Geoffrey here. If you're currently trying to rebuild a relationship,
there's a good bet that you are either already in marriage counseling or doing
some sort of couples counseling or you're highly considering doing one.
Now I understand that this could be potentially a very sensitive topic for me to
discuss, because there might be some conflict of interest here.
Now I'm not going to spend this video trying to bash marriage counseling or
couples counseling. In fact,
I'm going to tell you right now that it does and can work,
but there are three really big pitfalls that I see a lot of my clients falling
into.
And this is not because couples counseling and marriage counseling doesn't work,
but there are a few inherent problems that I think you need to be aware of. Now,
be sure to stick around to the very under this video,
because these are the pitfalls of marriage counseling that I think very few
people think about.
And most people only realize when they're already finding themselves stuck in
that pitfall already. And for those of you who are new to this channel,
my name is Geoffrey and I help men and long-term relationships or marriages with
the right skills, with the right knowledge, with the right mindsets,
to be able to design a thriving relationship.
So if you want more content like this, to help you with your marriage,
then I want you to subscribe to this channel and click the bell button as well,
to be notified when I post new videos every single week. And before we begin,
I want to let you know,
also that the registration for the masterclass is still open on the five proven
steps to rebuilding your relationship from the ground up.
So if you want to join the masterclass,
we should stick around until the very end of this video for the announcement on
how you can get in on that. Now, before I get into the meat of this video,
I want to set some foundations first to really set the stage for what we're
going to talk about later on in this video. Now,
the first one is understanding the importance of safety.
So if you've been following me for a while,
you will know that emotional safety and psychological safety are really the key
cornerstones,
the foundational pillars that you need to create in every relationship.
If you want anything to work,
if you want to build anything or rebuild anything in a relationship and really
quickly, if you're not familiar with this principle,
what is emotional and psychological safety,
let's start with what is emotional safety?
Emotional safety is really about whether you have the culture where you both of
you can share your deepest emotions, your most sensitive emotions,
your toughest emotions with each other and psychological safety is
about once you express this difficult emotions,
can you find a deep understanding and can you find a win-win and a resolution,
not a compromise to where you both can move forward and resolve those conflicts
together. Now, these two terms are still not familiar to you.
I'm going to put some links at the end of this video,
for some videos that I have explaining to you what emotional and psychological
safety is.
And if you want to get a really in-depth look into the definition of what
emotional and psychological safety is,
you can also join me in my masterclass that I mentioned earlier,
where you can take a deeper dive into what both these principles really mean.
Now, once we have that first foundation set,
which is the importance of emotional and psychological safety,
I want to go to the second foundational principle that you need to understand,
which is the inherent problem with couples counseling or marriage
counseling, and that if you're struggling in your relationship right now,
there's a good bet that you are highly considering going to couples therapy,
because the communication in your relationship has broken down.
So perhaps you tried communicating with your partner,
communicating about the issues, but every time you try to communicate,
the communication always ends badly. Now,
whenever a conversation ends badly like this, both of you,
you both yourself and your partner will feel even less safe in the relationship.
So that safety,
that foundational pillars that we talked about earlier is going to degrade over
time.
And as that emotional and psychological safety degrades over time is going to
make it even more difficult for you to communicate.
And your communication ends up becoming worse.
And this vicious cycle usually continues until both of you are pretty much at
your last legs, the last straw of what you can take. And that's when,
usually when you are in this dire state,
that's when you decide to consider a couples counseling or marriage counseling.
But the ironic part is that when you're in this dire state of your relationship,
where both of you are really on your last legs,
you might be dealing right now with a partner who's completely checked out.
Who's lost all hope for their relationship.
And this brings me to the first problem,
which is the paradox of even the start of marriage counseling.
And that in order for you to even start marriage counseling,
you need to first communicate with your partner,
that you're interested in doing some marriage counseling or that marriage
counseling could be a good idea.
But the problem again is that either you or your partner is completely checked
out, you have destroyed that safety.
And so you can't even communicate about going to marriage counseling.
So the first mistake that a lot of people make is thinking that the therapist or
the counselor that you're about to see here is going to act as your saving grace
in a way, and this counselor or therapist will just do some magic to
somehow help you communicate better.
