Counseling Irony

As we drove to another counseling session, I asked John how much longer he thought we would be doing this. It's not that I feel our problems are solved. We are far from that. Things have gotten better between us, but the progress seems to have halted the past month or so. I told him I thought counseling isn't worth the money we're paying if we weren't going to put the advice to use. While trying not to be confrontational, I told him I didn't feel like he was putting enough effort into it anymore.

Luckily, he wasn't defensive. Maybe heading to counseling was enough to bring his usually tightly strung guard down. I won't question it. He offered the usual slate of reasons why he hasn't been trying as hard, mainly noting time and stress. I pointed out his time management has been particularly poor lately, and he's piling on more things to do instead of taking it easy when he can. He is under a lot of stress with work, the purchase of the house, and finishing the band's CD, but he's also spending a lot of time hunting down pinball machines.

He just bought another pinball machine. It's my personal favorite, and I know he went through all the hoops and hassle of getting it to make me happy, but I didn't need it right now. In fact, I feel particularly guilty spending the money on this machine when we could be helping the relief effort in NYC. It's John's project though, and I really can't criticize his spending when I've been buying lots of gear and clothing to prep for my race. It's his spending money. It's not right for me to judge. At least, it makes it easier on me to tell myself that.

He and I don't argue about money often anymore. Now that we're paying off our debt and almost all credit cards are closed, we don't have many financial problems about which to argue. Still, there are some touchy subjects that we tend to avoid rather than discuss. It's not an efficient way to handle it, but we have enough on our plates right now. Buying this machine really did rub me the wrong way in more ways than one, especially since he told me previously we had to be frugal due to buying the house. I really don't want to get into that right now though. It's another proverbial "can of worms." I didn't really want to talk about pinball machines either, but here I am on this tangent as well.

I did tell him before we bought any pinball machines at all that I had a limit of two. He agreed to that. He tried to convince me to go with three when he wanted to get the Pac-Man pinball machine a local guy had, but I wouldn't budge. Those suckers are big, and our basement is enough of a mess without several gigantic machines. I think two pinball machines and a video game is a generous compromise. If it ever gets truly clean, I may break down and get a third, but I won't go higher than that. Luckily, he never reads my journal, or he'd be bugging me about it. This purchase ends his pinball hunt for now, so at least that will free up some of his time, until he fills it with a new thing.

John was focused on our relationship for a while. He seemed to be working hard to communicate better and figure things out. That interest has waned greatly, and I'm having a hard time determining whether it's due to his habit of focusing on one thing intensely, tiring of it and moving on or whether it's due to the stress he's had lately. He's said several times that he's feeling a great deal of pressure from many aspects of his life, and he is behaving as he always has during stressful times, so it would be wise for me to listen to him for once. Still, I'm bothered by his lack of focus on us. He hasn't even read the rest of the book, and it's been over two weeks since he started it. I read it in less than a day. Maybe telling him that was enough. I suppose time will tell as it always does.

We didn't resolve anything on the way there. That's hard to do in fifteen minutes. I felt myself reluctant to go in this time, not because I was nervous about the subject, but because I felt like it was going to be a waste of time and money. We could go for the rest of our lives and never get anywhere if we didn't put what we learned to use. I was feeling tired of going in and being told to use the "I" language and communicate more clearly with one another. I'm definitely getting better at communicating, but John seems to be stuck at this point. Rather than continuing forward, he seems satisfied knowing he's already made progress.

Our session started off a little differently this time. I found it strangely coincidental that I was griping about doing the same old thing on the drive there, and here the beginning was already different. She said I seemed to be a lot happier and asked why. I thought she meant the difference between last week on the night of the World Trade Center collapse and this week. I explained how I wasn't feeling well last week on top of the sadness I felt for the tragedy and that I was doing better on both counts this week. She said she meant over the course of the counseling. She noticed a big turn-around in me. I was kind of surprised to hear that, and I felt pretty good about it. I told her I have a lot more hope now. Things are going better between us, and I'm doing better myself too. I'm doing more of the things I want to do and not letting the frustration in my relationship stop me from doing them.

Then she went to John and asked, "How about you?" He started off talking about our relationship and in what ways it's improving. He specifically targeted the fact we aren't arguing late into the night anymore, which is a big help to him. She asked for further explanation of that, and I told her I have made it a point not to bring things up at bedtime. John then went on to say we are only arguing about once a week, and the arguments are more productive than they once were. We don't always resolve the issues, but we don't feel so bad when we're done either. That lead to her asking what this week's argument was, and we went in a direction we haven't gone before. The rest of the session, we discussed John's family dynamic.

This is unfinished, but here seemed like a good place to stop. Plus, the entry was getting a little long, so I thought I'd break it up. The continuation should be up tomorrow.