Originally Posted by
lillamy 
He's focusing on you and the faults he perceives in you because if he can get you to blame yourself, then maybe you won't blame him.
That is fascinating to me, that any therapist would say that to the spouse of an actively drinking alcoholic. The therapists I've seen who have experience of alcoholism usually put that burden on the alcoholic and say, "I need you to commit to going to 90 meetings in the next 90 days. After that, we will talk."
I found that fascinating, too. It's no wonder then that AH really likes this guy instead of the recovering alcoholic who was the other therapist we went to. I think they homed in on me because I revealed that I'm sitting on the fence so the therapist must think that he needs me to commit to something since AH is totally on board with making our marriage work. The one word that the therapist gave us to work with/between us is 'validation'. He wants us to validate each other's feelings. No problem there, I'm great at validating, unfortunately AH and I don't really talk about our feelings and we told this guy this fact, too, and yet he still stuck with 'validation'. Got me? I'm just going along with it for now, as I continue to work through some of my own things; figuring out what I really want and need and fixing some financial stuff, too.