Marriage Counseling - in the Red Zone
When Frank and Debbie married in 1992, everything was rosy. Both had graduated at the top of their class and settled in to two well-paying positions. They built their own home together and were happy. Both had decided against children early on and adopted several dogs at the SPCA that became like their kids to them, according to them.
According to Frank, Debbie and he had gotten along quite well up until a year ago when Debbie lost her job and her mother. She began experiencing temperamental outbursts, seemingly out of the blue.
“She’d go from 0 to 60. We’d have a nice, quiet dinner and she’d be cleaning up the table. Something would trigger her, like the dog being underneath her feet or a glass that accidentally broke and she’d hit the roof. She’d scream obscenities and sometimes started throwing stuff. At first, I’d tell her to calm down but that only made it worse. Once she threw something at me, I knew we were in trouble. I’d never seen her like this.”
Debbie felt quite ashamed of these outbursts and wasn’t sure where they had come from herself. She confessed to having outbursts on the road as well, one time getting out of her car and knocking on someone’s windshield.
The marriage counselor suggested some individual therapy for Debbie with a focus on anger management. Undoubtedly, she had some unexpressed feelings pent up from a difficult year and needed to vent them in a healthy, therapeutic way.
Whenever there is any physical and eruptive situations in a marriage, counseling becomes even more imperative. Anger, unexpressed, tends to escalate. A couple also become more “used to” a dangerous and aggressive situation. Luckily, Frank and Debbie realized in time.
