Case Study
Peter and Nicky's story
Peter, 36 (a director of a logistics’ company) and Nicky Burton, 34 (a mum and part-time cleaner) had been together for five years, (married three) and with a young daughter, when Peter decided to call an end to their marriage. They had been arguing a lot, and he’d had enough. The couple even got so far as to start divorce proceedings however when Nicky became ill, Peter realised he didn’t want to lose her. So they went to Relate and worked hard on their relationship. They now have learnt how to listen to each other and admit they rarely argue any more.
Peter and Nicky Burton (in their own words)
Peter never thought he’d go to counselling. But when during divorce proceedings his wife, and mother of their young daughter, became ill Peter realised he’d do anything to keep her and they booked themselves into counselling.
Nicky said “The three months when we separated where the worst of my life, we were living together in the same house, for the sake of our daughter, but the strain was enormous. I wouldn’t mind betting this was the reason for my ill health”.
Peter said “Counselling was always a swear word to me, I’ve always dealt with everything before without help, why would now be any different?, but I soon realised that actually the way I had dealt with things, was not the way everyone did, and Relate helped me realise this, worth every penny, as now my wife and I have a fantastic relationship and are totally in love again”.
Nicky said “The counselling taught us a lot. The Relate counsellor made us understand how it felt when we said certain things to each other. I realised that while we had been arguing before we weren’t really listening to each other. It was hard but the counsellor made us work on understanding each other. Sometimes it felt like he was acting as an interpreter for us.”
“At the beginning I felt like the counselling seemed to be focussing on me, and then I realised I had a lot of things I needed to sort out for myself, in order to make our marriage work, and Peter had a few changes to make as well”
“We didn’t want to change each other as we still loved the people were, we just needed to change the way we talked about things without upsetting each other."
“Now things are very different and we really don’t have the heated arguments we had before. Things are so much better.”
“If your marriage is worth saving then Relate is certainly worth a thought, people often associate counselling with lying on a sofa and spilling your darkest, deepest secrets, that couldn’t be further than the truth, Relate counsellors are just human beings who are there to help in really difficult times.”
