In Houston relationship counseling, I believe it is my job to do my utmost to help you work through your marriage problems and save your relationship. When couples come in already talking about the possibility of divorce at the first session, I always know that my job is going to be a little bit more difficult.
And it isn’t because those couples have marriage problems that are more severe than other clients – even if their issues were that one wasn’t taking out the trash enough and the other was always taking the car without asking, I’d expect their situation to be difficult. Why? Because when couples even start considering divorce as an option, that is much more likely to be the end result.
Houston Relationship Counseling Advice: Avoid Using the “D” Word
When we let thoughts like that into our minds, we’re already starting to see them as real and plan out what would happen in that scenario. Who gets to see the kids when? What do we do with the house? Is Bob more your friend or my friend – because we certainly can’t share him.
As horrible and frightening as these questions are, human beings have an amazing ability to shrug off the bad when we can break things down into their basic components and look at the logistics in this way. In fact, I’ve seen people get so bogged down in the details like this that they forget about the things that they’ll actually be losing and how they’ll feel about that if a divorce goes through.
That’s why, when one of my Houston relationship counseling clients brings up the “d” word, I stop everything and ask them a question: “Do you want to make this marriage work?” Invariably, the answer is yes – after all, they wouldn’t be there otherwise! So then I lay down some ground rules: they are to push divorce out of their minds as much as possible. No talking about it – in or out of therapy – and if possible they shouldn’t think about it. Divorce is not an option, because they are going to fix whatever problems they have and make this marriage work.
Arguing that thinking about divorce can lead to it might seem a bit silly, but studies of successful, long-lasting marriages (of 35 years of longer!) have shown that the one commonality between all of them was that divorce was simply not considered.
So instead of letting my clients think about divorce and start to plan out the logistics of how it might work out, I turn their detail-oriented focus to breaking down their problems and fixing them one at a time. If you want to see how this can work for you, seek Houston relationship counseling.
