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What to do if Your Spouse Won't Go to Counseling

By Dr. Margaret Paul
December 31, 2006



Do you keep trying to get your spouse to go into counseling with you? If he or she is not interested, discover how going into counseling yourself can heal your relationship.

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"What should I do if my spouse won't go to counseling?"

I often hear this from my clients. What are they really saying with this question?

Generally, they are saying something like:

"My unhappiness is coming from my spouse's behavior," or "The problems in our marriage are my spouses' fault," or "My spouse needs to change for me to be okay."

As long as you believe any of these statements, then you will be focused on your spouse's issues rather than on your own issues. In fact, focusing on your spouse's behavior rather than on your own is a way of avoiding responsibility for your own feelings and needs.

So, if you are having marital problems or you are feeling unhappy in the marriage and your spouse won't go to counseling, then you go!

In counseling, you need to focus on your own thoughts and actions that are causing your unhappy feelings, rather on what your spouse is doing. You need to be exploring the following questions:

  • How are you treating yourself that is causing you to feel unhappy?
  • How are you responding to your spouse's behavior that is making you unhappy?
  • Are you being reactive to your spouse's unloving behavior with your own unloving behavior, and then blaming your spouse for your reactions?
  • Do you have expectations of how your spouse should be if he or she really loves you, and then you feel disappointed because your expectations are not met? Do you need to reevaluate your expectation of your spouse, which may be unrealistic?
  • Are you being realistic about who your spouse is? Are you expecting your spouse to be someone he or she is not or doesn't want to be?
  • Are you making your wellbeing dependent upon your spouse?
  • Are you taking responsibility for yourself, or are you abandoning yourself in some way?

These are just some of the questions you might want to explore in your therapy.

One partner making a major change in a relationship can change the entire relationship. If you learn to take responsibility for your own feelings and needs, and make the changes you need to make yourself happy, then you will see whether or not you have a viable relationship. You might be surprised to find that, when you are happy within yourself and no longer have your eyes on your spouse, he or she also changes. If, in response to your happiness, your spouse gets more angry or distant, you might need to consider that your spouse does not have your highest good at heart. At this point you would either need to accept things as they are, or leave the relationship.

Relationships are a system, with both partners participating in the system. When one partner changes the system, the whole system changes. For example, if you are a caretaker and your spouse is a taker, and you stop caretaking and start to take loving care of yourself, one of two things will happen. Either your spouse will be impressed with seeing you be happy, will gain more respect for you and start to take better care of himself or herself, or he or she will be angry and feel abandoned. Even if your spouse initially gets angry and feels abandoned, this does not mean that at some later time he or she won't shift and become more self-responsible. With the clients that I work with, most of the time when one partner really does take full responsibility for himself or herself, the other partner eventually stops being angry and starts to learn to take care of themselves.

When one partner in a relationship practices Inner Bonding and learns to take full responsibility for his or her own feelings and needs, you move beyond neediness and blame, and are able to share your love with your partner. This can bring about profound change in your relationship!

 

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Comments

Author Comment Date

Blessed2007
Downey California
Ok, after reading this article, I must say that it is so coincidental that my spouse and I have come upon the same argument YET AGAIN.

Let me give a little history and I'll try to be concise....

We married when we were very young and I was a freshman in college. My spouse, while being there with me physically, didn't support the whole idea emotionally and sometimes verbally and always took an opposing view. This forced me to choose between my life's goal, and being with him. Three children later, I chose my goal, he and I separated and I moved away. Leaving him and college at the time. 10 years later, we reunited, and while I began divorce proceedings during the separation, they were never completed. So we were legally still married, even though we moved on. He also during that time moved on and "married" another woman and had four more children.

Ok, now we are reunited, we have two more children, and I want to finish college, which means staying where we live to finish this particular school. It just makes more sense since I'm still technically a student here, I like the area, and it would take me less time to complete than if I started from scratch elsewhere. My husband however, wants to move, uproot all of us, and move to be closer to his other set of children. Only about 1.5 hours away as opposed to the 6 hours away that we were when we were apart. Are you all following?

Now, he's known that I wanted to complete my objective and particularly at this school since he's known me and especially since we reunited.

