Gertrude,
I am the one who had the therapist who I talked about being angry with. She was initially my husband's therapist for ptsd and addiction and then I was asked to participate in couples counseling with my husband with her as our couples  therapist. She KNEW then what I did not. She knew whatever my husband had told her about his childhood sexual abuse and she specifically told me that discussing it with him was not good for him. Even though the discovery of this secret also traumatized me. Nobody helped me to deal with it or to consider the implications. She KNEW he had SSA and he had acted on it yet I was never let in on THAT information. Instead we talked about our love languages and she encouraged us to rekindle our sex life as a couple. Of course he was lukewarm about this although I tried so hard to participate in all of it to help HIM. At the time I thought his lack of interest was from his many other issues, medications, drinking and not due to SSA. THAT was the puzzle piece that was purposely hidden from me. I am not going to sue her but I am still angry at how I was played.  I sincerely feel it was a huge ethical violation on her part. She had no business being our couples counselor. I made a big financial, emotional and physical effort to do everything to try to help my husband heal and if I had KNOWN I would have made a different choice. My husband took that choice away from me but she completely took advantage of my vulnerability at that time. She did additional harm to me. And I am still angry. 16 months past my discovery of TGT. I just wanted to share here what happened to me. I hope I did not interfere with your pastor topic. I just felt there was a small similarity because other people knew yet they threw out our well-being for whatever reason. Thank you for responding to me.

Hi, Goonnowgo,

I hope i did not hurt you by my response.  I do agree that what happened to you was unethical and I also agree that it is so very similar to what I went through.  Someone in a special position of trust practiced deception.  Thsi person may not have out and out lied but she practiced deception by omission.  There surely coudl have been ways for her to step away from this counselling relationship if your husband did not admit his SSA to you.  I would surely feel quite violated by this, as I have felt quite violated by my own situation. 

I am wondering a little if she thought he was simply bisexual rather than straight out gay and thought that the marriage could survive this.  Even so, You should have had a "say"over this. In my mind, she shoudl have demanded that he open up to you or she woudl cease the therapy since deception is a very poor foundation for marriage.   I really wonder how good her training was in marriage and family issues.  Most family therapists I know would immediately see the problems in all of this and seek to find a better, creative way that somehow still did not compromise yoru ex-spouses confidentiality in the previous one-on-one cousnelling relationship.

Where I find my situation to be a little different is that I sometimes base my shaky forgiveness of my former pastor on the understanding that he was a youngish 35 year old man without concrete training in marriage and family therapy.  I sometimes like to think that he woudl not do the same thing now, with all of his years of mistake-making behind him.  Where I find your situation to be a little more incredible is that, I assume, your therapist may well have had some formal training and shoudl have known better, shoudl have known how to do better, should not have let things drag on for five whole years.

What I have treid to also communicate is that there are lots of things that most of us would considerr to be unethical that are also legal and even sometimes considered o.k. by professional colleges.  It doesn't make them right.  Those are two very different things, sometimes, and at other times they lien up with each other perfectly.  And I am sure what is considered ethical and "o.k" varies from professional college to professional college and from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.  Our combined stories would make a good foundation for a professional ethics class.  Things are not simple and professionals of all stripes need to understand all of this complexity and realize that they can't look at confidentiality rules only and wash their hands of other responsibilities. 

So...I don't know what you want to do with this...are you simply looking for some comradely empathy, sympathy, and a shared sense of frustration?  You can certainly find that support on this website as I am sure you have prior to my coming along.  This is a good forum.

On the other hand, do you want to stop this sort of thing from happening again?  Do you want to hold this therapist to account?  Do you even feel strong enough to confront this therapist in an even-keeled and articulate way?  Or do you need more time or do you even want to do that?  Do you want to report her to her professional college?  Do you want to talk to a lawyer to see if getting back the funds spent in useless therapy is even possible?

I certainly do not feel that you have hijacked my "issue".   I'm still trying to find out if anyone else has had a clergyperson practice this sort of, in some ways, hard to pin down error.  But it also is helpful to know that it also happened in similar settings.  

It almost seems that a couple of things are needed...
- a way for premarital counsellors of all stripes to gently challenge engaged couples about their own perceptions of their sexual orientation and how they communicate that to each other
- special training about how to handle probably destructive secrets in relationships when confidentiality boundaries cloud the issue.

I think you are quite right to be angry, and just stay safe with your anger, meaning, find constructive ways to let it out,such as on this forum.  In fact, you need to let it out or risk the depression that i have struggled with.  I don't know you at all so I don't know if your anger would let you do anything that might ultimately be unwise for you in the long run.  Just a gentle, supportive suggestion to find and hang onto wise counsellors who can keep you going in the right direction.

Take care!!!
 

Dear Goonowgo,
I've just re-read your post and realized that you had already decided not to sue the former therapsit so I should not have goen anywhere near there in my own reply.  Sorry again fro not listening closely enough.

Kel,

I too wonder if any premarital interventions by professionals might not help at all...it's really hard to know, though, without someone doing a semi-rigourous study of the matter.  A good master's thesis topic in a social work program, for example?  Someone, someday, will do this, no doubt.

I still wonder, if, in addition to askign gentle questions abotu sexual orientation, an extra layer of public education/teaching might be helpful.  So, in the public sphere, for example, the odd newspaper article or post that we see about consequences for the straight spouse surely has to have some sort of impact on gay individuals..surely it causes some to take at least a little pause about deceptively entering into a mixed orientation marriage?

There are some, but not many, studies to document consequences....Amity Pierce Buxton is the big example, for instance.  I have also seen statistics about literally 50% of straight spouses experiencing suicidal ideation at some point after disclosure, for example (but this number was not presented in a way wherein the numbers coudl be tracked ot their original source for verification, so I am not at all sure about it!).  Certainly, I knew someone who knew someone who killed himself after the spouse came out.  (I'm sure not advocating this...these feelings pass and get better!)

Anyway, I'm still wondering if brave clergy might not want to include some of this gritty stuff in sermons, especially if it could be well backed up by science, and with children not present, of course.  This coupled with gentle questions presented in premarital counselling might spare at least a few people? 

If nothing else, even if not one person was helped by them, if these things were sort of standard practice, then clergy/other premarital professionals could know that they had done "due diligence".  And we could know that too.  We could feel safe that these people, so often intimately involved in our marriage processes, had done everything possible to prevent our fate. 

We would feel supported, instead of, in the odd situation like mine or goonowgo's, feeling betrayed.

And perhaps this aspect of having to  introduce this topic in premarital counselling/sermons would prompt/help different/better actions by clergy/professionals when SSA emerged after marriage?

Just some ideas.