SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

For background DDay was Nov 2023.

Myself and WH have been living apart since then (my choice) but trying to R since Dec 2023.

We have been in weekly couples therapy (his suggestion) since the start of 2024 up until mid March.

We stopped sessions at the end of March as WH said he couldn’t afford to keep it up, so I informed my therapist we would be stopping for the time being.

The therapist replied to me saying if ever I want IC he is happy to do that. I said I might do and left it for a while and at one point received another email with potential dates if I was interested and the wording seemed like he was really eager to speak to me.

Part of me wondered if he was trying to keep the money flowing, but another niggling feeling was that he wanted to talk to me separately. I was intrigued what he had to say about me and my partner so I booked one and went yesterday.

Well I was shocked at what he said to me. Normally he is very impartial during our couples therapy, doesn’t show much emotion and to be honest doesn’t say that much.

I realise now that the reason he doesn’t say much is because he doesn’t think we should R.

He spoke like a switch had been turned on at last and he didn’t stop the whole session. He said he’s been thinking about me since our sessions ended and that he’s been worried for me. How manipulative and lacking of remorse/inability to change my partner is. He told me I deserve so much better and that if I were a friend his words would be much stronger than what he can say in a professional setting. He essentially told me my partners treatment of me is terrible and he strongly urged me to consider my options.

I can’t ignore what my therapist has said, I think it’d be madness to do so. I just feel so sad that it seems R is just not going to be possible - and weirdly WH has been perfect this weekend, doing all the right things and helping massively around the house.

I think it hits harder knowing this professional has met my WH also and has seen him many times to be able to make the judgement he has. The fact he has seen no change or ability to take accountability makes me so sad - because maybe I was fooling myself that he was.

At the moment I’m acting like everything is normal (my WH doesn’t know I did the IC.) I don’t really know where to go from here - luckily he lives separately from me for the time being - but we also have children so my decision to stop R will affect them also.

I just feel sad and shocked at the response I got. I’m grateful for what he told me but it’s almost like someone has made my decision for me and I feel scared to go ahead with it.

Has anyone had any firm message like this from a therapist?

For those in couples therapy or those who had been in it, if your therapist had said this to you, would you leave?

I’ll be honest, the way the therapist spoke to you sounds highly inappropriate and unprofessional to me. Regardless if you should reconcile or not (he may be right and your WH may not deserve reconciliation) a therapist should never tell you what to do. They should support you, with the right prompts, to discover what decision you should make yourself.

I’m a bit concerned of this in the context of him being a male therapist and you a female client. I would not engage in therapy with this IC anymore.

I’ve done a few years of IC and MC and at no point did any of them (3 different ones for various reasons) told me/us what to do. Their job is to listen and guide you to discover what is best for you, they do not and should not hold the actual answer to your life problems.

As to the actual decision: only you can decide if your WH is showing signs of remorse and deserves to be given a chance or not.

Thanks so much for your response, and yes I agree it did seem rather unprofessional. It also was almost like he was having to rush to tell me what he thought incase he never had the chance again - I felt like a beaten wife with a friend having a brief moment with the husband out of the room telling me to leave.

I’m actually meeting with my own IC tomorrow who is lovely and will see what she makes of what he told me. She has never swayed me either way and knows the decision is my own to make.

The male therapist I go to is gay so I don’t think it’s anything untoward. But yes it was a one off session so I will continue IC with my usual therapist. I’m so intrigued as to what she will make of his words - I see her tomorrow so will find out then!

I agree that this therapist, for whatever reason, wasn't able to remain in enough of a "detached" place for you. Therapists are human beings, and sometimes there are situations they deal with that trigger their own feelings. In psychotherapy, they even have a term for it: counter-transference.
The advice might have been coming from a well-meaning place but that isn't to say it was properly given.

After my WH cheated in 2016, I interviewed several therapists.

One did tell me not to bother trying to reconcile. She (I'm also a woman) told me that people spend too much time expecting others to change, and people usually don't change. She said I was fine financially and otherwise and should consider my marriage a success that had run its course and move on with my life. She never met my WH.

I did not see her again. I wasn't looking for someone to tell me what to do. The whole experience of discovering infidelity was very disconcerting. But I was trying to figure out what my world was about and what I wanted to do with it, not what a therapist thought I should do.

Another therapist asked me to evaluate if my WH was a narcissist or had any other personality disorder. She said personality disorders do not respond well to therapy, and she would not want to work with my WH and me if he did have a personality disorder. I can respect that professional stance.

We did reconcile. I consider it successful so far.

I’ll be honest, the way the therapist spoke to you sounds highly inappropriate and unprofessional to me

I completely agree!

First of al a therapist DOES NOT TELL YOU IF YOU SHOULD OR SHOULD NOT RECONCILE.

