Unexpected support

[Brewsandshoes]

I know the advice is generally not to go into couples’ counselling when there is controlling behaviour or emotional abusive. But there has been one benefit for me.

We’ve recently started a course – and I’d been told they could do individual sessions as part of that, so I rang up to ask. I wanted the counsellor to know about my contact with Women’s Aid and the local service, so she could tailor what she said (ie when I bristled at the first session when she said the classic ‘maybe that’s something you can both work on…’).

What I didn’t expect was for her to spend much of the time talking about how I could leave the relationship – and even more helpful was her identifying his problems because she’d seen them for herself.

That’s not happened before. Even though all the Women’s Aid/local people have been brilliant, it’s always been based on what I’ve told them – so there’s a bit of me that thinks ‘maybe I’m exaggerating, maybe it’s not that bad’.

But here she was – a professional – who’d seen him and thought it was.

I know not everyone gets a good counsellor – and he’ll have his session next week, so who knows how that will go. But for now, it’s helped me.

[White Rose]

I had a similar experience. I went to Relate with my ex after I’d left him. I didn’t want to it was his control of me that made me. The first session was his opportunity to throw every bit of dirt he could at me and walk all over me. I cried the whole time. The counsellor was brilliant. Spotted the abuse. Offered for us to come back. He refused and walked out at which point she offerred me a couple of individual sessions which were really helpful in that, like you, it validated it for me. I wasn’t imagining it. He really was that bad.
What I didn’t know was that some Relate counsellors in our area did sessions for women referred by local DA centres and counsellor he’d happened to insist we saw was one of those.
My ex also insisted on mediation. We were at stalemate so solicitor felt it shoikd go ahead ad court would insist even if I didn’t want it. So i agreed to consider shuttle mediation. We had to separate initial meetings, him one week me the next. The mediator also worked out it would never work so spent my session giving me tips on coping with the process of separation. All good advice – just a shame my ex is such a skilled abuser that even the best advice seems not to be 100% effective. He still exasperates the experts – and continues to be a (Detail removed by moderator) with all professionals! Slowly but surely however, key people are chipping away at the facade and revealing the weak, ineffectual, evil little man he is and slowly seem to be squashing his ego absolutely flat! I’m loving it, even though the wheels of justice and the time to my final severance of all ties to him seem to be progressing so so so slowly.

[Brewsandshoes]

I’m glad you had good support there too White Rose. I know it’s not everyone’s experience and I did have to ask for the individual session. But that validation really helped – I’m not sure anyone else has really seen him like that. And it makes it harder for him to say it’s all me – though he is having his session tonight so God knows what he’ll say. But he has no capacity to empathise or see how his behaviour could be wrong. He just denies everything. We’ve got to the separate rooms stage. It’s only going in one direction – but he won’t accept that. Just behaves like he can do anything and it won’t have any consequences. Well not any more matey…

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