Tackle One Thing at a Time in Houston Marriage Counseling

Too many of my Houston marriage counseling clients come in complaining that they just can’t see how their marriage will survive because they have too many problems. How could they possibly solve everything?

My response to them: one thing at a time.

Houston Marriage Counseling: Concentrating on Individual Problems Makes Them Easier to Solve

We live in an age where people brag about their multitasking abilities like it’s a badge of honor, but when you’re going through relationship therapy, trying to do too much too fast is a recipe for disaster.

Why? Because complicated emotional problems quickly become overwhelming, and attempting to reach the mountain summit when you’re standing on the ground can make you want to give up. So rather than staring up at the peak, so to speak, I encourage my clients to focus on individual legs of their journey. Or, in terms of their marriage problems, a single specific issue between the two of them. Put everything else aside and deal with that before moving on to the next problem.

This isn’t often easy at first, but once my clients fall into the rhythm of relationship therapy, they’re often surprised by how well it works. It’s because when we look at the big picture, too many things intermingle and make individual problems muddier. Pushing everything else away brings problems – and their solutions – into focus.

Houston Marriage Counseling: Solving Smaller Problems Makes the Whole Thing Less Daunting

Besides making the individual issues easier to solve by letting you focus on them, taking things one problem at a time also makes the big problem of fixing your marriage less imposing. By breaking it down into bite-sized chunks and solving them, you’ll also receive a feeling of accomplishment that will make you want to continue working at it.

Oh, and about multitasking – experts have discovered that what really happens when we multitask is that our brains pay less attention to each task so that we can accomplish multiple things at once. Forget the big picture and figure out each of the pieces of the puzzle in Houston marriage counseling.

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A Houston Relationship Therapist Talks about the Hope Behind the Lie

As a Houston relationship therapist, I know that no one likes to be lied to – especially by their significant other. In fact, many of my clients decided to seek me out because they discovered that their spouse was lying to them.

Perhaps they uncovered a lie about an affair, or discovered money that their spouse had hidden from them. Maybe the lies were about smaller things like having a beer with coworkers instead of working, or saying they cleaned the house when they didn’t.

Not surprisingly, these kinds of lies and deceptions can cause big marriage issues, especially if they are repeated. But there is also another kind of lie, one that it’s important for people to know about.

Houston Relationship Therapist: The Lie They Want To Be True

Once in a while a client will come to me complaining about a different kind of lie that is causing marriage issues. Here’s an example: Mary’s husband keeps telling neighbors about how hard it was when your baby first arrived. How he was always up feeding the baby, soothing the baby, playing with the baby. It was exhausting work, but together they got through it.

Unfortunately, Mary knows this is completely false. She was always the one up with the baby while her husband slept in so that he would be rested for work. He’s lying about everything! Why would he do that?! But when she confronts him about it, he pretends that she’s the one who’s lying. It drives Mary crazy.

What Mary is experiencing is a desire by her husband for what he’s saying to be true. He wishes that he had been the kind of husband and father that he tells people about, and may have even started to believe his own lies. It’s not so much an attempt to deceive her as it is a way for him to rewrite history so that he can feel better about himself.

Houston Relationship Therapist: They’re Not Lying to You, They’re Lying to Themselves

When Mary confronts her husband about his “lies,” she only succeeds in making him defensive. Rather than doing this, I advise her to remember that it’s not her he’s trying to lie to, but himself.  He sees himself as a bad father for not doing more, so he’s made up a story where he’s a great father. By denying this story, she’s confirming his fears – he really is a bad father.

Instead, when one of these lies surfaces, she should remind him of real times when he displayed good fatherhood traits and reinforce to him that he’s a good dad. Want more tips? Contact the Houston relationship therapist today.

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Top Money Arguments in Marriage, from Houston Marriage Counseling

People come into Houston marriage counseling all the time because they are arguing over money problems, and it’s gotten to the point where they just don’t know how to deal with it on their own. Sometimes these people are constantly fighting; other times they’re barely talking. Whatever the problem, somehow they came to the decision that they needed relationship therapy to fix their marriage.

What I have found amazing about most of these couple who argue over mony is that there are a million different specific things that they’re fighting about, but most of them end up really being about the same few things. But in order to realize that, we have to dig under the surface of each individual problem to discover the source.

Houston Marriage Counseling: Types of Money Arguments

I’ve dealt with many different money arguments in relationship therapy, but most of them fall into one of these categories:

You’re spending too much money. Your spouse argues that your spending is out of control, or that you buy pointless things that you don’t need. Sometimes, people buy things because they feel like they are missing something in another aspect of their life. Instead of going on shopping sprees, try spending more time together.

You’re a tightwad. Your spouse accuses you of never wanting to spend any money to the point that you refuse to ever go out or do anything fun, even though you have money in the bank. Holding on to money so tightly that you never do anything is often a fear-based reaction. While saving is good, saving everything is going a bit overboard.

You never talk to me about finances. Your spouse is tired of never knowing how much money you really have and keeping them in the dark. Locking your partner out of the finances is a way of maintaining control. Unfortunately, a relationship is about having a give and take, and if you refuse to talk to your partner about your financial situation, you’re creating an inequality that will cause problems.

You hid money from me. Your partner accuses you of earning or having more than you told them about, often involving hidden accounts. It doesn’t take an emotional detective to figure out that keeping money from your partner in this way indicates a lack of trust. Maybe you haven’t completely committed yourself to your relationship, or your partner did something to make you feel betrayed.

If you find yourself suffering from any of these problems and can’t manage to get through them yourself, check out Houston marriage counseling.

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Houston Relationship Counselor: The Relationship Between Marriage and Class

As the Houston relationship counselor, I’m always interested to find articles and research that change the way I think about marriage and relationships. Recently this happened when I ran across a New York Times article on how more and more people in middle and upper classes are marrying each other, while people from the lower socio-economic classes often don’t get married at all.

Whether or not they get married hasn’t had much of an effect on procreation, though, as unmarried people are just as likely as married ones to have children. In fact, unmarried couples are having children earlier than their married peers.

This wouldn’t be such a big problem except that it often leads to single-income families struggling to make ends meet. And to make matters worse, most of these single-parent families tend to have less education, leading to lower-paying jobs. So not only do they not have two incomes coming in, the one that they do have isn’t so great to begin with. And since they’re just scraping by and only have one adult to deal with the kids, parents in these families tend not to get married because they don’t have any time for themselves to actually go out and find a good partner!

But the worst part is that children living in this kind of situation are far more likely than their wealthier, two-parent peers to end up living the same kind of life as their parents, with less education and no marriage. Help isn’t even something they think about.

Houston Relationship Counselor: Marriage Benefits Need to Be Taught

Marriage help is exactly what’s needed, in the form of education on the benefits of getting married. It isn’t a question of morals or religion, either, but quality of life for you and your children. Two-parent families make more money, have more time to be involved in their kids’ lives, and have children who are more engaged in society and school.

Some will argue that a couple doesn’t have to be married to form a two-parent family, and that’s true. Unfortunately, statistics have shown that these types of families are far less likely to survive over the long haul than those with parents that have actually gotten married. And deciding to have kids and get married later isn’t a smart idea either, because those relationships often suffer the same fate.

If you and your partner are debating marriage and children and want to know more about the benefits that being married can bring, contact the Houston relationship counselor today.

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