A therapist’s role is to help you identify your needs and how to express them.

Second if he thought your spouse sounds remorseless why didn’t he say that during the therapy? I am in shock how he handled his therapy sessions and frankly he seems more manipulative than helpful.

I don’t think he was unprofessional at all; in fact, I think a therapist who is wishy washy and doesn’t tell their client that they are in an unhealthy and abusive situation is failing at their job.

Imagine if he was a cardiologist and you were one Big Mac away from a heart attack.

Would you want him to say "Yeah, well it’s your life to live, and you could try to eat more greens and maybe only go to McDonalds once in a blue moon."

Or would you want him to say: "This is dangerous and you need a bypass as soon as possible!"

Alternatively, if you went to the ER a with a black eye after your husband punched you in the face, do you think that doctor should tell you to report him to the cops and get out as soon possible, or say “Eh, take your chances and maybe he will or won’t kill you next time.”

Now I’m not saying that his professional assessment of your husband is correct. As you would with a serious medical diagnosis, you might want to get a second opinion.

But as you astutely observed, marriage counselors don’t make money by referring their clients to divorce lawyers. In fact, it’s far more common for them to drag couples along and actually placate the wayward spouse (rather than challenging them) in order to keep them going to therapy.

My ex and I went to a faith-based counselor, mainly because he thought that a counselor who was also a priest would tell me shut up and stay married no matter what. Needless to say, when the therapist told him his behavior was unacceptable in a marriage, that was first and last MC session we had.

As we left, that MC looked me straight in the eye and told me I deserved better. And he was right.

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 3:17 PM, Sunday, April 28th]

I’m a bit concerned of this in the context of him being a male therapist and you a female client. I would not engage in therapy with this IC anymore.

Exactly my though, too. VERY DODGY AND UNPROFESSIONAL.

Second if he thought your spouse sounds remorseless why didn’t he say that during the therapy? I am in shock how he handled his therapy sessions and frankly he seems more manipulative than helpful.

If he said that during therapy the husband would’ve likely flipped out, walked out immediately, and demanded that OP never see or speak to the therapist again. And because she wants to reconcile, she would’ve complied.

Ask me how I know.

Maybe there is a distinction between a therapist and a counselor? I would consider a religious-based person to be a counselor who give guidance and opinion as part of their job. It seems a therapist has a different role.

Kitchen, he was priest who was also a licensed psychologist who specialized in marriage and family counseling. He also taught psychology classes at a prestigious Catholic university.

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 6:08 PM, Sunday, April 28th]

Ask me how I know.

Please explain. If a therapist does see things and remains quite, all the work is based on what?

[This message edited by Fantastic at 6:25 PM, Sunday, April 28th]

I had almost completed my therapy training before DDay, and would like to contribute my professional insight.

That therapist is playing fast and loose with his boundaries. Pursuing you for an appointment rather than giving you space to make a decision? Saying "If I were a friend I'd use harsher words"? Talking almost the whole session!? Pressuring you to not R?! The further you got in your story, the more shocked I was.

He is likely concerned about you and thinks he's acting in your best interest. He's not. He's reacting from his own fear and discomfort. His job isn't to tell you what to do. He could give his view if he's concerned for your safety and well-being, but a therapist isn't supposed to be another authority figure. Even when therapists have to confront a client, it's with the goal and intention of helping the client to build their own capacity to see reality without trying to deny it, find their values, and help them in building the skills to live a life in line with those values.

I think he made a decision about your WH early on and that's what he sees it through. Whether his decision was accurate or not I can't say. The best thing for you is to develop your ability to consider alternative viewpoint in making your decision without being swayed to act against your judgement or values. You've seen a lot more of WH than therapist has. You have different information.

I also wouldn't rule out attraction. He wouldn't be the first gay man to sleep with a woman.

Honestly, something about him reminds me of my old therapist. She was very critical of my BS. If I tried to talk about my role in conflict, she'd turn it back to my BS is the problem. She kept telling me to leave after I told her repeatedly that I wasn't. Oddly, she loved AP who assaulted me and emotionally abused me for months. I describe love bombing to a T and she said nothing. I would tell her about ways AP offended or disrespected me, she defended him. I don't get it, except she had him in a class she taught. Maybe she liked him as a student and that clouded her judgement, as if abusive people aren't different people to the outside world than to the people they're abusing.

I also wanted to point something out from another person's post while we're talking about therapist red flags.

Another therapist asked me to evaluate if my WH was a narcissist or had any other personality disorder. She said personality disorders do not respond well to therapy, and she would not want to work with my WH and me if he did have a personality disorder. I can respect that professional stance.

This therapist is incompetent and should not be practicing. Your therapist was not skilled enough to deal with your husband, but rather than saying that, the real problem is how irredeemable your husband is.

