Every few months, three or four times a year,
when driving to or from the counseling office
while thinking or praying for clients,
I write a poem
here’s a recent one
It helps me let go of the outcomes
while still holding on to hope for them
especially when things get really hard
I hope it might encourage you if this is something you’re struggling with
even if you are single and not in a relationship right now.
Here’s a video blog (in three parts) for newlyweds on some areas to watch for as you start married life. I’ve included a written summary below (not a transcription).
It was fun to make this but hard to organize.
I might make this a blog series to say more in depth about each area.
“You get what you create and you get what you allow.” – Henry Cloud
Here are a few areas that are worth paying attention to early on in marriage, being aware of them and dealing with them proactively can help you create the marriage and family you’ve dreamed about and prevent unhealthy and destructive behaviors, attitudes and patterns from damaging your marriage. Marriage can be the absolute greatest thing, it can also be the hardest, scariest, stressful thing. Getting off to a good start can be extremely helpful.
Talking about, exploring and working on these areas will help you flesh out what your marriage will look and sound like on the surface and on a deeper level, help you define what it will be at its core, its heart.
1) Practical matters. Deciding and sorting out what your marriage and home will look like. Where will everything go? Where will you live? Who will pay the bills? Who will take out the trash? There are dozens or hundreds of little, mundane, everyday choices to sort out. This is also related to the issue of…
2) Time.
How will you spend your time? Together and alone. How will you balance it? This is something to work through day-to-day, week-to-week. Pulling back, there is also the question of what will the rhythm of your year look? How will you spend the holidays? How will you balance work and leisure and vacations? And an even bigger picture question, what will you give your lives to? How will you invest your life, in terms of work and career? That touches on the bigger question of…
3) Meaning.
What will all this mean? What will getting married mean to you? Individually and as a couple? Often, little issues become big issues because there are underlying issues as stake in conflict and in the process of sorting things out at the start of marriage. Tim Keller in the book The Meaning of Marriage describes a dynamic that a lot of couples face today: a deep disillusionment about marriage, on one hand, and a deep hope or expectation about marriage at the same time. We can bring a lot of unspoken, deep rooted fears, hurts and hopes to marriage and a few weeks of pre-marital counseling often just touches the surface of them. Having doubts, second thoughts, anxiety about marriage can be really For Christians, marriage is a symbol of the relationship of Christ and the church; what will that look like for us?
4) Identity.
Who am I now as a married person? What will be different now? What will our marriage be? Even couples that have been together for years can be shaken by the new realities and identity of being married. Where do I end? and where do we begin? What issues are mine? What issues are ours? What does the role of being your husband, or wife look like? Who will I be to you? Will it be what we saw modeled and defined by our parents or will we create something different?
5) Communication and conflict resolution.
Listening well, expressing empathy, giving honest feedback. Make it a habit to give honest feedback, even if it’s hard and risks conflict. The pain of feedback early on is much less than the pain of going along and being less than honest and the whole truth coming out later. Develop language or a ritual of apology, making amends, forgiving and reconciling. Learn how to support each other during stress and struggle vs. fixing them. Learn how to ask for help and what you want. Be assertive and don’t just give in and comply in order to collaborate and create agreements and solutions that work for both of you.
6) Sex.
Sexual intimacy ideally is a natural expression of the emotional and spiritual intimacy you experience. It is also something that develops and grows. Address early on (get help if necessary) struggles, in order to get off to a good start. Whether you wait for marriage to be sexually intimate or have been prior to marriage, the transition in to marriage and all the changes mentioned above can make this area difficult. It can be hard to talk about, something that ought to help you feel closer becoming something that pushes you apart. Hurt, rejection, “failure”, anxiety, tension, avoidance, frustration, impatience, feeling used can all quickly enter in to derail this vital area of marital happiness and satisfaction.
7) Stress.
Related to #5. As a couple, it will help to communicate about health and unhealthy ways to cope and manage stress (and busyness). Stress often impairs or kills empathy. Be vigilant at deal with it and other gremlins, like unfair fighting, selfishness, dishonesty. One of the couples I worked with said it well in describing their struggles: “We had lost our ability to console each other.” Protect that, it’s one of the best things about being married, having someone who can console and support and be there for you. If not, the person who you turned to for support and comfort can easily become the one who causes hurt and stress.
What do you think? Is there another area that you would add for newly married couples to pay attention to?
One way to decide if counseling would be helpful vs going out for coffee or a date night is when the way you talk (or don’t talk) about your problems becomes the problem, when trying to talk drives you further apart, not closer.
When communication breaks down it can be so frustrating for both husbands and wives. I wrote this too for guys who aren’t sure if counseling would help or be worth it.
Guys,
What if I told you there was a place you could take your wife and you could talk calmly and efficiently and come to agreements about your conflicts.
A place where your need to think things through inside before replying outloud would be honored and uninterrupted.
A place where you would listen to each to other and find the words to understand each other and feel validated and heard.
You wouldn’t have to numb or shut off your emotions but could express them because you’d learn to contain them and not be overwhelmed.
A place where the stress of the present doesn’t steal away the joys of the past or the hope for the future.
There might be some crying involved but it would only take an hour and you’d leave as friends or at least with the hope that you might be again someday?
That it may seem like weakness but to your spouse it’d be the most courageous thing you could do for her.
And really not just for her but for the both of you.
What if I told you it could make all the difference.
Would you go?
I get questions about counseling in my inbox sometimes.
