She wants me to find another T

[maxsterling]

W wants me to find another T.  And she also wants us to fine another marriage T. 

We have seen 4 marriage/couples Ts in 10 years (all female).  One of them went OK (for her - but most sessions were W talking about her personal stuff).  Two others W rejected after a few sessions because she claimed the T was taking my side.  The third basically quit on us after my wife went on a big cursing rant about me and the T said that it was starting to sound "abusive".  Obviously I am wary about finding another MC for fear of the same thing happening again, and because I am feeling it useless.  How do I navigate this?  My thought - I will agree to go if she finds someone she likes but it is up to her to find someone.  My reasoning - it hasn't gone well in the past and it was her rejections that wound up ending things. 

I stopped seeing my personal T a few months ago mainly because he was just too busy to meet with regularly, and I was too busy.  Plus, it wasn't really "going anywhere".  I have now had multiple Ts basically tell me I am in an abusive relationship and as long as I am in an abusive relationship it is hard to separate my own issues because many of the issues I am facing could be caused or made worse by stress/abuse.  I am certainly willing to see another T - it's just hard to pay for session after session when the T is basically telling me the same thing.  W wants me to see a female T this time because she thinks a woman would help me learn how to "communicate" with W better.  The last female T I saw the first session went something like this:

T: "why are you here today"
Me:  "I want to learn to communicate better with W"
T:  "what do you think is preventing you from communicating better?  Who is saying you don't communicate well?"
Me:  "W does.  I think I am starting to fear her reactions."
T:  "Why do you fear her reactions?"
Me:  "Because she has yelled at me in the past for saying the wrong thing."
T:  "Can you give me an example of something you said that she thinks was wrong?"

So I gave her a few honest examples of things that happened.

T: "I can't teach you how to communicate better with someone who is yelling and screaming at you."

A few minutes later she pulled a book called "I hate you, don't leave me" from her book shelf. 

I expect the same exact thing to happen again.  I think W is feeling that if I have a female T the T will tell me to be more tolerant of Ws behaviors.  I don't think she realizes it is the female Ts that have told me to walk away when she is screaming at me and calling me names, the female Ts that have explained the abuse and domestic violence, the female Ts that told me to call 911 when W is talking about suicide...

I'm certainly willing to see a T.  I expect the new T to say the exact same things.  But for W to demand it tells me she expects a different outcome, and to me that feels like a trap.

 

[Cat Familiar]

How many cycles of this are you willing to pay for and endure, when you understandably have a good intuition about the outcome?

[maxsterling]

How many cycles of this are you willing to pay for and endure, when you understandably have a good intuition about the outcome?

Good point.  I would say zero more unless something is different. 

In the case of MC - I don't think I would go into it again with the idea of "fixing" the marriage.  Instead I would be clear that I am going into it with the idea that separation is okay by me and that there are certain things I can no longer live with or make excuses for. 

In the case of personal T - my goal there would be to have a T that I am comfortable with to help navigate the MC process and potential separation/divorce. 

[Every day]

I went through this with my uBPD husband.  I insisted he pick the next therapist because when I picked them he always had me to blame when he manufactured problems with the past therapists (or any other professional we worked with - realtors, medical providers, etc…) and it gave him an excuse to bail.  I spent an entire year telling him I was more than happy to see someone else but I wanted this person to be someone he was comfortable with.

In some ways, I don’t think he knew how to search for someone he was interested in so his stonewalling was more a cover for his lack of knowledge in the area.

He wanted it to have a focus on our sex life and for some reason he claimed that all of the “sex therapists”  were faith-based, which wouldn’t work for us. I suggested he look for someone that was LGBTQ+ aligned, which I don’t think he realized you could do, and that led him to someone that he thought would work for us.

His behavior pattern is to delegate as much of life to me as he possibly can ranging from family tasks, finances and emotional baggage.  But he ultimately painted himself into a corner on this one.  To give him credit, the person is GREAT and he has actually decided he is going to see her 1:1 next week too - something I never imagined he would do.

He’s got narcissistic tendencies so I knew that he would have to love anyone he selected so while it took a while, the strategy has panned out for me and it has truly been a win-win. 

[maxsterling]

I went through this with my uBPD husband.  I insisted he pick the next therapist because when I picked them he always had me to blame when he manufactured problems with the past therapists (or any other professional we worked with - realtors, medical providers, etc…) and it gave him an excuse to bail.  I spent an entire year telling him I was more than happy to see someone else but I wanted this person to be someone he was comfortable with.

Did you explicitly tell him the reason, or did you just tell him that he needs to find someone he is comfortable with?  I am thinking I need to explicitly tell my W the reason I don't want to choose.  She does not make any decisions on her own - even about her personal affairs or what she wants to eat.  Sometimes she will ask me "what should I say to (name of her friend)", and if I give my opinion, I am immediately rejected and ridiculed.  I think my W needs to know that I do not want to choose a new T because I have found 3 out 4 so far, and SHE has rejected them.

