How to Make Couples Therapy Work

Couples therapy taught me that no one can change someone else’s habits (which is pretty much the only goal anyone has when they go to couples therapy,) but you can shake things up for the other person. Just change what you do yourself—it’s like a system of inter-locking gears. If you turn one gear, all the gears respond. Small changes you make to one habit ripple through to others in unexpected ways.

~Penelope Trunk

The first couples therapist my husband and I went to was a jerk. We were there because I felt detached from my marriage. My husband and I were busy with three kids and two careers. I had found myself attracted to a guy I met through work. I recognized this as unhealthy for my marriage, which I nonetheless thought was pretty solid. 
The therapist told me I had rose-colored glasses about my marriage. He told me I was angry. He suggested I was full of resentment.
I told him he was wrong. 
He wasn't. I just wasn't ready to admit it yet, even to myself.
What I didn't know what that my husband was already cheating on me. Had been cheating on me since pretty much day one of our relationship. And while I'm not convinced the therapist knew, he sensed something wasn't right. So while he might have been a jerk, he wasn't an idiot.
Nonetheless, once I found out about the cheating, I found this therapist's confrontational attitude more than I could stand in my fragile state. What's more, I wasn't sure I wanted to stay married. It seemed dumb to spend time with a gruff, unsympathetic therapist to save a marriage I thought wasn't worth saving.
So I fired him and put my husband on notice.
The next guy, about two years later, suggested that my husband was bisexual, though my husband insisted (and continues to insist) he wasn't. His most frequent recommendation for our marital distress was "wine time" – an hour or so at day's end during which we were supposed to decompress and reconnect (and, apparently, polish off a bottle of wine). Might work for garden-variety relationship issues but we felt little incentive. It felt like we were skating on the surface of a pond that still held some monsters.
We waited another couple of years – during which we continued to, sporadically, have individual counselling. 
By the time we found our current couples therapist, we were on solid ground individually. We were through the agony of the early post-D-Day period, had made our way through the plain of lethal flatness, and felt fully committed to being in our marriage. We were looking for someone to help us clean up some residual stuff, like my trust issues. Like my husband's desire to pretend I didn't have trust issues. 
From the beginning, she was wonderful. She made it clear that she wasn't there to pick sides. Nonetheless, I thought she was secretly on my side and my husband felt that she was secretly on his side. She has a masterful way of getting each of us to really examine our behaviour within the relationship, and ask ourselves whether it's getting us what we claim we want – a deeper intimacy with each other. Suddenly, fighting over who did the dishes more often seemed a distraction more than the problem itself. She was equally masterful at getting us to peel back the layers of our problems to get to the root beneath it. For me, usually, it was about fear. For my husband, usually, it was about fear. I suspect, for most of us, our problems are rooted in fear. Fear of abandonment. Fear of not measuring up. Fear of intimacy. Fear, fear, fear.
Thing is, once you pull that fear into the light, it loses its power. Put under the microscope, it seemed easy to see that fear was stopping me from getting what I wanted. Stopping my husband from getting what he wanted. It was a wall between us that prevented us from letting each other into the most vulnerable parts of ourselves. It held us back from a deeper compassion for each other but especially for ourselves.
And that is what Penelope Trunk is getting at in the quote above. 
Couples therapy might seem like the chance to get an ally in your battle to prove that you're right and your husband is wrong. It's so tempting, especially if you've long felt silenced in your marriage, to give voice to your complaints and be rewarded with someone who agrees with you that your husband is an ass. And sometimes, it's necessary to point out when either partner is truly being an ass, especially when one of those partners has betrayed the other. There's no way to split the guilt with that. He cheated. That's on him.
But if we're genuinely interested in rebuilding a marriage, couples therapy is the chance for each of us to examine the role we play, which gear we turn by our actions. And by shifting our own behaviour within the relationship, we can often move the whole relationship closer to one that serves our needs and feeds our soul.
You can never change another person. Going into therapy with the desire for that person to suddenly see the light is a waste of everybody's time. That might happen, absolutely. But it more likely won't.
However, going into couples therapy with the goal of learning where you fit in, what role you've played and even whether or not this relationship is is worth saving, can absolutely change your life.

