The counselor has not yet stated her opinion on swinging but did ask me if this was what I hoped to achieve through counseling. I told her truthfully that there had been times when I had thoughts that this might be fun, however.....my fantasy of swinging and my husbands were worlds apart. I would have to have a lot of my ducks in a row to do that, but that was not why I was there.
Although my husband is interested in seeing if I could "clear" up some issues that I have about it, that is NOT why. I am not seeking professional approval, or find a way that I can do this. She has been in counseling for 26 years and has had this issue come up before. I'm not much of a statistican, but I think that three couples in one week (us being the 4th), has GOT to have some significince. Maybe not along the lines of winning the lottery, but did take me by surprise, as it did her.
My biggest personal concern (which has been laid to rest) was being either emotionally "beat" up by both him and her (or to be overly simplistic have "them, the counselor and my husband corner me into doing what he wanted to do, or to have my husband be the bad guy and him feeling beat up. Lord knows he tried to talk me into it for a long long time.
The funny thing I think is that he felt and so did I that I had low self esteem and hearing that she did not agree that was an accurate label, if you will. Not that a lower self esteem wasn't manifisting itself when I felt that he was comparing me to the younger women that he wanted to have sex with.
I do not think that this is going to be fun, but another benefit of counseling, is that I had no one to talk to. A counselor isn't your best buddy, she isn't going to tell me what she thinks I want to hear, and in fact, one of the goals is going to be finding other ways to cope with my juvenile ways of handling stress and conflict. She was referring to our arguments. When I feel threatened by the swinging issues, we would generally argue. That was one of the reasons why I sought counseling, I am tired of the arguing, and because the nature of arguing (in my opinon) is that you can no longer communicate when you need to start attacking and defending, just to survive.
I knew that I was a pleaser. I LIKE to please people. It doesn't "cost" me anything to show someone a kindness, or whatever, but I couldn't swing to please my husband. The one thing that he would like me to do to "please" him was the thing that I couldn't do and "please" myself. So I would argue with him, hoping that he would just let it go. The more we argued, the more distant we became. The love between us was always there though.
When I first started, I filled out this questionaire, and had to state my problems. I thought about it for a week or so, after all, I had a few lines to give her an idea of why I was there. Imagine you trying to represent who you are, the fears and problems that you have in your life in a very limited space. Gads!
In a PERFECT world for me, the desire to swing wouldn't be an issue in our marriage. He would either be not interested in it, or I could go "gee honey...doesn't that sound like fun?....but for me, it isn't. I suspect that there are many relationships out there that this has been an issue for, either the wife or the husband. It's when it gets out of whack, like in my relationship where on just about everything else, nothing is so important that our personal opinons on a matter would be the breaking point, or cause such stress and strain that outside help is wanted or needed. Unfortunatley, this isn't my perfect world!
T.H.
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