Hi, I'm Paul Freedman. I started The Marriage Foundation and I'm going to try
to help you today with something that is a little bit complicated but just a
little bit. There's going to be a general attitude that I'm going to try to convey
to you sort of an overview and the topic is How To Prepare For Your First
Marriage Counseling Session and the reason why people will do that is
go to marriage counseling is obviously, so that they can save their
marriage or just improve it because it's not going in the right direction.
There is a general consensus now that marriage counseling
doesn't really help but there are some marriage counselors who are top-notch.
For The Marriage Foundation, we hired them or try to find them so they could
be our counselors as people take the course or have questions so there are
some really excellent marriage therapist counselors out there. I'm gonna try
and give you things that you need to look out for. The overview first is to
remember why you're going to marriage counseling.
You're not going to marriage counseling so that you can bitch and moan about
your husband or wife. You're not going there so you could get everything out on
the table and talk things out that's a misconception. There is no good end to
talking things out. A good marriage counselor will not do that, they won't
ask you what's going on in order to talk things out. They'll ask you that only so
that they could get a sense of your commitment to one another, your
commitment to the marriage whether you're willing as an individual
to take responsibility for your end of the marriage and frankly, for the whole
marriage. Try to understand that there are those marriage counselors out there
far too many who want you to keep coming back. You become their bank account, you
become a client of theirs. In contrast there's others who just really want to
help you get your marriage under control. So, what are you looking for? What should
the first session look like? Well, it should really not look like where you're
getting each other into trouble. You're not trying to blame one another what
you're trying to do is find out here's the critical piece. You're trying to find
out what you're doing wrong, not what your spouse is doing wrong but what
you're doing wrong. You're going into an arena where someone who's a professional
who knows what they're doing can say "you need to look at this," "you might
want to read this" and there's many counselors who will recommend one of my
books either Breaking the Cycle or Lessons for a Happy Marriage as a basis
and then they'll help you through the steps because you got to take the steps.
Look, marriage counseling doesn't have to be
tortured, it's supposed to be where you your marriage has gotten off the rails.
Now you want to get back on the rails and you want to do it as quickly as
possible so we've gotten a little bit off-track. Speaking off the rails
we've gotten a little bit off-track about how to prepare. So, how you should
prepare is you should literally grab a piece of paper and a pencil and write
down your vision for a happy marriage. You shouldn't write down your complaints
don't write down what's wrong with your spouse that will literally undermine any
progress you possibly could make. You want to ask the question, "What can I as
an individual do to improve our marriage?" Don't worry about what your spouse wants
to do in there. You know there's this idea that
marriage is these two people becoming one and that's not exactly true, it's two
souls who merge, sure, that's true, but two minds aren't going to merge. You're
always going to maintain your individuality. If you think about your
marriage as two individuals being married together but they're still
individuals it really helps you understand that you're not going to ever
achieve this, how do I say this, you're never going to achieve a unity of
minds. I mean it may come to some degree in many respects but that's not the goal
of marriage so I'm gonna get a little bit deeper on
this. So you want to write down your vision of your marriage, what do you want?
You're also gonna want to write down what am I doing wrong. You want to ask
candidly, and this is one of the reasons why I'm not really all for marriage
counseling because you should be with the marriage counselor just by yourself
and ask what am I doing wrong. You got to be really sincere, what can I do to
improve? But if you're going to be together and you do that and you're sincere
you're also sending a great message to your spouse that you really care for
them, and that's what you want to be able to say. You want to give yourself things
that I'm going to say so take a piece of paper draw a vertical line and on one
side put "things I want to say" on the other side "things I don't want to say."
What you want to say is you want to say
only positive things about your spouse. You want to acknowledge that you can use
some improvements. You want to acknowledge that your imperfections may
be what's getting in the way of your experiencing the unconditional love of
marriage that you seek. On the other side of not to do
don't criticize, don't complain, don't condemn, don't let any bitterness come
into this session. Remember, you're in here to heal. This isn't a courtroom.
You're not trying to go, "I'm the better spouse. They need to improve." That's the
last thing you should do so put a list of things that you know will be
offensive and write those down as things you're not going to say, even if it comes
up and you're tempted because you should be seeing those things as what he or she
is doing is triggering me, what is it about me that is taking these things
personally. So remember you're going in for a
positive experience, another thing that you're doing on your first session, and
this is really important is you're evaluating the therapist. You want to
make sure, number one. You leave upbeat. If you're not out of that session
feeling better than when you went in quit that therapist and find a different
one because your progress towards a happy marriage is not going to begin
with taking things apart and hurting each other, it's just not how it works.
You can't go in two opposite directions at the same time and the direction you
want is to be positive, to improve your marriage
so it should begin with the very first session. Now of all of the
therapists who I interviewed and trained for The Marriage Foundation, my favorite
unfortunately, passed away. Paul Hagen Berger and what happened was
I met him and introduced him to my book and he called me up and he said, "Paul, I
want in. I want to be part of The Marriage Foundation." But when he
explained his philosophy of working with couples I said, "Paul, you do not need what
I have." He goes, "No, you hit the nail on the head. Your thing is all education." And
that's what I do and I go, "Yeah, I see that's what you do so you don't need me."
That's what you need is you need a counselor who understands getting
marriage help is about educating you. It's not about straightening you out
it's not about fixing your spouse, it's not about clobbering you. It's about
teaching you about the things that will improve
your marriage right from the get-go and then get better every day.
Your marriage is supposed to get better every single day. You're supposed to feel
more love, more connection, more joy, more happiness. I remind people all
the time look you got married in order to be happier than you were, so why
in the world are you not? You could analyze this. You're not because you
don't understand that this creates a requirement for you to create the
happiness in your marriage and so you need to understand the substance of a
happy marriage is unconditional love and you have to understand that it's your
responsibility as an individual to exercise unconditional love and not
expect it, because if you expect it it's not unconditional love on your end.
The marriage therapist who is good is going to help you get there and that's what
you're looking for. You need to get there. Marriage is an amazing thing, it's
amazing, it's meant for you to be fulfilled in ways you cannot even
imagine. Alright, if you like what you hear, like it and share it. Share this
with your spouse, especially with your spouse but share with your friends too
just on Facebook or whatever. If you have a comment I'm happy to interact
with you. If you wish advice, you could write into our own counselors and get
some feedback and other than that my blessings to you, my blessings to your
spouse, and my blessings to your family. Thank you!