And just how I magically make your partner understand you and to engage you back
into the relationship again, somehow.
And if you're guided by that previous thinking and that you think the counselor
will be your saving grace, you tend to make a second mistake,
which is you tend to resort to some very controlling,
very demanding and very threatening ways to get your partner who is usually
already checked out at this point to go to couples counseling with you.
And your thought here is that it's okay for me to damage a bit more safety and
make her a bit upset. Probably frustrate her a bit more because you're thinking,
once I get my partner to couples counseling,
then everything will be fine because the counselor will,
will solve all my problems for me.
And when I say people tend to resort to this controlling and threatening ways,
this can be an active control where you are trying to get your opponent or force
your partner to go to couples counseling and a very angry in a threatening way,
or it could be also be in a passive way where you might brush a subject very
gently.
And then your partner refuses to go to a couple of counseling and then you get
all huffy and puffy about it, right? So the idea behind the second part here,
the passive way is that you're trying to guilt trip your partner into doing
couples counseling with you. But nonetheless, either of these two methods,
whenever you try this controlling or threatening ways,
you're basically trying to reduce the safety in the short term in order for,
to get to couples counseling.
And hopefully the couples counselor would do some magic to restore all that
safety you've destroyed and other conflicts you've made and so on.
And what a lot of people find here is that couples counseling and marriage
counseling is not going to be your end all be all.
It's not that once you get your partner to agree to doing couples counseling
with you, with that,
the problem is over because the counselor can solve all their problems for you
because one, not only can you not communicate,
but your partner won't be willing to communicate openly in the counseling
session because you've destroyed that safety once again.
And once safety is destroyed, the limestone communication is really dead.
And so here, because your partner is checked out,
your partner will not be able to communicate in a therapy session that is
designed to help you to communicate.
And this is really the endless and paradoxical problem of the start.
So don't put a flag to that first problem here, the first problem of the start,
and I'll discuss the solutions towards the end of this video as we progress on
The second problem that I see is even if you get your partner to go to couples
counseling, and even if your partner is participating,
she's opening up and so on. This brings another very common problem.
And this is a problem that no one thinks about to set the stage for this
problem. Again,
we have to go back to this principle that we only go to couples counseling when
things are really dire when perhaps your partner has to refuse to open up to
you anymore, she's completely shut down and stonewalling you,
or perhaps that whenever you start a conversation, the conversation ends badly.
And eventually your partner tells you, you know what?
I don't want to talk about it anymore. And at that point,
when your partner has completely shut down like that and checked out,
that's when you realize the importance of couples counseling at this point.
And you're thinking at this point is if my partner doesn't want to talk to me,
if I can't talk to my partner, if my partner doesn't want to open up to me,
then perhaps if I hire a counselor or a marriage therapist,
that they will help my partner to open up. And finally,
we can talk about the issues that we haven't been able to talk about for awhile,
but here's what most people find in that when you actually go to the couples,
counselor or a marriage counselor, your partner may be open during that session.
So during that session itself, when the counselors present,
your partner may be opening up a lot about how she feels, what she wants to do,
and really just be more open to you then when she was at home.
But what a lot of people find again is that once the session is over and they go
home, their partner instantly shuts down again.
And then they go to the next session, their partner opens up again,
and then the session ends. They close down again,
and this can be a very confusing pattern for a lot of people. But again,
the problem here is not really what your partner or your therapist or anything
that you might think.
And the real problem here is that you have not understood how to create that
safety and that trust with you. So whenever you rely on your marriage,
counselor, your marriage therapist, as your saving grace, what happens is yes,
during the sessions, she'll open up because she feels that safety,
but she doesn't feel that safety towards you.
She feels that safety towards you and the therapist or the counselor.
And once the counselor or therapist is out of the picture,
that safety gets brought back down to zero. Again, because again,
the safety is not established with you.
So let's put another flag to that problem.
The problem with the misplacement of trust,
whenever it comes to marriage counseling and therapy.
And I'll talk about what you can do about it to remedy this later on in the
video. Now,
the third big pitfall that I see a lot of people make when they're go to
marriage counseling is the solutions and not the process trap.
