A
female
age
30-35,
anonymous
writes:My fiance recently decided to go to therapy. Our relationship has always been good, however a couple misunderstandings caused my insecurities and defensiveness to rear its ugly head. I didn't handle it well and it caused my fiance to push me away due to fear. One day, he came to me and said that he suddenly felt very confused with what he wanted in life. He had cold feet about our marriage, immense work stress, and was unhappy with himself and his appearance. It was causing himself to self-destruct and ruining his relationship with me and even people at work. He said he recognized this behavior of himself from the past, and said it was worse this time. This time, he wanted to be in control. So, he sought therapy. I'm very proud of him for wanting to get better. So far, we learned that he has very low self esteem which is causing problems in other areas of his life including our relationship. The way he grew up with very little caused him to want what he couldn't. He would be frustrated if he can't have it, and would get bored with it right away when he got it. This applied to his purchases, computer games, career, relationship, friends, etc. We also learned that his parents fought often and didn't tend to him, so he spent most of his childhood wandering around outside. He also has a tendency to push people away due to fear, which he did with me and all his exes. We also learned that he had a poor relationship with his father and will have to confront him eventually.I decided to seek my own therapy as well, but mine is via an app because that's what i can afford. We learned that i have a defense mechanism up and tend to assume the worst before anything has actually happened, which also causes a lot of anxiety. We also learned that I fear change in relationships which stems from insecurities.In general, i feel ok. But my fiance is a total wreck. He is extremely anxious, wringing his hands and barely able to make eye contact. He is only able to spend a few hours at a time with me before he wants to go home and write it out, work out, or do self care. He has become a total different person. I know therapy can bring out the worst and i try my best to be understanding. He said he enjoys our time together but needs a lot of time and patience right now. I respect that. But it's hard sometimes knowing he needs lot of space and not seeing him. Does anyone have any advice on how to navigate this? How do i give him enough space while maintaining the relationship? What are some tips for couples who are both doing individual therapy? I have a lot of anxiety due to insecurities, how can i manage them better? (We do not live together). We eventually want to do couples counseling, mostly likely with his therapist.
View related questions:
at work, fiance, his ex, self esteem, video games Reply to this Question
Share |
Fancy yourself as an agony aunt? Add your answer to this question! A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (20 June 2019): I think what you need to do is set some boundaries. How long are you willing for this to go on? It's good that he's working on his issues but how much are you going to allow them to impact your relationship before you say enough is enough? I'm not at all suggesting where that line should be, only you can decide that. But I think you should decide it.
A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (20 June 2019): I'm not dismissing therapy as a way to help address how you feel if you are struggling but the theme that seems to run through your dilemma is you are both relying on therapy almost it seems like it is summing up your personality and your behaviour is dependent on what you are learning.
Sorry but surely you never learned from therapy that your parents were not all that great, I am having counselling and i dont need it to work that bit out. It's a useful thing to do but you are still the same people it's almost like you have put a label on it.
Taking aside therapy as with any relationship the key is to communicate, to support and to care for your partner, your relationship you say has been going well apart from the odd blip so just be yourself and both work on what you feel you both need to work on but dont allow it to define you.
You can both either choose to be victims or survivors as can we all, therapy is surely to learn ways to cope, to learn different ways of thinking if you have low self esteem etc its not for you to look to define the very being of who you are based on these new discoveries when the reality is you do both know who you are deep down...
...............................
|
