As the therapy progressed, he slowly shut me out of a major part of his life.

Is there anyone else out there who has experienced emotions of betrayal and lack of trust in their relationship as a result of their partner going to therapy?

My de facto partner of 4 years first started therapy about 18 months ago - he stopped going after 5 months because he felt he wasn't benefiting from it. He resumed therapy again around 9 months ago, wanting to stop again at the 5 month mark but I encouraged him to keep on going. What I hadn't anticipated were my feelings of betrayal and rejection and being left out of the relationship due to the fact that my partner was sharing so much of his intimate feelings, thoughts and emotions with his therapist and not me.

As the therapy progressed, he slowly shut me out of a major part of his life. It seemed that the longer he communicated with his therapist, the less he communicated with me. This began to cause problems in our relationship and was becoming the main issue that we would fight about. It was not so much the therapy that was the problem, but the associated issues surrounding the therapy -the feelings of rejection and betrayal that I was experiencing, lack of communication between us as well as the cost of the therapy (he was going once a week). The worst thing was that he would not acknowledge these emotions and would just say that I was jealous, plain and simple. It was not a case of jealousy at all but more a feeling of "I'm his partner in life, how can he talk to a stranger about his most intimate feelings and not me?" "How do we make this relationship work if there is so much being discussed about his life that I don't know about and he doesn't want me to know - doesn't he trust me?"

Things came to breaking point recently and we almost separated. It was not until he realised how much it was affecting me that he finally acknowledged how I was feeling and that I was there to share in his life as opposed to being increasingly shut out of it. He has given up therapy for now so that we can work on the issues in our relationship that needed addressing -improved communication and shared emotional intimacy being high on the agenda. I don't know how rational or irrational my emotions are regarding the feelings of betrayal and as a result the lack of trust, not in him, but in our relationship. We have both committed ourselves to really working on our relationship and to put it first before anything else so we can resolve some of these issues. Hopefully the next time he resumes therapy there will be less emotional cost to both us and our relationship.  Anon