What does this mean? So again,
when people go to marriage counseling with couples therapy,
what they're really looking for is some solutions that they want the therapist
or the counsel to tell them here's what you should do next.
And what if you just do this things will be better.
And so eventually you get to a point where you stop seeing your counselor,
because you think everything is okay. Now you have the solutions,
you have the next steps. Great, but fast forward, a few months later,
you'll find that new problems have to come up.
And those new problems plague your relationship the same way the old problems
did. And so you find your communication breaking down again.
Then you need the counselor. Again, you go through the same routine.
They give you a solution.
You come home and the same cycle repeats where the solution might last for
awhile, but it doesn't last forever.
New problems come up and the new problems bring up communication problems.
And then you get to see the counselor again and never ending cycle.
And the problem here again is not with your partner or your therapist that
really went a lot of people go to therapy or marriage counseling.
They're really not going to that, those sessions with the right mindset,
with the right expectation and with the right guidance of what questions,
what information you should be getting from your therapist.
So let's put another flag there where now we have three pitfalls that you should
need to avoid.
So how do we solve all these three problems that we mentioned here?
Number one is really a mindset shift.
And this is really about understanding that there's really no short cuts or
really no quick fixes to saving your relationship.
So do not see your counselor as your shortcut,
as your quick fix and your ticket, really,
to bypass the hard road of having to learn the skills,
learn the frameworks, learn the mindsets,
to be able to create safety and lead your communication and lead the building of
the culture of your relationship.
Whether you choose to see a counselor or a therapist or not,
you must be able to learn the skills to create safety and to lead the
communication sometime or another.
And this is regardless of whether you're a man or a woman,
it just needs one person to be able to learn how to create safety and how to
lead the communication and the interactions you have together.
And you need to create the safety and you need to learn how to lead
communication, because you need that to get your point out,
to see a counselor in the first place. As we mentioned,
you need that to create safety towards you and not just create safety towards
you and the therapist.
And you must have this mindset where you're not looking for shortcuts in order
for you to be able to have the patience,
to ask the right questions during the couples counseling session that actually
gives you long-term process that you can rely on.
So you don't need the counselor at some point.
The second one is another mindset shift in that the Cray safety and leading
communication is really your job.
This is not your counselor's job or your part of the job.
This is really your job. And again, to really hit this point home,
it must solely rely on you because you need to be able to create safety and to
lead the communication in the first place to get your partner to do counseling
in the first place,
and to make sure that whatever safety is created during the counseling sessions,
it's credit to you and not to you and the therapist as well.
Then number three is you need to start expecting to build trucks towards you and
not the counselor. And we mentioned this a few times already,
but the misplacement of trust during the couples counseling session is such a
common problem and such a systemic issue to the nature of what couples
counseling and couples therapy does. And many people,
when they go to a couples counselor,
they simply sit back and they look at this counselor and they think that the
counselor would simply lead them to wherever they need to go.
And so they sit back passively and they just let the counselor do and take them
wherever they want to take them. And if you do this,
if you simply passively sit and let the counselor do all the work,
that's naturally going to create this misplacement of trust issue.
So whenever I have a client that comes on to my program and they tell me that
they're doing that currently doing couples counseling or couples therapy,
the first thing I tell them is one.
You have to learn the fundamentals of what it means to create safety and what it
means to lead the communication that creates safety and that creates trust as
well. Then the second thing is once you have really mastered the fundamentals,
tell your counselor to let you lead the interaction,
to let you lead the conversation with your partner and ask your counselor to
take a step back a little bit,
to become more of a mediator role than the problem-solving role. And again,
the goal behind this is I want you to be able to lead the interactions with your
partner during the session so that she can start to associate the safety with
you and not with you and the counselor itself. Now,
I want to give a bit of caution here in that, before you try this,
before you try telling your counselor, basically let me lead it.
You must make sure that you understand the frameworks and the mindsets really,
really well, because if you don't understand the frameworks and the mindsets,
and you're trying to lead a conversation,
but you don't really understand how to lead it,
then this can backfire hard on you. And again, you can't fake this.
You have to really understand the frameworks for this to work.
So this brings me to number four,
which is that when you're in a therapy session in a counseling session,
ask process questions, and don't ask questions just to get a quick solution.
