bpd mess, I'm so glad it went well! I hope it will prove helpful to you to have your H go to some sessions. Do you know what you will work on with your H in your joint sessions? Are you doing couples therapy? Or is it so your H can better appreciate your issues? Or something else? When my H came to therapy, we did about 10 sessions together, and met every other week. The weeks off, I had individual sessions with my T. I found this very helpful to me to keep going by myself as I still had individual work to do, and I needed a lot of support due to life events.

So if your T is able to see you alone and with your H, that is great. Some Ts operate from a paradigm that doesn't allow them to see a client both individually and as part of a couple. My T is a family systems therapist and this type of T has training and a theoretical stance that allows them to see multiple members of the same family, in different combinations. I saw my T also with my whole family for a few sessions. The more members the T meets, the more information he gets about the family. (I saw a different family systems T for something else once, and he was the same way.) My T told me that when the first member of the family to see him is an individual, as in my case, and a strong relationship has been built, sometimes the client cannot tolerate having other members of her family come in, as she feels abandoned or like the T is being unfaithful to her. It can be hard! My T warned me of this possibility before my H joined us in therapy, and told me to watch for it, and if it wasn't going to work for me, then it wasn't, and he could refer us to another family T for the couples work. But I didn't have a problem with it. My T was able to maintain a close relationship with me and start to build one with my H (right in front of my eyes!). It was actually pretty cool to watch. You will get to know your T better through this experience. There was a time I remember a joint session did not go well and I told T at the next individual session that I was not going to do any more couples sessions. T said "what???" LOL. He determined I had felt abandoned by him at the session (his interpretation), and he said he would watch for that in the future, pay closer attention to me, and if he felt me in need of him he would give me more of himself, so I would be able to feel our connection. He told me he would provide a stronger presence to me. And he said I could reach out for him too if I needed more. It all sounds a bit murky, but he knows how to do this, and we did better after that. (I think now that we are back to individual I would like to look him in the eye and say, "I need more of you, T," or "I need a stronger presence from you today, T" and see what actions he takes to provide that. )

From what you write, bpdm, it sounds like your T is experienced with seeing different members of the same family, and your first joint session went well, which bodes well for future sessions.