The last time I wrote a blog, Mr T and I were at a crossroads.  We were constantly at each other’s throats and were both miserable.  We had agreed that we wanted to give our relationship one last shot, for the sake of Mia, and I booked us in for counselling.  Since money was one of the biggest things we argued about, we were not about to pay a fortune for a private counselling service, so I did some research and spoke to CatholicCare Social Services, who agreed to give us the first three sessions for free.  Surely after three sessions, we would have aired all our grievances and everything would be hunkydory again anyway, right?!🤷🏼‍♀️

So, on the Thursday, after work, my friend came to Queens Park to pick Mia up and take her to her house and I met Ian at the counselling offices.  He turned up sweaty, dirty and grumpy after a hard day’s work (nothing new there!) but was extra distant.  I thought we could have made it lighthearted together and tried my best to get him to crack a smile, which is my go-to response when I’m uncomfortable, but it wasn’t working.😐

Isn’t it strange how we all have different coping mechanisms to situations?!  Regardless of how I’m actually feeling inside, I will slap a smile on and pretend everything’s just fine and talk for the sake of talking, just so that I don’t have to endure any awkward silences!  Ian will inwardly retreat and won’t give anything away, which makes him very hard to read.  I will then overcompensate for his lack of interaction and will do enough talking for the both of us!😬

And that’s exactly how the first 20 minutes of our session went.  Nobody would be surprised to hear that I did the majority of the talking and tried to fill in the awkward gaps.  The counsellor, “E” from now on, obviously picked up on that fact though and made us wait for each other to express our feelings, which was so painful for me to sit through (patience is not a virtue!) and I got very frustrated, but tried to mask it.🤐

E got us each to write down the main issues in our relationship so that we could go through them as a starting point.  I had pre-empted this task, so had prepared an A4 page in an exercise book which I had brought with me, but I added a couple more on the spot for good measure!  Ian wrote down a couple.  Simply explaining this scene to you, I can see why we rile each other up constantly.  People often describe us as “chalk and cheese” and we really are.  We seem to approach absolutely everything from opposite ends of the spectrum.  But then again, opposites attracting is what brought us together in the first place, so I shouldn’t grumble about that!

We then had to tell each other why our issues were so important to us. We weren’t allowed to say “you” or blame each other directly for anything. We had to say “X made me feel this way…” etc. This was just semantics and an exercise I was used to doing as a Languages teacher, so weirdly found it quite fun to change my wording to fit the task. I will also admit that I was enjoying GH being visibly uncomfortable with it and getting reprimanded when he said “But then YOU did this!”

“No, Ian, we don’t blame!” scolded E.

Does this make me a bit sadistic?!😬

Anyway, because we know each other inside out, GH could see I was enjoying myself, and decided to bring up situations from the past when we were much younger and stupider and which we had vowed to “move on from” at least a gazillion times!😒

The mud-slinging had well and truly started, so I countered with: “The name-calling is making me feel upset!”, which is probably the tamest retaliation I have ever uttered, but was within the rules of the game!🤓

“Blaming!” exclaimed GH.

“No it isn’t!” I replied indignantly. “The insults directed towards me are hurting my feelings, but I didn’t blame anyone!”

“Well you’re obviously taking about me!” lamented GH.

“Blaming!” I shouted jubilantly, as if I had just scored a winning point.

“I think we’ll leave it there today…” muttered E, as she metaphorically put the lid back on the game and returned it to the cupboard.

She asked us if we wanted to come back next week.

“Yes!” I replied instantaneously.

“Ian?” she questioned.

“I suppose I have to, don’t I?” he said, defeatedly.

She gave us some homework to practice discussing situations without blame. (Ha ha, good luck!🙊) and out we went.

“How do you think that went?! I quite enjoyed it!” I said to GH.

GH gave me a withering look. “I’ll see you at home.”

“Oh.😐 I thought we could go for a quick drink or something?”

“What for?”

“To talk about everything?”

“I think I’ve done enough talking for one day. I’ll see you at home.”

Part of me really wanted to say “Actually, I did most of the talking!” but I stopped myself for once and let him go. Maybe I was learning something?🤷🏼‍♀️

I can’t say that the first session was overly successful and that it completely solved our problems, but it did make us aware of how much we blame each other for things, which quickly escalates into an argument. It also forced us to actually stop and really listen to what the other person was saying.

With all that being said, I got home and broke the first rule of Counselling Club straight away, by attempting to talk about some of the issues which were raised in the session, which ended up in another argument!🙄 I know that was wrong, but I just couldn’t help myself! We clearly needed a third party to get through those issues!😬 Baby steps…