"I’ve done therapy before – quite a lot of it in fact, both solo and with my husband." Photo / 123rf
OPINION:
“What keeps you awake at night?” was the third item on the questionnaire. I paused for a second, then the words started to flow.
“Teeth crunching rage that I’m married to a man who’s never cleaned a loo in his life; who seems to think that pants magically clean themselves. Being jealous of other women and their husbands. Being so f****** tired of all this s*** and wondering how I turned into this person.”
I didn’t want to feel like this. So angry all the time. So full of resentment towards my husband of 15 years that, every time the front door went to signal his return home, my body would tighten in anticipation of the instant irritation. I loved this man. He is the father of my children; the man I promised to be with for better and for worse. And yet somehow, at this point in our marriage, with both of us juggling busy jobs and an even busier home life with three children and a hectic domestic calendar, I seemed to have lost sight of why I loved him, and who I was.
Mhairi Todd, I hoped, was going to fix it.
Mhairi is a “roadblock coach” who specialises in helping women to navigate and overcome obstacles in their lives, be they feelings of anxiety or being overwhelmed, a career that seems to be on the wrong track or a relationship that is falling apart. I’d come to her with one simple goal: to stop resenting my husband. Of course, it would turn out to be not so simple, but then, life never is.
I first met Mhairi over Zoom. We’d chatted through what I wanted to achieve and I gave her some background on my marriage. I was going to be doing one of her “Shift” packages: an in-person, intensive four-hour session in Edinburgh, where she is based. But first, this remote meeting, some questionnaires to fill in and a psychometric test to complete.
Already, after 20 minutes of talking to this warm, bubbly Scottish woman through my computer, I feel as if I’m being hit with life-changing statements. “We are all so hideously critical of ourselves,” Mhairi says simply. “It is normal to think of a relationship in negative terms.”
What if I’d married the wrong man? “Well what if you did? You’ve done it now.” Plus, two truths: it is possible to love and loathe simultaneously, and if it’s hysterical, it’s historical – i.e. if our reaction to something is overwhelmingly out of proportion, it’s probably linked to some sort of trigger in our past.
I’ve done therapy before – quite a lot of it in fact, both solo and with my husband. I know what my childhood traumas are and what his are too; I know how we both tend to react in certain situations. What I’ve been lacking until now, however, is a real understanding of how those traumas impact the way I live now, and what I can actually do about them. Refreshingly, it seems that I can, in fact, do something about them – and I have to start with myself.
Mhairi explains the different types of attachment style, which, for many adults, are disordered. The goal is to move to secure attachment. I am currently an anxiously attached person, however – which basically means I have an urgent need for love (needy, yuck), but struggle to find appeasement. My husband, on the other hand, has ambivalent attachment – aloof, self-contained and detached.
He is literally my polar opposite, which causes some fairly painful moments for both of us. We talk about where my anxious attachment might have come from, and I have a eureka moment – an early break-up in our relationship before we got back together and got married, which has niggled away at me for years, probably affected me so disproportionately because it triggered memories of some fairly significant parental absences in my teen years. Moreover, I won’t find answers to my marriage issues within the relationship.
“The solution starts and ends with me,” I write down.
I feel strangely excited after our Zoom, even though I have to fill in answers to the hideous psychometric test which makes me feel as if I might actually be a psychopath, or have some sort of split personality. Mhairi sends me off with one initial exercise – that when my thoughts become intrusive, I should name them either “thinking or feeling”, to detach myself from an emotional downwards spiral. I am full of vim and vigour for transforming myself and my relationship, and text my best friend. “OMG this roadblock woman is amazing. You need to see her.”
Then I have an enormous row with my husband about money. Is this really fixable?
A week later, I’m on a ridiculously early train to Edinburgh. I am meeting Mhairi, in person this time, at Gleneagles Townhouse Hotel for breakfast where, over smoked salmon, scrambled eggs and several cups of coffee, we continue to discuss my marriage.
