Couples T gone wrong, again...

[stolencrumbs]

Sorry for the length of this. I think some background might help, and this seemed different enough to start a new thread.

So my wife and I went to our second session of couples therapy today. It is with a T she has started seeing (she's seen her three times, I think). She is in the same practice as my T, and the two Ts have spoken (I have signed a release; my wife has not.) The tl;dr version is that it did not go well, my wife felt attacked (again) and I don't know what to do.

Here's the long version. At some point in the last year, my wife decided that the main problem she had was that our house didn't feel like home. We moved here four years ago and did a lot of work initially on the house and garden. Painted everything. Bought new furniture. Removed 20-something trees (sorry environmentalists!) and completely overhauled the yard and established gardens. My wife hated the kitchen. About a year ago, she started taking out her rage on the kitchen. She smashed the counters with a hammer. Put dents in the refrigerator. Broke the ceramic-top range. So a few months ago, we started refinishing the kitchen. This was something she said she needed in order to feel okay in the house and even begin working on anything else. So we started on the kitchen. I regrouted the floors, sanded and painted the cabinets, built a vent hood, installed molding, put in a sink, put in new appliances. At some point she decided that all the trim in the house had to be painted to match the newly painted white cabinets. The current trim was the wrong color of white. Nothing was "right" unless the trim was painted. Painting all the trim is, to say the least, not a small project. I advocated for finishing the kitchen (we need countertops and a backsplash) first. She refused to order any counters until she saw that the trim would be painted. Eventually I agreed to paint to trim. So I started on that a few weeks ago. I've prepped two rooms--sanding, priming, taping, cleaning, etc. That's the state the house is in now.

I also work two and sometimes three jobs. So, yeah, I'm kind of busy. I can't devote 24/7 to house projects. Well, I could, but we then couldn't afford the house.

So today, the T suggests that we pare down the list of house projects and get the house in some kind of less chaotic state that allows us to not have it as an albatross around our necks. Her advice was for us to do what we have to do to get the house off the table and focus on other things in T.

My wife did not say much in the session. At one point she asked if I understood what the T was saying. I repeated in my own words what I thought she was saying. Because we've gone down this road in couples T before, I really tried to validate my wife's feelings during the session. We left and I sincerely thought things had gone okay. I thought we were both on board with making a plan to get essential things done (recognizing that what counts as essential to my wife is different from what most human beings consider essential.)

Let's just say I was wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. It did not go well. I apparently attacked her. I didn't defend her. The T and I judged her and are telling her to just do the bare minimum and live with it, and that is telling her to just give up on everything. (For some idea of the specifics, one issue is whether I need to remove shelves inside the closet where the washer and dryer are in order to paint the trim that is inside the closet. Those are the types of corners we're talking about cutting.)

The general flavor of the dozen or so emails I've gotten since the session are that she is done. The session was "horrific." It was a waste of time. I don't give a damn about her. I don't want a life with her where she is visible. The house is "barbaric." She is not the obstacle. Let her know when I decide to sell the house. In the meantime, she is done. She will just sit in the house until she dies.

I have responded to some of the emails, attempting to validate her need for order and beauty, etc. I've given my understanding of what the T was saying. I've emphasized that I want to do the things we've already agreed to do. This was, not surprisingly, not received well.

Anyway,  I don't have a clear, direct question here. I'm not sure how to respond or what to do. It seems to me the T is right that the house is not the real issue and is largely symbolic. My wife obviously feels invalidated and unsupported. I don't know how to address that, since right now the only thing that seems to matter is the house, and I simply can't do everything she wants done in the time frame in which she wants it done. That seems to be the avenue she's given me to "prove" that I care, and that is an impossible row to hoe, but she ain't willing hoe any other row.

My guess is that she won't see the T again. She'll continue to spiral for some time--days, maybe weeks. Any thoughts or ideas? I can't think straight in the middle of it all.   

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[Turkish]

"Albatross." It sounds like this invalidated her, no matter how unreasonable her neverending demands about changes to the house are.  She likely thought "he's calling me an albatross! A burden of shame!" Shame is the core distorted emotion of a pwBPD. 

It sounds like she has core anxiety tied to your home.  My ex was like this with never ending and never good enough cleaning.  

Have you ever been able to discuss the root of her anxiety? And I wouldn't use that word.  

[stolencrumbs]

"Albatross." It sounds like this invalidated her, no matter how unreasonable her neverending demands about changes to the house are.  She likely thought "he's calling me an albatross! A burden of shame!" Shame is the core distorted emotion of a pwBPD. 

It sounds like she has core anxiety tied to your home.  My ex was like this with never ending and never good enough cleaning.  

Have you ever been able to discuss the root of her anxiety? And I wouldn't use that word.  

We've not talked about it directly. What I can gather indirectly is that there are two things going on w/r/t the house. One is that she never had anywhere that she called home as a child. She lived with an alcoholic mother in a variety of places. She lived with her grandmother some summers. Lived with her godmother at some point. Occasionally with her dad. Then went to boarding school. Then college. Then overseas. Then grad school where we met. So she's never had a place that was "home." She desperately wants that and is trying really hard in her own way to make that happen.

Two is that I think she has anxiety about meeting some standard of living that she never had growing up. There is some imaginary judge of houses that she needs to please, and she takes anything that falls short on this scorecard to be some kind of reflection on her, and proof that she can't have nice things. I suspect she doesn't feel like she deserves the kind of lifestyle she has, or that she can "rise above" her childhood, and so has a kind of impostor syndrome that fuels a lot of anxiety. Like someone will see that the trim inside the closet isn't well painted and the game will be up. They'll figure her all out.

I think she'd easily agree with the first paragraph. I think she'd deny the second.  My sense is that the T wants to talk about whatever those root issues are with her instead of talking about the house, but my wife is *very* resistant to that and *very* insistent that the issue is the house.

[Turkish]

So nix paragraph 2, though it's insightful.  Given that and paragraph 1, do you see a validation target to work with? It sounds like it might be tricky given possibly triggering shame given what your view is given paragraph 2.

[Radcliff]

Hello stolencrumbs, it's been a while.  How are you doing?

RC