Guilt doesn’t often show up in couples counseling, and couples using guilt to parent their children is infrequent. I’m more likely to hear from couples about their parents using guilt when the couples were children. Fortunately, it seems guilt is less popular these days as a parenting technique.

However, guilt recently showed up in a couple’s counseling session. The husband said, “You’d rather be alone than be with me.” The husband wanted to spend time with his wife, and could have said so. Instead, he used guilt to get her to spend time with him. Using guilt to convince is manipulative. This makes it less likely that the wife would want to spend time with him. 

There is no place for guilt in relationships.