The Art of Dividing Up a Marriage
I went to my first marriage counseling session with my wife two years ago. I was in this relationship of one year and when we went to therapy, my wife came to the appointment dressed casually in jeans and a white long-sleeved shirt and told me she needed space. At the time she was the only one of the two of us in that situation. We had just moved in together and were already adjusting to our new relationship. She was about 6 months pregnant at the time. She said she didn’t want to be with me and our unborn child, but she was afraid of being in a relationship with me and her children’s father. She started asking about the possibility of us splitting up. I tried to explain to her that I loved her and could see us splitting up, but that it was never going to happen. I had always hoped that she would let go of me and stay married to me, and I was going to respect that decision. However, this time she insisted I get help on this issue.
After spending a few sessions talking about her anger issues, she seemed to get quite comfortable with our relationship. She began to share her frustrations that she saw the way I treated her. I have never been a good communicator while I was married. I have never been able to express myself and be very clear in my thoughts. I am not good at reading her body language or her emotions. I am generally not a very confident person, and I struggle with a lot while we were married. However, when we went to counseling, she said she was seeing the divorce as something completely apart from me, but she decided she needed help to deal with it on her own and not look for my help.
We never made it very far in our relationship, and I found myself in the same situation in a few years. My wife had moved out of the house and was in her own apartment. It was my first year of being a stay-at-home parent. I was single, working from home, and she was not coping with the move. She was going through a lot of upheaval in her life. After speaking with her, I decided to seek out therapy for myself (in this scenario, I was looking for help