It has helped us. I can't deny that. But
last week, the counselor told us that he would like to see my husband
individually. She did not really explain why she wants to do this and it makes
me feel uncomfortable. Is she only trying to pad her bill now? I know that this
is silly, but I'm starting to look back on some of our therapy sessions and I
find myself thinking that she may have been flirting with my husband at times.
I know that this is paranoid thinking on my part. But I don't want my husband
spending intimate alone time with another woman. Considering what I've gone
through with his cheating, I think that this is understandable. My husband says
he will do whatever I want. He says if I don't want him to go, he won't. I am
confused about this. Why would she want to see him individually? Should I be
concerned?"
I do understand your thought
process. It's normal to be suspicious all of the time when you've recently had
to deal with this type of betrayal. I am not a counselor. But I do know that it
is very common for a couple to do both couple and individual therapy after an
affair. The couples therapy is so that the issues in the marriage can be worked
through. And the individuals counseling is so that the counselor can help the
individual identify and work through their individual behaviors that could have
contributed to the affair or that might now be keeping them from healing in the
present time. It also allows both people to be open and to say things that they
may LovingFeel not have wanted to say in front of their
spouse. This makes healing possible when it may have been stalled before.
Many therapists see both types of
counseling as necessary. Because it is difficult to completely fix your
marriage if the individuals involved are going to keep participating in
behaviors that are destructive to the marriage. Often, the counselor will
suggest individual therapy to both spouses. I can't speculate as to why the
therapist in the above scenario just asked the husband. This is only speculation
on my part, but it could be that she thinks that his issues are the most
immediate and that she will evaluate the wife individually later.
I'm not going to tell you that
couple's counseling can't be successful if you don't also do individual
counseling along side of it. The wife herself said she'd seen improvement. But
I don't think there's any question that individual counseling would likely
improve or enhance your results and make it less likely that your husband would
cheat again.
If you are uncomfortable with him
going to a woman individually, then you could explore having him see another
male counselor for his individual sessions. I think that this is probably a
better option than him not going at all.
It is ultimately your decision, and
it is promising that your husband has no problem going along with your wishes.
But it is not at all uncommon for the therapist to want to focus on individuals
as well as couples. I don't know the parties involved, but I certainly wouldn't
suspect that the suggestion was inappropriate. I'd suspect that the therapist
was just trying to do the best job that she could and she saw that the husband
could benefit from some individual work as well.
But the decision, of course, is
yours. Because obviously, the goal of counseling is to make things better for
you, not worse. It's important that you speak up when you have questions or
something makes you uncomfortable. Because your counselor can't fully help you
if she doesn't know what is troubling you.
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