My husband
was married when he was 19 as the result of pregnancy of his college girlfriend.
As it happens in many of these situations they didn’t make it. We [got
together, then] broke up a couple of years ago because it was apparent to
me that he had issues with anger and he told me that he didn’t want
a family (children). We got back together and moved in together. We made
goals together, talked about his anxiety with having a family and he agreed
with me that he would like to have a child. [We were married a couple months
ago.] Ever since we got back from the honeymoon my husband is sabotaging
the relationship. He says he can’t stand the thought of being married
and he keeps grasping and exaggerating issues to make it seem as though we
will never make it. . . . He doesn’t seem to be concrete
on his reasoning. . . . He is agreeing to marriage counseling
and we have been to 2 sessions. Our counselor . . . encouraged
him to get counseling for his issues from his past, he refused doing that.
I think he is scared to face it alone. I talked to her today and she said
this week she was going to recommend that we go to individual counseling
for a while. I asked her if we could also continue the couples counseling
since that was really the only arena in which we talk. She said she would
continue to see us every 2 weeks or every month. My question to you is, do
you think this approach is correct? I think my husband does want help because
he is agreeing to go to the couples counseling. I think he is very afraid
of individual counseling. . . . Are there any words I can
say to encourage him to go and deal with his issues? I believe his main issues
are his repression of emotion, anger, and he has a tendency towards OCD,
mainly through cleaning and making sure everything is in it’s
place.
The function of marriage counseling is to create a safe
and respected environment in which the husband and wife can communicate with
each other without hostility. If, after understanding the needs and desires
of the other, one person refuses to accommodate the other, then individual
psychotherapy can be prescribed, so as to uncover and heal the cause of the
resistance to fair and charitable cooperation.
So, from what
you say, your counselor is within the bounds of accepted standards of
care.
And, in your
description of the problem, you touch upon two rather unpleasant aspects
of marital difficulties. First is the axiom that “What you see is what
you get.” That is, if your husband was
angry with his first
wife, and if he was angry with you as your boyfriend, then you have to expect
that he will be angry with you as your husband. Many people seem to believe
that marriage will magically change a person’s behavior; it
doesn’t.
And this leads
to the second principle:
“Common love
does not cure anything.” There really is nothing you can “do”
to “make” your husband change. I have learned from experience that
people change for only one reason:
sorrow. When people
recognize how they have hurt others, and when they feel sorry for what they
have done, then they can change any behavior they want. But until they really
want to change—out of heartfelt remorse, rather than out of fear or
coercion—they won’t change no matter how bad it gets. Even when
someone says, “I can’t,” it really means, in the deepest
unconscious sense,
“I won’t.”
So what can you
do? Well, as difficult as it is, all you can do is focus on yourself. If
you want to help your husband change, then show him, through your behavior,
not just in what you say to him, how to live charitably and peacefully with
another. Learn, in the words of Saint Francis of Assisi, to accept the
world’s injustice, cruelty, and contempt with patience, without being
ruffled, and without murmuring. If you can do that, then perhaps your husband
will come to recognize—and mourn—the fact that in his anger—and
in his avoidance of it with
obsessive-compulsive
rituals—he defiles love itself. If he sees in you what he lacks, he
may be motivated to explore his inner experience enough to change his behavior;
but if he sees in you only his angry, unstable, and unprotective mother,
then nothing will change.
In the end, the
provocation of anger—and
violence—is
a subtle dance between two people. If through charity you can avoid provocation,
then you have a chance. Otherwise you may need police protection.
No
advertising—no sponsor—just the simple truth . . .
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