What Good Marriage Counselors Teach Us

My husband relented and agreed to marriage counseling. It wasn’t long before he refused to return. I continued to go by myself. My own personal oxymoron…couples counseling for one.

I couldn’t force my husband to work on our relationship.

I could work on myself.

There are different types of marriage counselors. There are Licensed Clinical Social Workers (LCSWs), Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists (LMFTs), Licensed Professional Counselors (LPCs), Licensed Mental Health Counselors (LMHCs), and psychologists.

Our marriage counselor was a psychologist.

He was able to identify, and diagnose my husband as lacking empathy, and having narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) on the severe end of the spectrum.

Hence, why my husband refused to return.

We delved into the specifics of what I had undergone throughout my marriage. I was educated on this troubling disorder. My experience and feelings were validated.

I no longer felt crazy that I was married to two different people.

A handsome charmer and a coldly cruel stranger.

I was finally able to make sense of this frightening contradiction.

I still struggled.

I fought my truth. I fought my husband’s diagnosis. On one hand, it validated me. On the other hand, I couldn’t abandon what I believed to be the better side of my husband.

The handsome charmer.

I thought I was working on myself.

And that would be true.

I learned about my own deficits. I learned about what led me to make the choices I had made. I learned why I tolerated the intolerable. I learned about family of origin.

But I wasn’t strictly immersed in self-discovery.

Something else was happening.

I realized this the day my marriage counselor and I were having a conversation about therapy. We weren’t discussing the specifics of my situation.

“Colleen,” he said. “My job is to help people heal.”

His words struck me.

I’d been learning about myself.

I’d been experiencing an evolution of personal growth. But I’d also been gradually healing. Despite resisting the end of marriage, denying my husband’s actual diagnosis, and years of my own ingrained enabling, and fixing behavior.

I had been letting go of my hurt, frustration, anger, and bitterness.

It took a long time.

But it happened.

I let go of the sense of victimization I felt. I let go of the sense of failure I felt because my marriage ended. I let go of the injustice that accompanied others’ inability to recognize the abusive behavior of someone with Narcissistic Personality disorder.

I chose to elevate awareness.

I chose to write and speak about these topics.

I chose to turn a negative into a positive.

Good counselors teach us to heal.

They proffer self-examination. They understand that while people are capable of change, we don’t have the ability to change them. We must work on ourselves.

Yet we attempt to do just that in our marriages.

We beg our spouses to care.

We beg them to change troubling behaviors.

We shouldn’t. It’s a waste of breath. It’s a waste of time. It’s a waste of emotional energy. True and authentic change comes when a person arrives at self-discovery. Not when we beg them to.

I thought I was working on myself.

I was.

But a good counselor also taught me to heal.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.