Does going to therapy or couples counseling really help solve all the issues that are tearing apart a relationship? This is the question most people are pondering as they grow desperate to save a marriage they really are not ready to let go of. The big question is whether talk sessions with someone else can really work for two people in crisis.
Before you go into a counseling session with your spouse, both of you need to understand that it is not the definite cure to all of your problems. You cannot hire someone else to do the dirty work and make things all better, no matter how skilled they may be.
Before even walking in the door to your first session, have a clear understanding that the therapist is going to give an objective point of view, not validation to your own thoughts and feelings. If you go in there expecting this person to see that you are right and "fix" your spouse, then you will get nothing out of it but frustration and disappointment.
A therapist is not going to take sides or say one person is right and the other wrong. Their job is essentially to steer the couple to working out the issues, which are created equally by both of them. They both share bits and pieces of the blame, but therapy is not about blame.
What a therapist does is get you to ultimately open up to one another so that the root issues standing in the way of happiness can be discovered. Believe it or not, the real issues are not who forgets to take out the trash or who forgot someone's birthday.
If you don't fix the deeper issues the marriage will only continue to unravel.
In order to get to the bigger problems you have to go into counseling without the idea that someone is right and the other wrong. You have to be willing to just listen to your spouse without assuming what their words mean for you personally.
For example, instead of getting defensive that she says she feels lonely and screaming that you have to work so it's not your fault; just listen. Don't translate it to mean anything about you. She is lonely. That is all.
In order to save a marriage with the help of therapy, this husband would have to be willing to quietly listen to his wife talk about the loneliness without automatically assuming it is directed as an assault on him. He has to listen selflessly for it to work.
Before you go into a counseling session with your spouse, both of you need to understand that it is not the definite cure to all of your problems. You cannot hire someone else to do the dirty work and make things all better, no matter how skilled they may be.
Before even walking in the door to your first session, have a clear understanding that the therapist is going to give an objective point of view, not validation to your own thoughts and feelings. If you go in there expecting this person to see that you are right and "fix" your spouse, then you will get nothing out of it but frustration and disappointment.
A therapist is not going to take sides or say one person is right and the other wrong. Their job is essentially to steer the couple to working out the issues, which are created equally by both of them. They both share bits and pieces of the blame, but therapy is not about blame.
What a therapist does is get you to ultimately open up to one another so that the root issues standing in the way of happiness can be discovered. Believe it or not, the real issues are not who forgets to take out the trash or who forgot someone's birthday.
If you don't fix the deeper issues the marriage will only continue to unravel.
In order to get to the bigger problems you have to go into counseling without the idea that someone is right and the other wrong. You have to be willing to just listen to your spouse without assuming what their words mean for you personally.
For example, instead of getting defensive that she says she feels lonely and screaming that you have to work so it's not your fault; just listen. Don't translate it to mean anything about you. She is lonely. That is all.
In order to save a marriage with the help of therapy, this husband would have to be willing to quietly listen to his wife talk about the loneliness without automatically assuming it is directed as an assault on him. He has to listen selflessly for it to work.
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