It’s been said that marriage counseling is either the first or the last step toward divorce. In conventional marriage counseling the counselor acts as an umpire.  Instead of fighting in private, they now have an audience! Perhaps this is good training for a reality television show!  Somethings have been revealed to me in counseling and in life.  One – you cannot change anyone else. Period. You may try love. You may try withdrawing love and even withdrawing sex, but you cannot manipulate or bring about change in anyone but yourself.  Two – you can never win an argument with someone you love or care about. You can hurt them.  You can point out how they are wrong. You can even make your point… but you will never win an argument. Think about this.

When we were two years old we went into “the terrible twos.” That was when we developed an agenda. It never coincided with anyone else’s,  but we tried. We felt that if we could only get our way in the world… we would be happy. How we tried. We manipulated. Some times with temper. Sometimes with anger. Sometimes we withdrew our love or warmth.  We learned how to show “conditional love. “If you give me my way, I will love you or be nice to you.” Our behavior was based on the concept of conditional love. Conditional love became one of our main tools in the continuing battle for what we believed to be our right… happiness. We felt that if things only went our way, we would be happy. When things did go our way, we weren’t happy. We’d moved on to something else that if we got our way in… we would then be happy.

It didn’t work then, and it hasn’t worked yet. It never will. Unfortunately, many of the people who are married – shouldn’t have gotten married in the first place.  Before they got married they knew that there were deficiencies in the other person that weren’t acceptable. But… they really liked or though they liked a lot of qualities in the other person, and  knew that if they could only bring about the changes in the other person that they desired, everything would be okay. We still hadn’t learned the concept of unconditional love. If playing nice didn’t work, we withheld nice… just like when we were a child. If love didn’t work, we withheld love… just like when we were a child. And then as an adult we withheld intimacy. We actually inter spaced that with threatening divorce. Not much different from saying “I hate you” to your parents or grand parents or to your friends.

We grew into adulthood with the concept in our head that if we got our way, we’d be happy. And we strove to get our way then and now, regardless of the consequences to anyone else.

How do we then change our mate? You’re not going to like this but we first start making changes in ourselves. One immediately quits condemning, complaining and criticizing. Furthermore, we discontinue threatening divorce. Many couples begin this threat soon after they get married. At that point they really aren’t contemplating it, but it is a tool designed to hurt. And it did and it does. Is there a way to salvage our relationships in a win win scenario. Actually there is.

A film was released called “Fireproof”. It showed the deterioration of a young couple’s relationship and marriage. The film was on target. If getting our way is the only way that we can be happy… and if unconditional love instead of conditional love is a concept that we won’t buy into, there isn’t much that can be done.

Remember when you were courting each other. You were considerate. You respected each other’s desires and opinions. You were thoughtful. You were caring. You always put your best foot forward. But when you were sure that you had captured the other person – you began to take them for granted. This could well have happened before you got married. But, there was a certain momentum going and anyway it was too late to stop things as the invitations had gone out.

Your first and foremost objective  should not be to cut and run. If you want to fix your marriage, it is counter productive to spend great amounts of my time and your energy attempting to prove just how wrong, how unjust, and how unfair your mate is. Once both of you have stated your case, and you’ll have plenty of time to do so, what is needed is to move on and fix things. I am not going to sit there each session and be a referee. What is the point in that? Once again – the relationship needs fixed… not rehashed. In all but a very very few cases, not only will the relationship be saved… but it will be much much better than it ever was before. I’ve never seen a troubled relationship where it was all one persons fault. What if your focus was to change deficits in you and let your partner change their own deficits?  We all have them. Wouldn’t it change the dynamics of the healing process? It was stated earlier in this article that you cannot change the other person. You really can’t.  There are many many things that can be done to save most marriages… as long as the parties do not let false pride get in the way and they both give it a 110% effort.  Once again, fixing blame is not as rewarding as fixing the relationship!

If you want to save your relationship call Bob Crow at 404.277.1827 for a complimentary appointment.

Tags: Marriage Counseling, stop fighting

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 at 6:45 am and is filed under Financial Problems, Marriage Counseling, Relationships. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.