He's made mention of moving away, but all of his actions have been contrary (changing jobs and taking a pay cut, starting a whole new industry altogether, etc.) We can't afford it and even if we could, we need to move to a house and not an apartment for our family is just too big. Even businesswise, moving would cause us to have to start from scratch the progress we are making in our ventures.

All this being said now here I am (just a few a hours past the argument we just had), and I just want order. The first area of disorder and I think the foundation of it all is that none of the situations have been legally taken care of. He never legally divorced me, and now that he started the annulment process with her, he never followed through and it's been a year since it should've been finalized, for whatever reason (please don't call the police on us, I'm going somewhere with this.)

Now, coming from a preacher's daughter, my father has told my siblings and I that we have a divine purpose. I think everyone does. However he said that one must above all else do what they are divinely destined to do or else, expect much difficulty and confusion in life. Not that there won't be challenges in pursuit of your goal, you will at least have direction and God's assistance in reaching His purpose for you.

I've read the Purpose Driven Life, and countless other books, audios, etc.

I guess what I'm asking is this: Am I wrong for being so rigid in my choice to continue at this University in this city? My heart is here in completing this. while I could move, my heart isn't in that. But once you have a spouse, you are biblically responsible to do as your husband says right?

I'm asking these questions but the main thing that's out of order is this: If he's not going to officially end his union with her, it needs to be done with me. Nothing personal and it doesn't mean that I don't love him or we can't still work towards being together. It just means that we must bring closure to some areas and put them to rest once and for all before we keep trying to pile new stuff on top of a weak foundation.

Help! I need a counselor myself to help me work it all out. Or maybe I'm using that as an excuse to avoid doing what I need to do....
05/24/2007 08:38 AM

Dr.Margaret
Durango Colorado
First of all, God wants you to follow your heart and trust your own path - above all. Second, I suggest you look at the list of IB facilitators and get some facilitation. You definitely need support! 05/24/2007 03:55 PM

bridgeweavera
Brenham Texas
I just want to respond to the biblical question, here, because I'm sure you'll soon figure out the other ones. As a Lutheran pastor, I teach that the biblical passages about wives obeying their husbands are cultural. It's coming from Paul, the man, and reflects his cultural milieu. You'll notice that in Ephesians, before Paul gives the table of duties, he says for all Christians to be MUTUALLY submissive to one another. This part is the inspired part. I think it means to be compassionate instead of egotistical! And even from his human point of view, wives do not have to obey their husbands until AFTER the husbands treat their wives as lovingly as Christ treats his bride, the Church. In your case, your husband has a long way to go before it would be the least bit sensible to follow his plans. Or non-plans! So this is my combination of biblical orientation and spiritual guidance. Your guidance might come out different--but I don't hear you describing really listening to your own inner guidance reliably, regularly, constantly. (Maybe I missed that, though.) Instead I hear you reflecting on the teachings of others, like your dad and Purpose Driven Life (I offered mine just as a counterpoint to the other biblical view). Why not give it a go--really listen to your loving spiritual guidance about you, about your relationship, about the delight God takes in you? Your God-given gifts are an array of opportunities, not a binding obligation. Many blessings to you! God doesn't control you any more than he controlled someone like, say Rebecca, or Peter, or, oh, anybody in the bible! (He influences, and he sets limits that were more loving, I am sure, than they are portrayed in scripture by fearful people protecting themselves from recognizing their powerlessness!) My two cents. Or maybe a nickel's worth. 05/24/2007 04:08 PM

Blessed2007
Downey California
I thank you so very much for your support and wisdom. It's much more than a nickel's worth.:-)

A lot has occurred since I even posted this message and you'll be glad to know that I've made the choice to go with me. To follow my heart and most importantly to restore order to my life. I do not want to be married to a man that's married to someone else.

Even more importantly, I just want to do what I've been born to do. That's it! Everything else, is next in line.
05/24/2007 08:51 PM

Blessed2007
Downey California
I think one thing I forgot to mention was that my spouse is non-Christian. I know this can also make a huge difference.
05/25/2007 07:15 AM

Phyllis
St. Louis Missouri
Dear Blessed

That last statement caught my attention. I was curious to know why you think that his being non-christian is making a difference here.