Why you (and he!) need therapy to heal from infidelity

We often hear on this site from women whose husbands don't "believe" in therapy, or women who resist it , or have had bad experiences with therapists. I remain convinced that avoiding therapy simply makes healing from infidelity even more difficult than it already is. A good therapist will coach you toward healing, while acknowledging just how devastating infidelity is. 
Contributing BWC blogger Steam had the benefit of a good – nay great! – therapist. She offers up what she learned here:

by Steam

Sometimes I wonder: Am I really this far along in my recovery from the largest trauma of my life? Is it really possible? I see so many of us who are stuck and although I know we are not supposed to judge our recovery against others, sometimes I can’t help but use our collective as a barometer. 

If my story has one thing that is a little different, it might be that, if my husband had not  agreed to go to therapy, that was a deal-breaker right there. But he said yes.

Once upon a time, and maybe where you live, as recently as yesterday, therapy was frowned upon.

You were mentally unstable if you had to seek therapy.

Although that's not always the case, in fact it rarely is, if you are just finding out you have been betrayed, here is the truth:

You really ARE mentally unstable.

For damn good reason. You have been rocked to the core. You know how you feel – you feel crazy.

But right now, for you, crazy is the new normal.

And don't you dare feel ashamed about this. 

I knew, even on D-day, that I wanted to be with my husband and, in my mind, that pointed to my own insanity. I must be nuts to want to stay and yet I wanted to…and had no idea how to do it.

This is where therapy became a must, not just for me, not just for my husband, but as our therapist pointed out on our first visit, for the third entity – “the relationship”.

Our therapist – let's call her Mary – knew exactly why we were there and her first question was “do you want to stay together?”. We both answered yes. If you are unsure if you want to stay, I still believe therapy is a good place to learn why you’re not sure…and perhaps become sure, one way or the other.

Mary's style is very active. I didn't just watch someone nod her head and ask me “how does that make you feel?” 

No, we had to get off our butts and do things, such as…

Learning to communicate 

That is an art form and neither of us had the tools. We never would have made it without them. Everything had to come out: ”Fine” was not a real answer to “how are you?” and “nothing” was not an answer to “what are you thinking?” If you did not feel like talking, you could set a time in the not-so-distant future,  say, 30 minutes, to get it together and communicate. We could not just shove our concerns aside until they were convenient.

Dating

We had to go on a date once a week and only one person planned it. No squabbling during planning. One partner just planned it, told the other what to wear and to get in the car (which explains why I went hiking in heels once – men sometimes miss the God in the details, and I will never ever judge another woman by her footwear on the trails. She may be on the same path as me, literally and figuratively).

We had been living in the same house, quietly and often too independently, for so many years that bringing fun back was a game-changer.

No matter how awful the week was, we had something fun to look forward to, and no matter what, we had to go. The change of scenery was always good. It only failed one time, our very first time when I fell into a heap of tears looking at other happy couples. They looked so young and untarnished, I knew I would never be like that again and it killed me. But the next weekend, we adjusted and did it again. Practice makes headway. 

Validating

But above all else, Mary urged me to feel and explore this state we call crazy and she called it PTSD (hallelujah, it has a name! Facing it was the only way to go through it. I was up, I was down, I was crying, I was re-living, I needed HELP and not just once a week. I needed help from the person who betrayed me. Gasp! She asked if my husband was willing to not just listen, but actively support me through my bout with PTSD. It could not have been easy for him, but yes, he was.

She taught both of us that “crazy” was totally normal, at least for now, and we both had to deal with it.

This newfound me with my need for passwords and complete transparency, who needed to know every moment of every day where my husband was and who just texted, felt bossy and controlling, wanting passwords and to “talk” at any hour of the day. 

I was hurt, I was shattered, I was NORMAL.

I have always known and said to anyone that my husband is the kindest man I have ever known. He has never said an unkind word to me in our 15 years together. Never put me down, never noticed if my weight creeped up, or if he did, was brilliant enough not to mention it. But what I put him through for at least six months was not pretty, or easy or fun.

Without Mary and my husband’s urging, I never could have set rules and demands. That was so not my style. I needed permission to feel every feeling, to learn the difference between feeling them and acting on them, and my husband learned a lot too!

Run, don’t walk to a good therapist!

If your husband tells you (or you feel the need) to “put it behind us”, “leave the past in the past”, “never speak about it again because it makes him (or you) feel bad” then you need some tools,  either to stay or to go, and to find out why you want to or not, and the best place I know is inside the office of someone trained to help.

How does that make you feel? You don’t know? Make an appointment.