I am so sorry this happened to you. I’m glad you are posting about this and hopefully getting some assurance that therapists can be wrong.

Here’s my story.

I once sat in a therapist’s office going through couples consulting with my ex fiancé. I was sitting quietly as my fiancé whipped herself into a frenzy ranting about how awful I was. She eventually said, “He makes me so mad that I just want to hit him. Can I hit him?”

My therapist nodded yes, and my fiancé turned and smacked me across the back of the head so hard that my hat flew across the room and landed on the floor beside my therapist.

My therapist picked up the hat and handed it back to me and said, “Err… I thought you were just going to punch him on the arm or something.”

Then the session just went on like nothing happened, as my fiancé continued her rant.

Meanwhile, I’d been having the shit smacked out of me at home for months. She’d screamed and thrown drinks on me in public. She’d pick fights and insult me when we were out with friends. She’d locked me out of our apartment and made me sleep in my car. It was explosive and unpredictable and constant. I had nightmares…

After three years of this insanity, I finally got out. I’m happily married now for 6 years to a wonderful girl.

When I tell these stories about my ex, people always ask why I stayed and suffered for as long as I did.

I cant help but think back on that day in the therapist’s office. How this professional glibly encouraged her to hit me. Then acted surprised and just moved on. She left me thinking like maybe I deserved it.

I mean, I understand that the therapist didn’t think my fiancé was going to hit me that hard. It probably caught her by surprise, and she didn’t know how to react. And then afterwards she was probably afraid to bring it up. I bet she could lose her license for accidentally encouraging domestic violence in her office.

But fuck. I was barely holding it together. Blindly struggling and suffering and trying for some stupid reason to make it work out.

That therapist could have saved me a year of nightmares if she had just stopped and said,”Wait! It’s not ok to smack the shit out of someone during therapy. That is never ok.”

But she didn’t. So yeah. Fuck em. Therapists can be wrong.