A letter to a counseling service

Re: Couples counseling received in 2006

To Whom It May Concern,

My name is Harriet Jacobs. In the summer of 2006, I received couples counseling from your organization. I understand that you offer a valuable service to people in need. I believe that for the most part your volunteer clinicians provide essential and affordable assistance to the community, and I’m sure the majority of your clients’ experiences are positive ones. I don’t wish to condemn your organization as a whole. However, my experience there had some significant shortcomings, and I wish to express my concerns about the professional training of your counselors and their supervisors.

I contacted your organization in the summer of 2006 to receive couples counseling for my marriage. My husband and I presented ourselves as a young couple experiencing some rocky problems. In truth, my husband was abusive. This was not something I knew or could have directly expressed at the time. I had been effectively isolated from all my friends and family, and had no outside support structure to assist me in recognizing I was being abused. The real reason for our attendance at couples therapy was because I had met another man who had told me my relationship was abusive and I deserved better. As a result, I had begun to demand small things of my husband to try and prove, to myself, that our relationship was not abusive. I began to ask that he pay some of our bills, let me leave the house more often, not read my emails, and allow me to say no to sex sometimes. This caused his abuse to accelerate, which caused me to begin talk of moving out. Rather than cease his abuse, he agreed to go to couples counseling as a “compromise.” I could not express any of this in front of my counselors with my husband in the room, as I was terribly afraid of him. I also could not vocalize it during the one individual meeting I had with my therapists, as I truly believed everything I experienced was my fault, as my husband had told me.

In therapy, my husband presented our problem as being based on my having an “emotional affair” with the other man, who at the time was trying to make a safety plan with me. My husband wished me to stop speaking to the man, and to pay more attention to him; he would then be happier and able to treat me better, and our problems would be solved. Our counselors agreed with this prognosis, and the focus of therapy became forcing me to sever my connection with the other man, who, in truth, was the only connection to the outside world that I had. Our therapists made me promise to stop speaking to him for a designated period of time, which I did. In return, they made my husband promise to take me on a date (which he never did). However, the therapists did not seem concerned that he had not fulfilled his part of the bargain; during the next session, they simply asked me to extend my period of non-contact. If I did not agree, it would be tantamount to continuing my emotional affair, and there would be no reason for us to continue therapy if I was not willing to work. The therapists stated that no matter what we did, I would sabotage it as long as I was consistently punching holes in the marriage.

During my individual meeting with the therapists, I revealed that my husband had insisted on our having an “open” relationship, where he was allowed to sleep with others but I was not. I received no reaction to or discussion of this. During an appointment with both my husband and I present, I revealed that he had woken me up in the middle of the night to tell me he had been staring at me for hours, thinking of all the ways he could kill me. My husband and I had a large fight about this outside of therapy. I tried to explain to him that what he had said was wrong and “sort of like what an abusive person would do.” He refused to accept this, instead calling me several names and telling me he would express himself however he wished. When I told our therapists about this event and the following fight, they asked him for his side of it. He very calmly explained that of course he was sorry for frightening me, but I was completely overreacting, and his death threat was nothing compared to the fact that I was cutting myself and stating openly that I felt suicidal, which was far more frightening and manipulative to him than a death threat could possibly be to me. He had become angry when I insisted that he was threatening me, and had only called me names because I was unwilling to empathize with his emotions. If only I would understand how upset he was, he would not have had thoughts about killing me.

During that session, I harbored some hope that our counselors were only maintaining a cool façade because they did not wish to tip off my husband to the fact that they now knew he was abusive and violent. Afterwards, one of the counselors pulled me aside, and I had great hope that she was going to offer me assistance, help me leave him safely. Instead, she handed me a flyer for a couples workshop they were putting on the following month. “It’s not for couples in crisis or anything,” she said. “Just regular couples having a few problems, like you. You two should go.”

My husband and I experienced a change in our work schedules, which effectively ended therapy. I eventually gathered the courage and resources to leave him, but without having created a safety net for myself. As a result of the years of abuse, a lack of other support, and because of my experience with our counselors, I did not believe my situation was serious enough to warrant my going to a shelter, or fleeing in the night, as I should have. I did not think any counselor would believe I was experiencing abuse, or that I needed protection. I also knew that if I was turned away from assistance I would have nowhere else to go but home, and my life would be worse once my husband found out I had sought help at a shelter.

