Who Needs Counseling?
Is counseling just for couples who are fighting, like the couple in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days?
I recently watched this movie with a group of friends. If you’ve never seen it, it’s about a journalist who is writing an article about all the worst habits in relationships that lead them to implode. Things like being inappropriately clingy, accusatory, and invasive. As “research” for her article, she dates a man and purposefully exhibits these behaviors, hoping to get him to break up with her.
The only problem is that this man wants to keep the relationship going. His friends suggest couples therapy with the hilarious line: “Every time my wife wants to divorce me, I suggest couples therapy! It always buys me at least four months!”
At least four months gets me every time. I wonder how many years this guy has been married on that strategy!
I used to cringe when I heard the words counseling and therapy. It sounded uncomfortable, it sounded judgmental. It sounded like something you do when you’re desperate and see no way out. I didn’t realize the truth about counseling until Joshua and I were engaged.
Turns Out, We Do
Our chaplain suggested we try couples counseling on our campus. He explained that though we had no issues in our relationship that warranted “therapy,” he had seen dozens of couples get married over the years. Those who did pre-marital counseling handled marital conflict much better than those who just ticked items off an engagement checklist.
So, a little reluctantly on my part, we signed up for couples counseling.
When I called the therapy clinic, I was asked a series of preliminary questions about our relationship. They were things like: how long have you been together, do you cohabitate, do you have children? At the start of our first session, the counselor asked us to tell her how we met and how Joshua proposed. When we finished excitedly recounting our story, she paused and said words I’ll always be proud of:
“So, why are you guys in counseling?”
She explained that she had never heard a couple be so happy when they began a session. Our level of respect for each other and our excitement to share the early stages of our dating and engagement blew her away. According to her, people did not often sound like us when they came in for counseling. She said that she had been waiting the last few minutes to hear about some horrible disaster or conflict that had led us into her office.
Why Counseling Can Benefit Everybody
We told her about our chaplain’s advice to go through premarital counseling. Her happiness with us only increased, and she said: “If more people did this, there would be a lot fewer divorces.”
During our counseling appointments, this is what I realized. Counseling is not a last-ditch-nothing-to-lose emergency surgery to try to save your dying relationship. Instead, it’s a personalized learning experience that helps you and your partner learn to take better care of your relationship during difficult times. I am so grateful that we took our chaplain’s advice and experienced pre-marital counseling. It empowered us to seek help when we were struggling before the birth of our first child. Though this was the most wonderful time of our lives, it came with a lot of trials and anxieties we weren’t ready for.
What I discovered during counseling applies to you too: wanting to seek help does not have to mean that your relationship is broken. You’re not damaged people if you go to counseling. We all must learn new things to keep growing.
