Just finished the couples session. For those following along at home my partner and I took about a 6 week break from couples counseling with the expectation that my partner would go to an individual counselor to start working on some things that the couples counselor feels are needed. Apparently he and the individual counselor played phone tag and had difficulty with scheduling because of his work hours and the therapists available hours. My partner said he should have let me know he was having trouble scheduling rather than not telling me anything.

We talked about how good the last month has been. I said that I agreed the last month has been really good but I am disappointed that he did not follow through on the thing he said he would do. My partner said he feels like I'm only focusing on the negative of the relationship and not the positive and not giving him credit for the efforts he is putting in.

At the end of the session the couples counselor said that until my partner does some individual therapy she doesn't think that we're going to make much progress with couples therapy. She left it that we could reach out to her to schedule... But that she's not going to be able to work with us until my partner works on the way he copes with conflict (he tends to feel attacked and shut down). She said if we want to get a referral to a different couples counselor in the interim she's happy to refer us to somebody... She said that maybe our dynamic with her is just not conducive to the work we need to do.

I'm not exactly sure how I'm feeling about all of this. I guess just processing kind of numb. I really liked the couples counselor and he did too at first... Until she started challenging him. Maybe we should take her up on the offer for a referral... If the same conversations happen again and again with the same dynamics maybe my partner will be more inclined to realize some of this is stuff he's going to have to work on on his own. Or maybe I should wait until he gets some individual counseling and just give things a little bit more time. But how much time? Or maybe I just need to take a break from the relationship for a bit and stay with a friend and just plan to talk with him in a couple weeks and we can regroup and see how we're both feeling.