So if you want to really make marriage counseling work for you,
don't just use the counseling session as a free pass to either vent,
complain, and just air out all your grievances about the relationship,
how much you hate your partner, how much you, how bad you feel. And the one,
if you're doing this,
and you're basically just paying someone a hundred dollars an hour or whatever
it is to basically listen to your problems, which any of your friends can do.
And not only that,
you're not going to be learning anything throughout this whole process,
which is going to be a big waste of time and money for you and is going make
your partner defensive too. So it's a lose lose on all fronts.
If you are simply using this to vent and just air out your problems in front of
your counselor.
And I don't want you to just sit back passively and let your counselor just take
control of the whole conversation and ask you all the questions.
I want you to ask your counselor, your own questions too.
And this question should be process-related.
So I want you to ask you a counselor, for example,
why is your counselor asking certain questions?
What is the importance of them asking certain questions?
Where are they're trying to find out from you then once your counselor gives you
their interpretation of what is happening,
I want you to ask them again on how did they arrive at the interpretation?
What would the process? They took the mental process.
They took to arrive at that conclusion.
And once they give you a solution or a treatment to say, here's what you can do.
I want you to ask him how and why they came up with those solutions.
The idea here is that I don't want you to just take the solutions at face value,
but I want you to dive deeper into the mechanics,
the processes they took to find their diagnosis and to find their treatments.
The idea here again is that you want to be able to replicate the same mechanics
yourself,
and to understand the same mechanics so that you can replicate this at home.
Once you leave the counseling session, that when new problems come up,
you have the mechanics and the process to find the right diagnosis and to find
the right treatment of solutions at the end of the day as well.
And this will get you out of the cycle of having to rely on your counselor,
on your therapist.
Every single time new problems come up and every single time your communication
breaks down. If you want to learn on a deeper level,
all these five solutions that we talked about and leading communication in your
relationship that creates safety and creates trust.
Then I want you to know that this issue,
this three paradoxes and the three pitfalls that we talked about is something
that virtually all of our students face. I mean,
many of my clients who come to my program,
they begin with them seeing a counselor or some therapist of some sort.
And at the end of the day,
if you really take it upon yourself and learn the right ways to create safety,
learn the right ways to lead conversations, then you can make any couples,
counselor, and any couple of therapists work for you. And in fact,
when you find that you have the right processes, the right frameworks,
the right mindsets, to be able to lead an interaction like this,
you will often find that you no longer need a counselor.
You no longer need a therapist as well,
because you understand the exact processes you need to replicate your success
day in and day out.
So if learning how to become your own counselor and be able to diagnose the
issues in your relationship and understand the treatment and the next steps you
need to do to remedy it,
then I want you to join me in my masterclass and the five proven steps to
rebuilding your relationship from the ground up.
And this masterclass I'll show you the exact processes that all my students have
gone through in a way that allows them to really not only make their marriage
counseling work and create the safety and create that trust towards them instead
of them and the counselor,
to the point where they eventually do not need any counselor or a therapist to
help with a problem anymore,
because they have the right processes to be able to thrive under any
circumstance. And at the end of this masterclass,
you will also be able to have an opportunity to apply for the program,
our relationships rebel program. We're a hold your hand.
Step-by-step in letting you understand the frameworks and the mindsets to be
able to create the safety and trust for yourself.
So if this masterclass or this program sounds like something you want to
explore, then I want you to click the link above my head,
or also down in the comments below this video or in the description below this
video to reserve your spot in the masterclass.
And if you're looking for a free resource that can help you guide these
conversations better,
then I want you to click the link above my head or down in the comments below
the description box below this video for a free guide on leading and guiding
conversations that create safety, that creates trust over time.
And if you want to join a community of people where you can post your questions
and get some advice from me or other members of the community on your issues,
then I want you to click the link down below this video to join my free Facebook
group. In the meantime,
do leave a comment below with what you thought was most insightful or most
eyeopening in this video. I'd love to hear your thoughts.
And if you find this video valuable, then like it,
and subscribe to this channel for more content like this one in the meantime,
I will leave you with this two other videos with more knowledge and skills for
you to design a thriving relationship for yourself and rebuild your
relationships successfully. And with that, see LCU.
In the next video.