Life Before Counseling
No matter what your take is on counseling, one thing can be sure: your life changes after it. Sometimes it stimulates action. This could mean cohesive, focused actions to make your marriage better. It could also indicate the need for a separation, whether temporarily or permanently. Sometimes this is needed to separate two enmeshed people and aid them in focusing solely on themselves for a while.
Without counseling, you can guarantee more of the same. Problems don’t tend to “fix themselves” though we all have a belief system in place that suggests that’s possible. If we equate our relationship to, let’s say, a car, you recognize the problem with this kind of thinking. When was the last time your car “fixed itself”?
Without counseling, you can continue with a cyclical progression, where not only do problems not “fix themselves” but continue to get worse. This is because resentments build, bitter feelings harden and distance grows. It’s considerably easier to work on newer problems than ones that have been piling up for 25 years.
Life before counseling can be equated to a certain stuckness and a certain disassociation, where it’s seemingly easier to just ignore and go on with our lives. For a while, this can feel effective; looking the other way. But essentially, that isn’t what you came together for, is it? You joined with someone so you could continue your love, so it could expand and grow. Yes, you can live with a stranger and just ignore. But why should you? Don’t you and your loved one deserve better.
In our society, it’s easy to disconnect and just move on - to find all sorts of things and people to “feed the hole” instead of unearthing difficult problems and addressing them head-on. But if you’re interested in growth and a fuller life, couples counseling may be just the ticket to a more expansive you.