[15years]

I go in secret. The benefit of that is that I don't have to worry about her interrogating me, but it also helps the detachment process when it's 100 % my own self care thing.

Not sure if this is the right way to go but for me it has been great.


Similarly, I guess you don't tell your pwBPD that you are active on a support group online (I mean this forum), even if you wouldn't say where.

It's just a thought, once I went down this road it's hard for me to imagine being open about visiting a therapist. Having your wife take an interest in your therapy sounds very painful to me.

At the same time, maybe the next step for me really would be to tell her I'm going to therapy, and have firm boundaries about it.

[Notwendy]

It's the title of this thread that I found concerning. "She wants me to..."

What do you want to do?

I think a T is valuable for your own support- but only if you want it and for it to be for you, not her. It's confidential. YOU choose the T.

If so many MC's have said the same thing to you, ( that your relationship is abusive) at what point do you decide that they are correct, and that MC isn't effective in this situation?

[Turkish]

W wants me to see a female T this time because she thinks a woman would help me learn how to "communicate" with W better.

I was often called a bad communicator. Before kids, she tried to send me to a couples' communication class by myself. She lured me into joint counseling and then abandoned me there to get "fixed," just like my BPD mother did when I was 12 or 13.

[BigOof]

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is a little insane, right?

I suppose we're all living on the border of sanity and insanity...

[Couper]

My uBPDw spent the better part of a year clobbering me over the head with going to a MC with a finger pointed at me saying, "We have to do this and if we don't, we're headed for divorce and it will ALL be YOUR FAULT!".

I eventually realized that this was a new manipulation tool of hers to paint herself as a victim and that she was right -- if we didn't go (and succeed) that was exactly where we were headed.  The next time the issue was brought up, I agreed to go, told her to pick who, where, and when.  That instantly poured cold water on the whole thing, the goalpost got moved, and it became some new hurdle that had to be jumped, but I kept insisting on going.

I let that go on for a year and that's the point when I told myself that things here are totally unfixable and all I will ever be to her is the tool she uses to proclaim her victim status to the world.  Once I agreed to go and people in her circle said, "That's great!" she told at least her mother and one of her best friends, "but we can't afford it, who will watch the kids, it's not going to help anyway".  Never told me any of that, but I know for a fact she told them.  Before, "It is all I have ever wanted and you won't do it" and as soon as I agreed, she looked like I slapped her in the face with a brick.  No "thank you thank you!" and a hug or anything.  Imagine your kid going on for a year that a puppy is all they ever wanted, begging you every week, and one day they say it again and you pull one out from behind your back and hand it to them and at that instant their interest drops to zero.

The other night the whole MC thing came up and I told her that's the point at which she lost me and then she tried to blame me saying she gave me a list of counselors and she wanted to go but knew if she picked I would just shoot it down (projecting / casting aspersions on me again) and all I could do was look at her like the crazy bag lady on the street.  Never in three years did she use that excuse with me or others and she didn't use with me the excuses she used on others before.  Different answers for different audiences.  She's still a manipulator.   

Getting off the merry-go-round is what has kept me from losing my marbles and getting off the merry-go-round has not hurt her one bit.  Likewise, staying on would not have helped her, either.  She spent all of her life prior to me like this and will go to her grave behaving like this. 

I think Max should take care of Max and maybe tell her that if she truly wants to do something for herself, that she should make the initiative and go on her own.  You can't control her and he you shouldn't let her control you.

[zondolit]

My husband also wants us to be in couples counseling and I keep refusing to go. I repeatedly point out that we did weekly couples counseling for two years, so we have tried it. (I don't point out that he didn't like either of the therapists we saw.) I say that at some point it might make sense to try couples therapy again. My position is that for the moment we can be in individual counseling.

I don't say anything about my individual sessions other than vague statements like "It was fine" or "It was good to talk with her." My husband tells me a lot about his sessions as long as it has to do with how much his therapist thinks I'm wrong. I've learned to expect this. Mostly I say nothing in response but on occasion I will say, "your therapist is yours, not mine. I have my own and I listen to her." My husband wants to pit our therapists against each other; I simply refuse to play this worthless game. Essentially, my husband is not in therapy himself but is trying to fix me through his individual therapy. In my better moments, this level of projection strikes me as funny.

You should do what you think is best and what works best for you.

[scraps66]

From my own experience, totaling nearly $6k in copays over the course of a 47 month marriage, there was nothing productive that came from any of the couple's therapy.  It too me awhile to realize that the mere fact that I was "within range" that I would be portrayed as the reason for any and all problems.  Even court-ordered coparent counseling was a disaster and ended up being just a mechanism for exNPDBPDw to gather intel that would be used against me by weaponizing the children. 

