I had a conversation with two close friends recently about keeping secrets.  One friend commented that you are only as healthy as your secrets.  So in the interest of not keeping secrets – keeping things in the open – being transparent to a certain point, I thought I’d write the following – something I’d typically not share with anyone other than PawPaw:

PawPaw and I have started going to a relationship counselor.  We went in with extremely low expectations since we’ve both been through counseling before and weren’t very impressed with it.  Neither of us wanted someone who just sat there and listened to us talk.  We wanted someone who would listen but would also offer suggestions and observations.  As we walked into the building for the first time last week, we assured each other that if we didn’t like the counselor or if we felt it wasn’t helpful, that first session would also be the last session.  It was nothing but a trial run.

We hadn’t been having any particular problems – but we recognized that after 28 years of marriage, a divorce and over 8 years of being separate, our patterns of communication, while improved, are still sometimes iffy.  We don’t want to re-marry and be plagued with the same issues.  We both agree that being single is better than being in an unhappy marriage.

Fortunately, our low expectations for the counseling session were not met.  We went to someone who was highly recommended, and we both came away encouraged. 

It’s amazing how an impartial observer can pinpoint patterns of behavior.  At one point in our session, I was talking and the counselor commented, “Do you realize what you just did?”  She explained.  I had said to PawPaw, “I know what  you’re thinking . . . ” and went on to tell him what he was thinking about something I had said.  She was right.  A few minutes later, PawPaw was talking, and she stopped him with the same question.  He had done the same thing.  Something SO obvious but something neither of us were aware of.  It was an amazingly helpful session. 

She assigned us homework which we’ve already completed – and enjoyed.  We had talked about how we planned to put a picnic table at the building site for our new home so that we could picnic over there while the house is being built.  Our homework was to get the picnic table, put it together, and put it on the building site.  We did that on Saturday – and we’ve already had two picnics over there.  It has been fun.

I’m actually looking forward to the next session later this week.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 26th, 2006 at 4:29 pm and is filed under Family, That's My Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.