Finding Common Ground through Couples Counseling
When Mark and Marcia entered couples counseling, it had been the second time they had seen the same counselor. They had been married for 14 years and were in need of some guidance or a “refresher course” as Mark put it.
Mark and Marcia never had the easiest marriage. They do not have a lot in common and have distinctly different personalities.
As Marcia puts it:
We knew we were going to have a tough time of it. But we wanted to get married anyway. We do love one another but other than that, we have nothing in common. I don’t even like his friends. He doesn’t like mine either. We can’t even have dinner parties that easily. I know we’re from two different worlds, but he’s my husband and I’m sticking with him. We just need to come here occasionally to…get on the same page. Figure out a way to continually make this work.
The couples counselor, who had worked with them two times before, gave them even more comprehensive assignments this time. He felt they had focused on their differences (as well as their families, who make jokes about it) for too long and it was time to look at the commonalities that held them together.
The counselor also began encouraging time to explore some shared interests, outside of therapy. Both had a love of baseball, for instance, though rarely went to any games together. Both loved bookstores and while early on in their relationship, they used to go book hunting, it seemed to have fallen by the wayside.
Marcia and Mark weren’t as radically different as they’d like to believe. That very belief was becoming self-limiting and a veiled excuse to not spend open up to one another. Soon, the disparaging remarks from their family (and the couple itself) began to fall by the wayside, as the couple grew and found some common ground.
