my heart | his heart

We saw our therapist this week - it’s been a solid 2 months since we’ve seen him, due to scheduling conflicts. At our last appointment, he referred us to the Theophostic facilitator, we were spiritually attacked in his parking lot, and in the ensuing weeks, we discovered the truth about my husband’s CSA & how his parents both didn’t believe him and didn’t protect him from his predatory grandfather.

So we had a lot to catch up on. I think there are few things like recounting big, enormous steps forward, no matter how separated by time they are, to someone who isn’t living the reality of taking those steps. I think doing so is a good way to get The Big Picture and to be encouraged.

Which is exactly what happened in our therapist’s office. He was incredulous: “These are HUGE steps in a very short amount of time!” He listened and he actually let his poker-face down and his eyes widened as he said, “These are *miraculous* things you’re telling me! Praise God!” It was truly encouraging for us to get his perspective on it. Living with the reality of it all is sometimes overwhelming, and then we have to pick our way through the rubble of what was my husband’s childhood and how it still haunts us to create a new normal, a new reality.

So as we’re talking, the therapist is asking my husband what he’s doing now. My husband said, “I’m trying to investigate who I am as a man - what it means for me to be masculine, trying to define it.” We talked a bit about the world’s definition of masculinity and what that looks like and how it’s twisted and perverted. My husband will be going on a white water rafting trip next month and is looking forward to it; the therapist said, “Why are you going on that?”

“Because I think it will be fun and I want to.”

That was met with hearty approval and “permission” from the therapist to have fun and explore the things that he’s never done before, which is apparently what my husband needed. He really glommed on to that - he needed another masculine guy to encourage him and give him permission to explore, to discard what didn’t fit, and to have fun in the process.

Toward the end of the appointment, he asked what our long-term plans were: the answer is that we’re working on a new plan and seeing what God does. I’m looking for work so that we can afford weekly appointments for my husband - there is regressive-talk therapy that he wants to do with this therapist, but we have to have more cash in order to do it. When I have a job, we can make plans for that. But for the two of us meeting with him together, he said that we were doing well. That our communication-lines seemed to be open and that we were doing a good job of walking through the past destruction and avoiding the land mines that were there, but that if we needed him as a pair, to call him. He wasn’t “prescribing” any more couples’-appointments for us at this time.

I think that was one of the most buoying things I’ve heard in a good, long while. A professional therapist has watched us for the last 8 months, talked to us extensively, and says that we’re doing well enough as a pair to stop with regular appointments.

I feel like we’re making it through, guys. It’s a good feeling.

His and his,
~Cori