Begging Your Spouse to Go to Counseling?

Put on your walking shoes and avoid these 3 mistakes

I sit in my marriage counselor’s office. Once again, I arrive at the appointment alone. My personal oxymoron. Couples counseling for one.

“I will do anything to save my marriage,” I say.

“Stop trying so hard,” my marriage counselor says.

The problem? I am willing to do anything to fix my marriage and my husband is willing to do anything to remain in control.

I beg anyway.

“Please go back to marriage counseling,” I say.

“Not going back,” says my husband. “You get told you’re caring and I get told I’m an as*hole.”

My husband is unhappy and he’s drinking uncharacteristically. He’s upsetting our children and me. I urge him to either address what’s bothering him or stop drinking.

I give him an ultimatum three separate times.

“Either you face whatever is bothering you or stop drinking or leave,” I say.

He chooses to leave each time. Three times my sweet boys hold my hands and cry as they watch their father walk out the door. It doesn’t phase my husband. He says I’ve kicked him out.

Nope, I gave him a choice.

He promises to return to marriage counseling all three times.

I foolishly take him back and the cycle reignites.

He’s good for a few months and then his anger comes out while he’s drinking. I switch from my intolerant ultimatum to begging him to return to marriage counseling because I’m worn down.

I made 3 huge mistakes:

1. “If you have to ask someone to care about you, they’re already telling you they don’t.” —Colleen Sheehy Orme

We all do it.

The marital rescuers. We ask we plead, and we beg.

We emotionally throw our bodies in front of our partners.

It’s not a lack of self-respect. It’s well-intentioned. It’s motivated by love and by family. We think it’s being a team player. One person is effectively injured we need to step up. We convince ourselves the other person is unhappy, stubborn, or complacent.

But anyone worth loving will love you enough to work it out.

Don’t beg, put on your walking shoes.

2. “If someone leaves you once, give them your blessing before they leave you twice.” —Colleen Sheehy Orme

The first time my husband walked out that door should have been the last.

I rationalized his behavior.

He had no prior history of drinking like this. I thought he was a good person in a bad place. I thought he was experiencing a mid-life crisis. I thought something was wrong that needed to be addressed.

It was never my responsibility to be responsible for his behavior.

I should never have had to beg him to stop behaving badly.

He was an adult.

He made the choice to become a husband and father. He made the choice to drink and act out. The counselor told him he didn’t have a drinking problem. He was angry and it was coming out when he drank. I knew this. He had no signs of alcohol abuse before this.

My husband chose to continue to behave badly.

Even if it meant leaving our home.

I should have given him my blessing and never taken him back.

3. “We indulge in the ugliness of failing relationships when we should be rescuing our own individual beauty. So at least one of the two survives.” —Colleen Sheehy Orme

My husband was a difficult and controlling personality.

He wanted to win a stance not succeed at love.

I wasted myself on another human being.

You can’t change or rescue another individual. Only they can come to that personal decision on their own. They have to choose growth and evolution. It can’t be forced by another.

No matter how good-intentioned it may be.

We aren’t saving someone.

We aren’t protecting our marriage and our family.

We are destroying ourselves.

Rescuing my husband wasn’t only losing the best of me, it was costing the rest of me. There was little left in the end. Certainly nothing of much beauty.

The uglier side of me emerged more and more as I fought him to save us.

It was worth more than willing self-sacrifice.

Summary

There’s a reason my marriage counselor told me to stop trying so hard.

I was enabling my husband’s bad behavior. And the only person who was willing and capable of growth was sitting in the office before him. I couldn’t fix my marriage. I couldn’t rescue my husband.

I was the only one I could work on.

I was the only one I could save.

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