Taking the Time to Heal in Couples Counseling
This is a day and age of the “quick fix.” People want results yesterday. The idea of healing is becoming harder to comprehend because healing by its very nature is progressive - it takes time. Laura and James, a couple married 4 years, began to learn that lesson after several sessions with a marriage counselor.
Laura had an extramarital affair during their first year of marriage. She had an affair with a close friend of James, which only added to the deep sense of betrayal he was feeling. They hadn’t sought counseling at the time and instead “fought their way through it” as Laura put it:
I thought we had moved past it. We talked, we fought, we cried. James moved out briefly but came back. I didn’t know what else we were supposed to do. After a year went by, I thought we were in the clear. Things were alright for a bit. But once I started working for another friend of his, James would start harassing me again; asking me questions, picking me up at work. Our trust really seems broken.
What James and Laura did was sweep the problem under the rug. While the fighting might have seemed like a form of processing, it wasn’t. James felt his feelings were never truly heard by Laura. In counseling, both were encouraged to genuinely listen to each other and understand the depth of the frayed emotional state they were both experiencing. Laura also recognized that this would take time:
I think in counseling, I realized, maybe for the first time, just how long this will take. Trust is built over time. And it’s an active thing. I have to actively be a trusting person as well as a trustworthy person. I don’t think I’ll think in terms of it just ‘putting it behind me.’ Our marriage is about moving forward now.
