Hi, this is Paul Friedman. I founded The Marriage Foundation and I hope in
today's video to help give you more clarity about what you should and
shouldn't do in marriage counseling. Those of you who have been following me,
those of you who have read my articles or my books know that I'm dead set
against marriage counseling; however, some of you are going to try it even though
I'm against it, and I want to help you get the most out of your sessions. So, if
you like this video be sure to sign up for our mailing list, put a like, you
could put a comment, ask questions, I'll get back to you,
I will interact with you that's very important. So, let's get right into this
your very first session is what we're going to talk about now. Most people who
go into their first session discover right away that the therapist wants to
know "What's up?" I call it the what's up questioning, and it can come out in
different forms of course, so what brings you here, what's going on,
etc. You don't want to answer that. Your very first session with the therapist
should be dedicated to you and your spouse vetting them. You need to make
sure that you're not going to waste your time. I honestly don't care about your
money because if it works who cares what it costs, I care about your time because
the time that you spend starting now when you've decided, you're gonna do
something about your marriage; it's very important. You don't want to be
discouraged. You don't want to waste your time and energy or you'll give up, and we
don't want you to do that. So the first session is dedicated to you asking
questions of the therapists. Number one question should be, what do you base all
of your teachings on? Because basically, they're going to be
teaching you about marriage. You're not going in there just to solve this issue
or that issue. You want your entire marriage to improve. It's been trending
in the wrong direction so you need to understand who's guiding you. You don't
go up on a mountain. You don't conquer Everest with someone who doesn't
know what they're doing so you want to ask. "What do you base your principles on?
Are they based on spiritual principles? Are they based on scientific principles?
Can you give some examples of the principles that you base your teachings
on? I want to know. We need to know this." Then, you want to ask about their process.
How long typically do you spend with couples or with individuals? How do you
do it? Do you want to meet with both of us? Do you want to separate us? How do you
want to do it, and why?" You have a right to know this. If you go into the doctor
and you have an infection and it's coming out with all kinds of symptoms, you're
not going in just to deal with the symptoms. You wanted to deal with the
internal infection and a good doctor is going to explain exactly what he sees,
why it's indicating this particular infection, and how he's going to heal it,
what protocol, what medications, what he's going to expect you to do on your part.
You have the same thing here. Your marriage is sick. The issues are
merely symptoms. Now, you also want to ask, "How many marriages have you saved in the
last six months?" Trust me. If he says, "Well, I have one couple that's have been
seeing me a year." Head for the hills, your marriage should be turned around
very quickly that's what real marriage help does for you so you want to find
out. You don't want to know about clients satisfaction. This is a diversionary
tactic. You want to know about successes. "What kind of clients came in to
see you? That were they experiencing and what are they experiencing now?
Are they happy? Is it working?" You want to get into it. You want to know how they
work, exactly how they work so you know what to expect. This is very important.
Now, what you really don't want to do is you really don't want to get into the
issues -- you don't, and I'm gonna get into that in another video because it's very
very important. So again, if you got something out of
this and I'm sure you did. Then, like it and sign up for the mailing list. We need
to stay in touch. We want to get your marriage on track. People who look at
these videos generally don't have the perfect marriage yet, and you should.
Marriage is supposed to be perfect. Yeah! You may not be perfect, your spouse may
not be perfect, but your marriage can be. Okay. Thank you very much for spending
time with me, and I love you.