After The Storm (Sequel)

Couples Therapy

Liliana's pov

"What would you all say that your goal is with attending therapy?" Our therapist asked as Jackson and I sat beside each other awkwardly. Though I had been to therapy before, being in couples therapy and discussing all of the problems in my marriage was completely different and somewhat nerve-wracking.

"We want to save our marriage. I don't want to lose my family." Jackson said.

"What about you Mrs. Avery?" Our therapist asked focusing on me.

"I love my husband and I want to fix our marriage, but we have a lot of problems that led to us being here and we need to fix them before just jump back into things." I answered honestly as the therapist nodded her head.

"What would you say those problems are?"

"There's been a lot. We've had issues with communication, disrespect, selfishness, forgiveness" I sighed.

"Would you agree with that Mr. Avery?"

"Yeah, I've made some mistakes that I'm not proud of. I'm not perfect, but there have been mistakes on both sides."

"You're right. I never said all the blame is on you." I said.

"If you both could name the top 3 things you are looking to improve with therapy, what would you say?"

"Moving forward I want to feel like my wife trusts me again, that our marriage is a priority for both of us, and I want her to forgive me."

"When has our marriage not been a priority for me?" I frowned.

"I'm not trying to say it in a bad way I'm just saying since we became parents it's hard to make time for each other as a couple. Sometimes we're so busy focusing on parenting and work that we don't focus on our relationship as much as I would like."

"Do you feel like there's truth to that statement." She asked looking over towards me.

"Somewhat." I agreed as she wrote some notes down on her notepad.

"Okay Mrs. Avery, what 3 things would you say that you want to improve moving forward?"

"I feel like we need better communication, I need to feel like my wishes are respected, and I agree with Jackson that we both need to work on forgiveness."

"I notice that you both mentioned forgiveness. Would you each give me a brief summary of what exactly you want forgiveness for starting with you Mr. Avery."

"Yeah, I messed up a lot over these last couple of months. I put another woman before my wife and I went against her wishes. I wasn't the husband that she needed and I ended up hurting her, which is something that I never wanted to do?" He admitted.

"Mrs. Avery?" She said turning her attention to me.

"Well, I honestly feel like Jackson is still angry with me for leaving Seattle after our baby died." I admitted. Losing a baby changes your marriage forever and it honestly felt like our marriage had never fully recovered.

"What?" Jackson frowned looking over at me.

"It's true."

"It's not." He shook his head.

"Well it's how I feel Jackson." I sighed folding my arms.

"Okay, first I want to say that I'm sorry for your loss." She said to us. "I would like to back up and start back to where this started if you are in a place to discuss it."

"Well, we lost our son George a few years ago and it was obviously very hard. We both had our own individual ways of recovering and for me, I couldn't recover while being here so I left for a few months to stay in Washington DC." I sighed. "Jackson felt like I abandoned him and I wasn't here for him during one of the most difficult times of his life and we almost got divorced."