You can go separately, you could both go to sessions and take turns, then the T could bring you both in for a wrap up.  But it all comes down to the BP and the T.  So many Ts are either not aware of truly what dealing with a BP is like, or avoid it altogether. 

When it was over for me, when I really needed to speak to somebody, a T, I was so exhausted and fed up with therapy that I avoided it at all costs.

About the skill of the T, I have a story about coparent counseling - the second attempt.  We were sent to a really good child therapist known by my attorney.  I go alone, ex goes alone, I go with my gf, she goes with her bf, then we both go with S15 and S17.  During the course of the therapy S17s behavior would spiral even worse. Huh?  This was supposed to help.  I had several examples that proved ex was feeding back what I was saying in therapy to S17.  Finally I got fed up and said no more.  Told the T, gave him some examples of what ex was doing.  All credible intel backed up with a journal.  His response, "Ms. ExScraps says the same things about you!"  Like I said, if the T isn't well aware of the characteristics and the coping mechanisms a BP uses, gonna be tough to make any headway.   

[FirstSteps]

We are on couples therapist #3 and I am not seeing any progress.  My wife does not accuse in therapy but plays the victim, gets "triggered" and blames the therapist for not respecting her and favoring me. 

I agreed to this round because I saw it as a last try that I could transition into separation counseling.  Instead it has drawn me into a swamp of false equivalence and more and more discussions that lead nowhere. 

The thing is that this therapist does seem to get it.  So I am trying to own my own part, do the work he's asking us and just treat it as a chance to grow personally.  I do not like that I've lost the clarity I was gaining on leaving my wife but I was also willing to try one more time so I'm hoping I can just get back on track if/when it doesn't work.

I have found that going in and owning my own part has defused a lot.  I immediately say I'm codependent or I've been managing her and the kids and have been reactive and defensive.  And all the therapists have responded well to that.  Of course, I've now emotionally mortally wounded my wife by using the word codependent and that comes up every other day.

With my personal therapist, I tell my wife that we just talk about me and things on the surface - which is believable as that was my previous experiences.  While in the session itself, my therapist is explicitly trying to "deprogram" me.

Anyway, my bigger point is that therapy is not working for me in my relationship but it's all a huge step forward in my personal journey.  Is there a way to look at it like that?

[maxsterling]

We are on couples therapist #3 and I am not seeing any progress.  My wife does not accuse in therapy but plays the victim, gets "triggered" and blames the therapist for not respecting her and favoring me. 

Life itself is a "trigger" for pwBPD.  Avoiding someone's triggers = walking on eggshells.  We know what triggers are reasonable, and which ones we can do nothing about.  99% of her "triggers" I can do nothing about.  Being around pregnant women or women with newborns is a "trigger" for my W.  Guess what - I can't go around life keeping pregnant women away from her.  When she goes off about this, I usually just try and change the subject or make myself unavailable for the complaint. 

[FirstSteps]

I hear you.  I'm struggling with the making myself unavailable and avoiding part, as that in itself is a trigger!  Right now my wife is mad because I did not initiate deep relationship conversations the day I underwent a minor medical procedure and was recovering from light anesthesia all day 

[Every day]

Did you explicitly tell him the reason, or did you just tell him that he needs to find someone he is comfortable with?  I am thinking I need to explicitly tell my W the reason I don't want to choose.  She does not make any decisions on her own - even about her personal affairs or what she wants to eat.  Sometimes she will ask me "what should I say to (name of her friend)", and if I give my opinion, I am immediately rejected and ridiculed.  I think my W needs to know that I do not want to choose a new T because I have found 3 out 4 so far, and SHE has rejected them.

I told him it was because he hasn’t been happy with anyone I’ve chosen. I haven’t told him I think he has BPD. I know that is a shut down conversation if I bring it up.  His father was a child psychologist and thought he had bipolar disorder (and he may have that as well) and he didn’t speak to him for 5 years.  I learned all of this after we were married… As much as I would love to live by purer ideals and be honest with him, I also need to not fight my circumstances and make a positive impact where I can.

[Notwendy]

I think asking her to find a T is a good way to put the responsibility on her. She's the one who wants it - then she can be responsible for taking care of that. It also makes her responsible for her choice- if she doesn't like the T, well that's her choice.

Asking you to find a T she likes is asking you to read her mind. It's also a set up- she's not responsible if it doesn't work out or she doesn't like it. It can only be "your fault" if she didn't choose it.

You can find your own T that you like - on your own. It's not her decision. It's personal between you and your T.

If she wants a marriage T, then let her find one. Say "honey, I think it's important that you have someone you really like and the best way to accomplish this is for you to look and choose one. Let me now who you find"   See where this goes.

[ForeverDad]

Similarly, I guess you don't tell your pwBPD that you are active on a support group online (I mean this forum), even if you wouldn't say where.

Absolutely!  This is your safe space and our safe space.