“Did anyone ever tell you that you have a little Dr. Phil in you,” I say jokingly.
“Yes,” says my marriage counselor. “I have heard that before.”
My husband and I have been seeing our counselor for months. It’s early in our couples therapy. But it’s long enough that we’re now hearing hard truths about ourselves.
There are some that may not believe it’s bad to be called an enabler.
My ex-husband didn’t think it was.
It aggravated him.
“You get to be called caring,” he would say. “And I get to be an asshole.”
That wasn’t what our counselor told my husband. That was his interpretation of it. He was told he lacked empathy. Empathy is a developmental stage we receive in childhood.
It was a severe deficit.
Despite my husband’s opinion, there’s nothing healthy about being an enabler.
It’s what led to my demise.
I grew to love counseling but in the beginning, it wasn’t easy. It’s difficult to have your faults stare you in the face. I always say I went to marriage counseling with the same motivation most have.
I was going to be told…
My husband was the problem.
It’s true, narcissistic personality disorder was the issue in our relationship.
But a good counselor is going to tell you how you got yourself in this situation.
A good counselor is going to help you grow, evolve, and heal.
It was hard to look at myself.
It wasn’t easy to acknowledge my faults and mistakes. It was difficult to discover what it was about myself, that made me remain in an unhealthy situation for too long.
It was wrong, however good intended, to model any of that for my children.
I thought an intact family was better for our kids.
It felt as if I had the right intentions.
It felt as if I was putting our children first. Of course, at the time, I didn’t understand enabling. And then, when I was told I was an enabler, it was impossible to break a lifelong habit.
Despite, how badly I wanted to.
It was engrained in my behavior.
I always say for that hour of counseling, I was all in.
I was a believer. I wanted to grow and evolve. I wanted to have healthier relationships. But the moment I stepped outside that door, Colleen who was Colleen her whole life, took over.
It’s one of the reasons I remained in counseling for years.
A few months doesn’t make a dent in a lifetime of behaviors.
It’s not enough for an emotional self-education. It’s not enough to learn about ourselves or our relationship. It’s taken years to build both. A few months of counseling is emotionally comfortable.
It’s akin to therapeutic grazing.
It scratches the surface.
True counseling is uncomfortable.
Self-evaluation requires emotional strength. It demands our egos step aside, and allow a few unwanted truths to slide in. It calls for an investment of ourselves and time.
It’s difficult to have our faults stare us in the face.
It’s not easy.
But anything worthwhile, never is.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
What Does Being in Love and Loving Someone Really Mean? | My 9-Year-Old Accidentally Explained Why His Mom Divorced Me | The One Thing Men Want More Than Sex | The Internal Struggle Men Battle in Silence |
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