Here are some local Christian counseling recommendations and resources.
First of all, I recommend my friends at A New Day Counseling Center which is on the campus of Western Seminary. We have a team of counselors and psychologists that work with a variety of concerns and also accept different types of insurance.
We also have student interns that receive excellent supervision and can see folks for $20 a session.
Here are a few counselors and counseling clinics I recommend.
Feel free to recommend others below. Apologies to anyone I’ve left off.
For marriage counseling:
Jason Wilkinson at Wellspace Counseling. This is an interview I did with Jason.
Alan Rutherford sees individuals and couples. My wife and I enjoyed and benefited from a Marriage class Alan did for Imago Dei Community.
Roxie Sprick at Gresham Family Counseling.
In town, Nate Bagley and Bridge City Counseling
In Sandy/Gresham Dave and Hollis at River Ridge Counseling
On the west side, Aaron at Discover Counseling
In Clackamas, Cornerstone Clinical and Connie at Partners in Hope
In Springfield, Scott Waters at Veritas Community Counseling. Here is an interview on marriage counseling with Scott.
In Vancouver, Charis Counseling and Fir Crest Behavioral Health.
Julia Garrison at Garrison Counseling Services. This is an interview I did with Julia.
In Battleground, Parkway Counseling.
When looking for a counselor, I recommend reading the info and bios at the counseling center’s website for the areas they specialize in, their experience, their description of their approach to counseling, and see if it resonates with you. You can also call their office usually to ask questions to help you decide.
These days many counselors do telehealth (online video) sessions so you can meet with counselors who are not in your immediate area or city. You will need to schedule with a counselor who is licensed in the state you live in.
Some folks ask me if there are counselors I recommend at Kaiser. Since I don’t work in the mental health department there I recommend folks with KP insurance make an intake appointment and ask to be assigned to a Christian counselor. Sometimes, KP members are able to get an external referral to clinics outside the KP offices. I think clinics like Western Psychological Services may take these referrals and you might be able to find a Christian provider there.
Briefly, I’ll say here, if you are a Christian you don’t always have to have a Christian counselor to benefit from counseling. I’ll probably blog more about why that’s true here. If you’ve found that to be true for you, I invite you to comment about your experience in the comments.
I often recommend support groups, they can be extremely helpful in recovery, healing, and making difficult changes.
Divorce Care has a website with good information and several support groups locally and nationally. It is also helpful for couples and families that are going through a separation.
Celebrate Recovery also has several groups that meet at churches in the area. It is helpful for a variety of issues.
Refuge at Imago Dei Community in Portland meets on Mon evenings. Their website also has a list of Christian counselors.
Pure Life Alliance has groups for men and women struggling with porn and sexual addiction. They also offer groups for spouses and significant others that have been hurt by their partner’s struggle.
Here’s a website I recommend frequently as well
Cloudtownsend.com – I recommend their books on Boundaries all the time, their video advice channels cover many topics related to relationships, emotional health, etc. They also have Q&A replies to many questions related to mental health. I really appreciate their perspectives on integrating faith and psychology.
One of the main things I’d like to blog about is marriage counseling.
If you read or follow this blog you’ll learn about what marriage counseling is like in general and counseling with me specifically.
Not everyone would want or be able to do counseling or coaching with me in person but I want to share the things that I’ve seen that is helpful to the clints I’ve worked with.
If I write enough perhaps there will be enough for a book someday:
Marriage Counseling for those who won’t go but need it.
Even if that doesn’t ever happen, I hope these posts will encourage you in the meantime.
One thing about coming to marriage counseling is you don’t really go for answers as much as the questions.
You can get a ton of helpful info on the Internet and in books about marriage, communication, resolving conflict, parenting; I’ll be sharing my favorite resources here in fact.
What counseling does beyond passing along information and advice is help you process the info in a helpful, relevant way by making it personal to you.
One way is by bringing up questions like,
“What’s one thing that you wish your spouse understood about your right now?”
Or
“What’s one thing your spouse could do or say that would help you trust them better?”
The insight you get from the questions isn’t what really produces change either,
it’s the choices you make.
The choices you make together by going through the process of exploring what’s really going on inside, untangling all the things that are influencing your present experience and getting more clarity on who you really are or what to become.
There’s a lot of things that get in the way of doing what we could or should for our spouse, counseling explores what’s getting in the way, getting in the way of choosing to try or start again
I recently rewatched the movie Unbreakable. It had a scene I hadn’t really remembered or took note of before but demonstrates the power of choice.
Robin Wright plays Megan, wife to David played by Bruce Willis’.
They’ve been married twelve years but estranged.
His survived a recent train crash.
One night, she asks him,
“Have you been with with anyone?
Since we started having problems?
The answer won’t affect me…it won’t affect me either way.”
He shakes his head “No”
And she sobs with relief.
She tells him,
“My decision is…
I’d like to start again.
Pretend we’re at the beginning.
It’s a big deal you walked away from that train.
It’s a second chance.
If you want to ask me out sometime, that would be okay.”
I loved that. I try my best to help couples find their way back, to start again, like at the beginning.
Marriage counseling serves to create those kairos moments (described in Essentialism by Greg McKeown), those moments of opportunity in the here-and-now that inspire you to choose, to start over, to change, to grow.
The best advice or writing I can give you isn’t as important as the choice you’re willing to make for the good of your marriage and your spouse.
Is there anything that you’ve been wanting to do for your spouse that you just need to make it happen and do?
Is there anything you’d like me to write about?