Where do most couples end up when their marriage starts to fall apart? For the most part it is couples therapy or counseling of some nature, right? When neither person wants to let go but they do not know how to fix their issues, then they turn to an objective third party to show them the way. The question is whether counseling can actually save a marriage.
Many people go into the sessions expecting someone else to shoulder some of the work of getting the marriage back on the road of happiness. This is an unrealistic expectation as no one can do the actual work that leads to the restoration of a marriage besides the married people themselves.
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.
This is not what a therapist is there to do. They are not going to take sides, mainly because there is no one person who is right in a marriage. Problems are a collective mess and both people have some things they are doing wrong and some things they are doing completely right.
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.
Couples who go into therapy knowing that finger pointing is useless and they both have their own flaws have a higher chance of success. Both people have to be willing to put their own defensiveness aside and just listen to one another.
Let’s consider an example. A man goes into a session and hears his wife saying how lonely she is. He feels this is an attack on him for not being home and he starts saying how he is the one always working and she just sits at home. She is now defensive as well. Yet, what would have happened if he just heard that she was lonely and did not make it about his work pattern? What if he just simply listened?
If you want to save a marriage through therapy sessions then you can’t automatically feel blamed by your spouse’s problems. It’s extremely difficult to hear that the other is lonely without blaming yourself, but that is what must be done to make this approach work.
I think you’ll find this article helpful too, if you did, I reckon you’ll want to read this as well: Save Your Marriage or the magic of making up or Learn How To Save A Marriage
