Therapy for OW-- what to expect?
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| Fri, 10-22-2004 - 9:08am |
I posted a little while back about my 70 year old widowed mother who has now been involved with a MM for about 4 months (he is the guy she was engaged to out of high school, he dumped her for his current wife of 50 years, they reconnected at a reunion this summer and he called her up after). She knew he was married. He has told her from get go he will not leave his W.
I had a long talk with my mom this week and told her how much we loved her, but that we couldn't condone or watch the train wreck that is inevitable. But that we would be there to help her and get her help (and get into counseling together) WHEN the relationship is over so we can heal.
She has now told me that she has made an appt for counseling for herself (she states so that the therapist, he's a PhD in Psych, can help her to get us to see her side, and to come to some compromise so that she can continue in her relationship without breaking up our family---- that's my mom's take.)
My question is for those of you who may be in or have been in indiv. therapy for yourself as a result of being involved with a MM.
What happens in therapy of this kind? I told my mom to go in with an open mind and that we are proud that she has taken this step, that we all have to work on ourselves right now.
Can you give me some insight as to what the therapist may focus on with her?
Thanks in advance for your input. I appreciate it.

I'm delighted your mother has agreed to some counselling with her family, it's a positive step for all of you.
I'm an exOW who has had the benefit of both individual and marriage counselling.
To begin with you can usually expect a few sessions which are geared pretty much towards general information gathering.
Questions may well crop up regarding your mother's relationship, how it started, how it is maintained, what needs you mother is having met by the relationship, what are her hopes/fears for the relationship and best/worst case scenarios will likely be explored as well as how your mother perceives the relationship is affecting her immediate and other familial relationships and friendships, etc.
In my case, the aim was discovering the true reasons which led to my decision to have an EMA (which are nothing like the reasons we give ourselves at the time), working towards healing old never healed childhood emotional wounds, and giving me the tools to begin filling the void I'd attempted to fill by using exOM as some kind of bandaid. Much else has been and is presently being covered but these seem fairly common issues.
Therapy is not an easy route to take nor is it an immediate fix. It takes time and it is very much something you must actively want to do. Anyone can go and sit in a chair for an hour long session, but unless you are all prepared to do the work involved it can very easily be time & money wasted. It really does take a great deal of courage to go delving about in your mind especially when the mirror can often reflect parts of us we'd just as soon not be acknowledging let alone discussing.
That your mother is so willing to attend with you shows an enormous amount of love for you and a desire to come to an acceptable compromise.
Wishing you strength & peace,
Posie
And also to clarify, as I may have been unclear.
My mom is going to go to therapy by herself, not with us. We anticipate being involved down the road, however, any compromise or middle ground is not an option-- we cannot mediate the issue of her being involved with a MM. She has made it pretty obvious that if we just "don't ask, don't tell" or turn a blind eye everything will be "okay" in her mind and she can continue doing what she's doing.
Anyways, anybody else have some more insight on therapy for the OW? She seems like she wants to work on herself, but could working on herself mean that she is convinced (in therapy) to abandon her family and continue her relationship with MM at any cost?? Does that happen when someone has gone through therapy?
Thanks again for all of your insight. We are in tremendous crisis right now.
It is highly unlikely that the T is going to encourage your mother to dump her support network in he old age which is her family, he/she will not push her in any direction but will ask questions to get your mother thinking and answering them for herself.
The T is not a threat to your family, he/she is a healthcare professional.
Free
I can only comment what it was like to go into counseling as the MM.
It helped me to understand why I was choosing the destructive patterns of involvement in affairs and how to address those patterns and move on with my life.
As I have read your posts about your mom and her involvement with the man who "dumped her" for the 50 year marriage he's had with the woman he dumped your mom for, it came to me that perhaps mom is engaging in some kind of punitive payback on the MM's wife for the dumping incident. No one likes getting dumped.
I know my family is in for a long haul. The tragic and sad part right now is that, as each day passes and Mom has not contacted us, it leads us to the painful conclusion that she has in essence decided that her relationship with this person is worth it "at any cost". That she is just not communicating that to us, or thinks (still) that we'll "come around."
We just think that, given the mental breakdowns she personally observed my sister and I having over this (a week ago, she watched me shaking and hyperventilating on my couch until she decided she would just up and leave without a goodbye)-- there should not be a difficult decision for my mom to make here.
To have my mother go literally from the "church lady" mentality to being the other woman (with seemingly no pride or care about the consequences to others) is mind boggling to say the least. I hope she does go to see the therapist, no matter what her motivation to do so at this point. I want her to learn a lot about herself, and talk to someone.
It's just hard not to think that she has totally rejected her family , is clearly believing everything this guy is telling her and that's what she wants.
I am so confused!
For those of you who have been there--- what is going through her head? Is she conflicted? It sure doesn't seem so, and I am so sad. I feel like perhaps I never had my mom's love if the decision to choose her family is not a no brainer, KWIM?
Please reply with any more insight you may have. Is it okay if I stick around here?
I won't if I am intruding too much.
Thanks.