I was a course for couples where the husband is abusive. Its function is to show you how the husband abuses his wife and tries to help the couple heal through help the husband see his abuse and what it is doing to his wife.
The problem is that, though it may work for a situation where there is serious spousal abuse, for all other marriages it damages the marriage seriously. It goes in with the assumption that the husband is the abuser.
Key point, though. The men go to one class and the women go to another. The men have a book they follow to root out how they may be abusing their wife in ways not physical. It was pretty hard on men, but I thought that was great and it actually did help me to see where I may be wrong in how I interacted with my wife (side bar: It helped me in how to deal with my current wife beautifully). But here’s the rub: I figured the women had their own book that would be pretty hard on them and help them to be better wives.
Nope. both classes used the same book. And the book was all about going in with the assumption that the husband abuses the wife and that needs to be fixed.
Meanwhile, one part that was very interesting was it helped you root out where you may be abusive by using the family’s responses to you to determine you are being abusive in the way that causes that response in them. And this is where it got interesting. What I realized was that many of those were how the family was responding TO MY WIFE.
Yep. I discovered in that class that my WIFE was the abusive one.
She was projecting.
They also got into supressed memories back then and she “discovered” lots of “repressed memories” from her childhood. Of course, this all turned out to be bullschitt. It also speaks to why I didn’t believe Blaysey Ford.
Your story is spot on and is part of the problem in today’s counseling. The default position is the man is guilty because of the imprinted feminine imperative. I know people who have gone to couples therapy where the woman struggles with alcoholism, drugs, and being abusive - and yet the counselor ignored it all and assumed the man was the problem. No wonder there is a astronomical failure for couples counseling.
Well, your case (if true) is a one in a million example. We need her story.
Just accept that men are basically always at fault. And therapists are always balanced, just like the courts.