We do! And it's great for us!
I know I've mentioned it on here before so I used that little search bar up there on the left to find it. It was in a Q&A post awhile back (and several other times)-
3. Q: You guys seem so happy. How do you do it?
A: Well thanks but I think it's one of those 'always greener on the other blog' type of things. It's true, R&I are happy, but only when we choose to be. When we choose a Christ focus and work hard at it, life is good. But we slip up. A lot. We're just like you. Scratch that. You are probably way better at it than us. Ha. We do have an awesome Christian counselor that we hang out with once a month (or six weeks or whenever we can get in). It's great for accountability. It encourages you to 'walk the talk' so to speak. I admit that sometimes we've spent our entire 50 minutes talking about basketball and asking about his kids so it may seem silly go have gone. But there are plenty of other times that I've shed tears, prayed for forgiveness, and learned a lot about life. And I recommend it.
In the post quoted above, I mentioned we were going every 4-6 weeks. We currently go every 2-3 months but will likely go more often once Baby H arrives and we have new life challenges to figure out together.
I've had a lot of friends ask about the counseling. And here are some of the most common things people want to know-
Is it hard? -The hardest thing about it for us was to make the decision to go. Just setting up the initial appointment was difficult. It felt like admitting we weren't good at it and needed help. It's hard to ask for help. It was also hard to know where to go. We tried one counselor (a woman) because where I was working would pay for so many sessions there a year. The particular person we saw at that practice was not a fit for us. It took quite awhile after that appointment to make another one. We ultimately chose a friend that is a counselor. This seems so odd because who wants to admit to someone they know that they need help but we found in our case it helped out a ton. We didn't have to explain a lot of the backstory because he already knew it. Having a friend as a counselor is both great and not so great. It's great because we get the cheapest price on his sliding fee scale. It's not so great when we don't have a whole lot of marriage stuff to talk about and the boys end up talking basketball for most of our session! :)
There are tough topics that the two of us aren't sure we're comfortable with telling our counselor about. We've always discussed these at home first and (with permission from the other) ultimately brought them up with the counselor. We've never surprised each other on the counseling couch with a topic the other didn't know was coming. I think this helps us out a lot in feeling safe going there.
How did the two of you decide to go? -We both went into our marriage talking about what we wanted it to look like but knowing we hadn't seen that modeled. We knew it wouldn't be real easy but we weren't expecting it to be as hard as it was. We knew what we were living and what we both wanted were not matching up. We both did the Love Dare devotional when that movie came out. (The movie is cheesy, but it's a great message and the book was just awesome for us.) We got near the end where the devotion for the day is about seeking counsel. We had been so disciplined at following through with the other pieces and it was working- we knew we needed to follow through with this one too.
If you don't go very often, how are you getting your money worth? - Our counselor is awesome about giving us homework. There are a lot of simple (and not so simple) things that we can do on our own at home that really help us out. He has taught us a lot of tools on how to communicate with each other and how to focus our together time. I'm a huge planner/calendar maker/to do list follower. R is not. One of the tools that helped us out a lot was a marriage calendar. There were some specific things we needed to focus on during that time and those things had to go on the calendar to ensure that we did them. It's easy to say we need to have more 'talk time.' It's hard for us to make it happen without intentional planning. Being intentional about things is huge for us.
What is a marriage meeting? -A meeting about our marriage! :) I don't think there are very many happily married couples that would say marriage is not work. At your work, how often do you have meetings? (For my teacher friends, you're thinking TOO OFTEN, aren't you?!)
If marriage is such hard work and working together involves meetings, doesn't it just make sense to have a meeting about the work you are doing? We weren't real intentional about it otherwise so the marriage meeting helps us focus. (We also have budget meetings, house project meetings, goal meetings, etc!)
When one (or both) of us feels like our marriage needs some attention, we'll call a marriage meeting. We grab a pad of paper and a pen and start making lists of things to be more intentional about.
When we started going to counseling, I didn't know of any friends that went. I thought people might think we were weird for going. The opposite is actually true. The more I've talked about it, the more I learn that lots of people go and lots of people that don't go wish they did. If you are considering it, I would definitely recommend it.
I currently have some friends that would love to go but cant get their spouse on board. Did you/do you know anyone else that faced that same struggle? What advice would you give them?
