What Do You Have To Gain?
Couples Counseling Ins & Outs
“What do I have to lose?” Many couples enter therapy asking themselves this question. Often drowning in hopelessness, they sink towards despair or divorce. Checking the box on way to the lawyer’s office, Couples Counseling is seen as a last-ditch effort. The other option is a lifetime of committed misery.
Does this picture seem too bleak to those of you who’ve never been there? I assure you people are living this way behind strained smiles. Souls everywhere are dying to connect. They just don’t know how and it’s not their fault. They try. But something goes amiss.
It doesn’t have to be like this. Couples counseling doesn’t have to be about, “What you have to lose”, but rather what you have to gain. Growing as a couple is an extraordinary opportunity to become a whole human being. And I don’t mean in the soulmate type of way.
What happened to love?
When we fall in love, we fall for people who feel “right”. It’s this “rightness” metric which causes the trouble. We are wired to swoon for those who remind us of somebody we know. Whether you like it or not, consciously, or unconsciously you married someone from your family of origin. (Ew no, not literally!) But you married the same traits, healthy and unhealthy. Was your mom passive aggressive? Your partner likely is too. Was your dad emotionally unavailable? Hubby probably has similar qualities.
It may not be one trait for one, but the patterning is there. Was Dad an alcoholic? You might have avoided marrying an alcoholic, but does your partner prioritize work over family? Do they just need to get one more thing done before spending time with you and the kids? It’s the same pattern with different packaging.
We don’t notice, at first, the frustrating traits we told our parents we were never going to repeat in our own families. We are blinded by love. (Well, oxytocin and the honeymoon effect to be exact.) There is something so comforting to be with someone so familiar on all levels. That is, until a certain number of years have passed...
The Opportunity
We trip into codependency when we think the answer is to change our partner. But hear me out. Growing up with a passive aggressive mother created a certain pattern of behavior in YOU which attracts and accepts passive aggressive behavior in those around you. Yeah. Let that sink in.
Similarly, growing up with an emotionally unavailable father created a pattern of behavior in you which attracts and accepts this behavior in others. YOU also need to change. Then you’ll stop accepting the unhealthy behavior of those around you
How Couples Counseling Helps
When working on this change in couples counseling with two willing partners something synergistic happens. Both people’s patterns and wounds get revealed at the same time. And all too often they go together like a plug and socket. (Pun intended.)
The relationship has a life of its own. As a result, it becomes the client not the people on the couch. Together you’ll learn to observe your unhealthy patterns and what they are doing to you and your spouse. You’ll create new cycles and nip unhealthy ones in the bud. By experiencing healing with your person (who has a special way of uprooting your childhood wounds) you heal your past, your present, your future, and your children’s future. Once you deal with the old patterns and create new ones, you’ll no longer be passing on that which hurt the two of you.
I stand by what I said at the beginning. “What do I have to lose” is the wrong question. Start asking yourselves, “What do we have to gain?”
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