Sandesh (age 50) & his wife Swati (age 46) approached our clinic with common relationship conflict, but nothing serious until his wife got fed up of his “not so caring” attitude. They had a love marriage and are together from the past 20 years. They are blessed with twins, a boy and girl aged 16.
By nature, Sandesh was reserved, just to himself, extremely introvert and a submissive man. He mostly had no opinions or interest in anything. This behaviour was not appreciated by his wife, despite the fact that they had a love marriage. On a typical day, Sandesh would just follow his routine of work and get home and stay indoor cocooned, with minimal or no interaction.
In Couple Counselling sessions they shared that they had a love marriage & Swati was his school buddy. She did try her luck on figuring out what was running in his mind that he refused to sneak out of the house or socialise. Initial years went by taking care of the kids & career, so she didn’t give heed to his weird behaviour.
Lately, his behaviour was noted by his family and friends. When asked for help by his kids he would shun them. Even, if anyone at work tried to raise their voice against him, he would breakdown. If she would try to persuade him, he would refrain within a second! She received feedback from people at work, neighbours and their own kids were coming back with complaints about his snobbish behaviour, and she thought it was time for some professional help.
After a couple of conjoint counselling sessions, we suggested him for an individual session to understand his issues better. During the counselling session, it was initially very difficult for him to speak about the past, but eventually, he disclosed that he had a troubled childhood.
He confessed that he was physically abused by his relative when he was just 12. Since he was the oldest amongst siblings and his parents were very strict he couldn’t speak the truth to them. Not knowing what to does he started taking help from magazines etc. Unfortunately, his mother found some obscene magazines in his room and without given a minute to explain to him, they thrashed and grounded him for months. This created a whirlpool of negativity in the psyche of his mind.
He became extremely submissive which was overtime mistaken as being “reserved”. He stated that he has been all this while being convinced that he is a failure, introvert, submissive etc, and he has blindly accepted all without giving any explanation to himself.
We made him understand that he should not be feeling guilty about what has happened in the past as it was not his fault. We helped him in gaining his confidence back and worked with his self-esteem issues. He started interacting with people and slowly became assertive on how he feels and how he wants things in his life to be. He started taking care of his comfort zone and started enjoying life. Now, he has improved enormously and is a confident man. Lastly, the relationship with his wife has also improved drastically.