During the week I was moving my things out of our home, my husband raped me, attempted to impregnate me, forced me to spend a great deal of my getaway money on him, and indicated he would be by to see me as soon as I was gone. I understand you also offer, as part of your services, a rape crisis center. I had your pamphlet, and considered calling, but remembering my experience with your counselors, I was afraid I would be told what I had experienced was not rape. Worse, I was afraid my counselors would be alerted, and since as far as I knew they considered our relationship problems to be my fault, I was afraid they would perhaps alert my husband, and I would be forced to attend couples counseling with him to discuss the rape, and why it wasn’t really a rape, and why it was my fault anyway. I do not know how rational these fears were, or how likely these occurrences would have been. But I did know I had begun to discuss abuse at your organization, and had been forced to say it was not abuse, and had been told my relationship problems were my fault, so I cannot say my train of thought was entirely illogical at that point: I was working with what I knew of your services.

I did not go to a rape shelter. I did not call the police. I did not allow myself, until I had moved out, to admit to myself that I had been raped. Aside from the man I had been told to stop speaking to, nobody else I had ever known had called what my husband did to me abuse. I did not believe anybody else would. I truly believed, even with the rape, that leaving my husband had been selfish and wrong; I had simply reached the point where I had to do it anyway. I assumed, as a result, that I would have to survive alone, and could not access services that were meant for women with far more serious problems, women “in crisis.”

It is a few years later. I have gotten my life together, finalized the divorce, gone to therapy, tied up loose ends. I have done a lot of reading about domestic abuse, to understand what happened to me, and why I did the things I did. So I also understand how abuse flies so far under the radar, even for professionals. I understand it especially well, because in college I majored in Psychology and Women’s Studies, and did nothing but study abuse and feminism all day long, and yet could still go home to my husband and not realize what was happening to me.

There are times I think of the therapy I received from your program, and I get so angry and upset. Not only did I not receive help when I most desperately needed it, but I instead received affirmation that my abuse was my fault and my problem. I was told that I needed to change, I needed to sacrifice, and I needed to stop overreacting to death threats. Yet I know what I experienced is part of a wider institutional problem, and not specific to your organization alone. I understand, from what I’ve learned since I’ve left, that very few professionals receive adequate training to help them recognize abuse. Perhaps you know this from the research out there, perhaps you don’t. I am writing this letter because I believe I have a responsibility to tell you.

Couples therapy is the worst place for an abusive relationship to end up.  It implies that the problems in the relationship can be solved by talking, by work, by compromise. It also implies that both parties in the relationship are at fault, and both must work toward a solution. An abused woman will have talked till she is blue in the face, worked herself to death, and compromised away all her basic safety and dignity to no avail. Yet she will readily believe the problems in the relationship are her fault, and her job to fix; so will her abuser. When an abused woman presents herself to couples counselors, she is likely to agree with her abuser’s diagnosis, out of fear, and also because she truly believes that she is the one in the wrong. She is also likely to appear to be the source of the problems, because she will, as a result of abuse, be unstable, frightened, and unable to think clearly. This was certainly my experience, and, I suspect, the experience of other clients you have serviced and are perhaps servicing now.

I understand that your services are not focused on assisting victims of domestic abuse. But considering how damaging it can be for a victim to find herself in couples counseling, your counselors and supervisors need to be trained to recognize abuse, and refer victims to appropriate resources. If your couples counselors are not required to be trained in recognizing abuse, I suggest you institute this requirement right away. If they are trained, I suggest more, much more, as in my case any training my counselors may have had proved to be completely ineffective.

While I do not wish to lay blame at your door for my experiences, while I understand how an oversight could occur with inexperienced counselors, and while I understand simple human error, I am shocked and appalled to think I revealed to professional counselors that my husband had threatened me with death, and I received no response and no assistance. That is completely unacceptable, irresponsible, and frankly frightening.

You may begin by contacting some of the following organizations and trainers. They may be able to assist your organization in setting up appropriate training services and materials for your staff:

(Removed to avoid pinpointing my location)

Respectfully,

Harriet Jacobs