Hugs

Phyllis
05/25/2007 12:53 PM

bridgeweavera
Brenham Texas
If you are trying to go by traditional biblical theology, and he's not Christian, then you are not bound to him if he interferes with your path of faith. He is free to go down another path, and you are free to let him go. I say this because I keep getting hints that maybe this is your hang up, the notion that Christians do not separate or divorce. Sometimes they have very good reasons to do so!

But, hey, the most important thing is listening directly to God for yourself. Stop worrying about dogma. Let God speak directly to you. If the idea of "God" the Father talking to you is too much, consider an intermediary--Jesus, or Mary, or angels, or a deceased grandparent or even a deceased pet, etc.

05/25/2007 03:42 PM

bridgeweavera
Brenham Texas
Hmm. I think I am trying to control your thinking, as a counter to the controlling you seem to have absorbed in the past.

It's none of my business. Blessings to you on your path.
05/25/2007 04:06 PM

Molliej
Nantucket Massachusetts
What about a situation where a spouse goes to counseling and says he has no wounded self even when the counselor and I see otherwise? I am learning not to control. It is frustrating, however, when he is telling me our communication problems come from me. 05/27/2007 03:50 PM

Phyllis
St. Louis Missouri
Dear Molliej

I feel for you. A lot of us have lived at the blame end of a relationship system. Your husband has no clue that he is causing his own unhappiness because he can so clearly see how, if you were only different, i.e., even more willing than you have been to take his little boy, all would be well. However, your frustration still comes from trying to make HIM different. Also, you are probably still letting the blame in as you tell yourself that you are trying to stay open to learning. Opening to learning and letting someone blame you are not quite the same thing. You might need to really, really get that no matter what you do, he still chooses his own reaction. You could be mean and he could still choose to be loving and compassionate. You could be loving and he could still choose to lie to his little boy about your actions. YOU HAVE NO CONTROL OVER HIS REACTIONS! Beyond that, I suspect that you can see his abandoned little boy and that you have a lot of compassion for him. It may help, when he is blaming you, and after you have reassured your little girl that his behavior is NOT her fault, to see, with compassion, that he is hurting and that he is not taking care of his little boy. For me, for such a long time, that was heartbreaking because when I married, I had agreed, coming from co-dependence, to take care of his little boy and now I was not and he was not either. So you may have to let it be okay to feel this pain. But mostly, even if you continue to offer him information as appropriate, you probably need to get to a place where whether he gets it or not no longer matters. It feels like that would mean giving up on the marriage, but it might not, because you would then be happy, instead of waiting for him to get it in order to be happy and he might be able to move out of his resistance once the pressure to get it is gone.

Hugs

Phyllis
05/27/2007 09:49 PM

Molliej
Nantucket Massachusetts
Hi Phyllis,

thanks for your response and working on not trying to control him is my line of work at the moment. But, I didn't mean to imply my husband is unhappy. He says he is perfectly balanced and fine and completely in touch with himself and when I see him in moods and things like that, he says I am projecting. Oh well, I am so much happier keeping my eyes off him and am trying to learn how to then connect to him when I have trouble feeling him....
05/28/2007 04:41 AM

SharonPearson
Oakville Indiana
Dear Blessed: I lived in a system for years that used the Bible to "control" people and especially to reinforce an heirarchical family model. So, I went and got advanced work in Bible because everything I was learning in the study of Scripture had a very different ambiance. For example, "Gentiles Lord it over others" (1 Peter), umiliy and service is the mark of the Christian, and love is the supreme virtue. While I was actually completing my PhD in New Testament, I was also in one of Margaret Paul's Inner Bonding groups in LA. What a wonderful way to learn and heal. I do hope you can get some solid support to work through the complications in your life, but, expect God to speak directly to you and be open to how that might look or feel different from what you have been taught. By the way, it is possible to believe in a Purpose Driven Life without buying the heirarchical mdel. If you would life to do any reading on the topic, I have wrtiten an article -- it is in the Wesleyan Theological Journal (97 or 98 I believe) or it has come out as an update, a chapter, in a book titled Reading the Bible in Wesleyan Ways (2002 I believe). I receive no remuneration for either publication so, I am not hawking my wares. It does pain me a bit that interpretation of Scripture and spiritual guidance can get so off course... so, I write this as a way to expess my love today. Blessings, Sharon 11/12/2007 08:59 AM

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