The idea that personality disorders are untreatable is old and outdated. Personality disorders is a misleading term. It was once thought that someone with a personality disorder had an intrinsically defective character, and the best you could hope for was symptom management, but that's not true. "Personality" disorders are patterns that develop in response to childhood trauma and/or attachment issues as a means of survival. It's becoming more apparent in the field that what we call personality disorders are really different manifestations of CPSTD. It's likely that when the next DSM comes out, personality disorders will be removed or become a subcategory (not the right term but brain has not slept in three nights so) of PTSD.

Not to mention, HER, the professional trained in diagnosing, wanted YOU to evaluate if your husband had NPD? That's laughable. That's not a comment on your lack of intelligence but lack of skill set. Diagnosing is hella complex. Therapists have to give a diagnosis after one session. This is purely for billing purposes and not the best practice, but we have to do it to get paid by insurance companies. Blame lobbying. For this reason, if you don't have a diagnosis beforehand, a therapist will usually give a "little" easily changeable diagnosis (depending on the state, you may have to go to court to change certain diagnoses because of biases) like "adjustment disorder" or "grief disorder". You might have a "working diagnosis" which is a way to say you suspect a "bigger" diagnosis like Major Depressive Disorder or General Anxiety Disorder. I'd be skeptical of anyone who added a personality disorder as even a working diagnosis after one session about if the clinician isn't operating from some bias or their own history. The only "big" diagnosis I'd diagnosis after a single session is PTSD, and only if the client says specifically, "this traumatic thing happened and I'm experiencing the symptoms of trauma." Ok, clients don't say it like that but you get the picture. And even with PTSD, people can surprise you. I've had many, many clients come in and say, "I have all this stuff and all these belief patterns and I don't get what's wrong with me." Then a few sessions in they're like, "well I did have all these things happen to me in childhood and this traumatic thing happened a bit ago, do you think that that could have anything to do with how badly I feel?"

This is all to say, a lay person is highly unqualified to armchair diagnosis their spouse. You can't distinguish between NPD, BPD, bipolar, MDD, GAD, and PTSD, which all have overlapping symptoms and tend to be misdiagnosed for the other. Usually it's PTSD being misdiagnosed as something else because the client isn't aware that the things they went through were trauma and the therapist made a judgement without asking the right questions. Interestingly, if you had presented to therapy with the same symptoms as your husband, she would have probably said you have BPD (borderline personality disorder). BPD and NPD both have a LOT of overlap, and in the field the distinction usually comes down to gender. We interpret the same symptoms in different ways based on if the person is a man or a woman.

I have strong opinions about therapists and ethics. I'm going to step off my soapbox now though.

My Spidey Sense is tingling all over on this one.

First of all - I get why you went for that IC session. But I am questioning the boundaries of therapist during that session.

Slight T/J - right after DDay1 I went to my 10 free sessions with a male therapist. No rhyme or reason on the selection - he was the first one that took the call and and an appointment the fastest.

I cried/vented/shook and raged. What he said was kind of irrelevant. I just used it as a safe space to have my meltdowns.

Somewhere during one of those sessions I mentioned a friend who's marriage had ended due to infidelity and how WH watched me hold her through the trauma of it all - while secretly being engaged in his own LTA at the time. The therapist jumped out of his chair exclaiming "WHAT THE F*** IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE". IN my pain and trauma I thought "solidarity"

My next session was my last. I declined more IC at the time as I was just too exhausted with it all [foolish to quit - but glad I didn't continue].

The following week, the therapist called and when I answered "this is Chaos" he fumbled with horribly sorry he dialed the wrong number. I figured fat fingers, etc. And didn't give it another thought. It happened 2 more times over the next few months. I blocked the number.

End T/J

I share this because your story gives me the same bad vibes as my own experience.

If you feel you need/want more IC - please get some. From someone else.

Yes BluerThanBlue is correct (I can’t seem to quote!) - he would have just walked out and insisted I come too. If he knew now what the therapist had said to me in IC, he’d be contacting him giving him a piece of his mind as well as reporting him to whoever he could!

He often had "strops" in our therapy sessions that made it uncomfortable for all of us, well, except him. So I think this is why even my therapist seemed too intimidated to really say much to him maybe for my sake.

I’ve googled if therapists normally speak their mind like this and the responses are mixed. Maybe he does think I’m in a dangerous relationship. I have been isolated from friends and family and currently I do have no one but him. My WH has actually treated me awfully and it’s not just my therapist who has responded this way, all family and friends even when they met my H years ago disliked him - even he has no friends left because of the way he is. Which makes us both completely isolated.

