Dear Queenie,
My wife and I have some problems that we can’t seem to solve by talking to each other. I want to go for counselling, but she refuses because she won’t discuss private matters with someone else. But at the same time she tells her mother everything that goes on between us and asks her for advice.
Queenie, is it wrong of me to feel she violated my confidence by talking to her mother about our private matters when she won’t go to a counsellor?—Offended husband
Dear Husband,
Your wife does not consider her mother to be “someone else,” but more like an extension of herself to whom she has been taking her troubles all her life. Try to explain to your wife that to you her mother is just as much “someone else” as a counsellor would be.
And if you cannot make your wife understand your point of view, go for counselling without her for help in learning to deal with those problems you mentioned.