I really like Mhairi. In fact, I feel as if she could become my best friend. No doubt this is why she’s such a good coach, but as we discuss the merits of Botox and how to get a one-year-old to sleep through the night, I wish I could just do this on a more regular basis, without paying through the nose for it. Unlike my other faithful girlfriends, this woman has some seriously useful truth bombs to drop – and when she can see in my eyes that I’ve just absorbed some new revelation, she puts a comforting hand on my arm or reaches out to stroke my back.
We talk a lot about pain – my pain, his pain, where it comes from, what it is. When it comes to romantic attachments, I learn, we tend to look for people who hurt us in ways that are familiar. Great. I get a bit anxious when Mhairi tells me she is, or was, also an anxiously attached person, and that her first marriage broke down after seven years. What if mine breaks down too? What if this coaching lets all the furies out of the box and I can’t get them back in again?
I need to practice giving my husband the benefit of the doubt, Mhairi suggests. “One of the things we assume with the people we love the most is that they’re out to get us.” That’s really because of fear. “If I give you all of me, are you going to destroy me?”, I write down. It’s quite a lot for 10am.
I realise that perhaps I’ve never really thrown myself fully into our marriage – that early break-up had me always holding something back, just so I would never feel such hurt again. Because I’m not all in, I hold onto resentment, as some sort of power play. The thought of really putting my skin in the game is terrifying. But after all, why not? This isn’t some fly-by-night relationship. I don’t want to get divorced. And besides, I love him. “You are working so hard right now to withhold love,” Mhairi tells me gently. “But just let the beach ball come up. Stop holding it down under the waves – it takes too much energy.” And besides, she reminds me, I’m not doing it for him – I’m doing it for me. I swallow.
It’s time for another exercise – this time, I have to list six things I want to change, create or get rid of. I don’t want to feel resentment for my husband all the time; I want to be excited when he comes home; I want to enjoy date nights. I want to have better sex. I write down what good would look like in all these areas – that resentment would be rare; I wouldn’t look sour every evening; I’d look forward to our time together; I’d like to actually feel horny once in a while. Mhairi tells me I can cut myself some slack.
Then we get onto the hard part. I will, says Mhairi, continually find ways to question my own worth until I can accept myself for who I am. It’s the kind of statement I’d normally roll my eyes at, but somehow, at this point, it’s agonising.
Worse is when she makes me close my eyes and cast myself back to a time when I was really unhappy as a child. I envisage my miserable teenage self, lonely and awkward, desperately sad at the state of her own parents’ marriage, paralysed with fear of missing out, yet unable to join in with friendship groups. Mhairi makes me mentally sit down next to her and tell her what she needs to hear, writing it down. The words pour out of me: “You are funny, clever and kind. You have such joy and energy. You don’t need male attention for people to think better of you or for you to think better of yourself. You will look back and laugh at your mistakes.” Mhairi makes me read it out loud. I need several more gulps of champagne.
We move on to the results of my psychometric test. I am not, in fact, a psychopath, I am a “persuader” – full of ideas and energy. The report she sends me on my personality type is extraordinarily accurate – and extremely useful. Not least for writing my next cover letter.
By 2pm, we are done. I catch my train feeling utterly dazed. Half an hour later I receive an email from Mhairi. “What a glorious day. Thank you for your openness and bravery. You are such a joy to be around, I hope you know that.” I am given the next steps to “continue my journey” – a mental load exercise, to work out the support I need; a partner exercise to do with my husband; more talking to my inner child. I need to write a letter to my resentment, thanking it for its uses, and I need to release myself from the past – get rid of mementos of past boyfriends, delete hurtful text messages or unhelpful photos. Mhairi will be there for me on email and WhatsApp, she promises. We will have a final session in a month, to go over anything. But the future starts now!
A week later, and, as clichéd as it might sound, the change is extraordinary. I have simply stopped resenting my husband. It’s just gone. Something has been released. I’m not sure what, or whether it will come back, but it’s incredible. I have yet to complete my exercises, of course, but I’m looking forward to the bonfire of the mementos. And I will write that letter to my resentment. Am I thankful to it? I’m not sure. But I feel unblocked. And strangely content to do the laundry.
- The author of this column has chosen to remain anonymous
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