He has also commented on the reason he had an A was because I gained weight having a baby (I was 4 months post birth at the time). He even said in our couples therapy that my body isn’t attractive to him - so I can see why my therapist may not be his biggest fan.

My therapist urged me to start getting back out and seeing family and friends even though my WH hates me doing this. I know everything my therapist said is the truth really, I think I’m just shocked he actually said it out loud.

Thanks Chaos - I actually go to IC with a woman.
This was a one off session I did with him as my couples therapy had come to an end and I wanted to see what our joint therapist had to say seeing as we would no longer be going.

I really don’t think he’s interested in me, I just think he feels bad for me. My WH has treated me awfully and sat there each time admitting to everything and at times smirking at his own behaviours as though what he’d done was amusing while I’m in tears. I suppose that made my therapist form a negative opinion which maybe he shouldn’t have shared but in a way it’s opened my eyes up that I shouldn’t tolerate such awful behaviour any longer.

Again… regardless of what the therapist thought, their approach was unprofessional. If they thought the OP was in danger they can/should have report it.

Therapists/counsellors do not hold the absolute solution to our lives problems and issues. Imagine a therapist/counsellor that thinks they have the right to give solutions to all our problems.

People don’t go to therapy just for infidelity reasons or being married to narcissists. They go for a huge amount of other problems: body issues, trust issues, eating disorders, childhood abuse/trauma, issues with their kids etc.

What will this type of counsellor do? Dish out solutions? Anorexia? Just get over it and start eating. Think you’re fat whilst suffering with anorexia? You’re not, go eat, you’re welcome. Your parents were too authoritarian? Cut them off, you’re welcome. Are your kids disrespectful? Tell them it isn’t nice to do so or cut them off.

This isn’t how life works. Therapists are people and they may also project their own beliefs and prior experience onto your case. Professional ones don’t.

My therapist (the one that later became our marriage therapist) has experienced infidelity. She didn’t tell me so, I’ve discovered through my own "research". She never once told me not to Reconcile even though she saw me at such a low point once that she considered calling an ambulance on me (and sectioning me for my own safety). That is what professionalism looks like. She always prompted me to think of my healing and what that looks like. She never told me what I should do.

Many might not agree with this therapist’s approach but that doesn’t make it unprofessional. Therapists who will tell you their opinions straight on are rare, but they aren’t as rare as therapists who are willing to risk their licenses, reputations, and livelihood to hook up with clients.

The therapist also wouldn’t be able to report her husband to the authorities unless he had evidence that a crime had taken place or was imminent. But if he thinks that a client is being emotionally and mentally abused, isolated from their support network, and that they’re being driven nuts by gaslighting? He absolutely should raise that flag in a one-on-one session, as he did.

Edit;add

My WH has treated me awfully and sat there each time admitting to everything and at times smirking at his own behaviours as though what he’d done was amusing while I’m in tears

I posted this comment before I saw the above and just… wow. Smirking like the cat who caught the canary while your wife is sobbing is creepy and cruel, and definitely adds some much-needed context to your therapist’s actions.

Don’t dismiss his observations as baseless just because he told you something you didn’t want to hear. As I said in my first post on your thread, get a second opinion, as you would with any serious medical diagnosis.

Lastly, a red flag that stood out to me in your first post was when you described how "perfect" your WH was being, which included being helpful around the house. That’s the bare minimum of what a loving spouse should be doing, which tells me that you are accustomed to very low expectations of what a loving, supportive husband would be. Also, if he senses emotional distance from you (perhaps due to the conversation with the therapist) he could be trying to "hoover" or "love-bomb" you back.

The way you described your husband’s behavior in therapy and how he has isolated you from friends and family just confirmed that for me.

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 9:11 PM, Sunday, April 28th]

To answer your question, Fantastic, my MC did call out my ex’s behavior to his face during a session, which made him immediately lose his temper and walk out. That’s when the therapist looked me in the eye and said "You deserve better." When I got in the car, my ex called the therapist every name in the book, said he was a quack, and demanded that I never see or speak to him again. And I complied because I had been beaten down by mental and emotional abuse.

That’s why I said “Ask how I know.” And Chelsea’s therapist predicted her husband would react similarly, which is why he scheduled the one-on-one.

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 9:18 PM, Sunday, April 28th]

It would be more professional to me if the MC, IC, or therapist stated their professional position and boundaries before the therapy started or at least in the first session. For example, if they stated they don't do sessions or will stop when they have determined abuse or major lying/deceiving exists or they don't take clients with a personality disorder, I would appreciate that as being upfront. In the middle of sessions stating a position seems less ok to me. I don't have a strong feeling about it. It just tells me they are not the right person for me.

BluerThanBlue, I do understand your position and strong feelings on the subject. It's no doubt a difficult situation in those circumstances for everyone involved. I'm sorry you went through that.