Marital Counseling Requires a lot of Effort
It’s not easy to “spill your guts” to a complete stranger but if that stranger is a marriage counselor it may be necessary in order to save your marriage.
Marriage counselors are not the miracle workers some people think they are and they’re certainly not the “troublemakers” other people think they are. What they are is there to facilitate communication between the wife and the husband so that marital issues can be resolved if that is the common goal of the couple.
It is a lot of work to commit to rehashing hurt feelings and talking about all the things that have made both partners unhappy. It’s even more work to change the behaviors that resulted in the unhappiness. Some people want to be right more than they want to be happy and when this happens it can be extremely difficult to resolve marital issues.
Dr. Phil McGraw, author and daytime host of the Dr. Phil show often asks spouses whose marriage is in trouble, “Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?” It’s a sobering thought to realize that so many of us are “right fighters.”
Dr. Phil asks couples whose marriages are in trouble to ask themselves a question each and every morning, it is, “What can I do today to make my marriage better?” In this way, instead of focusing on changing the person you can’t change, your spouse, you are focusing on making changes through the person you can change – yourself.
Marriage counseling does require a lot of effort but is well worth it when you can emerge from it with your marriage and your happiness intact.
