How often do you and your spouse fight? Do you suspect your relationship is in trouble? When relationships are in trouble, counseling can help. One simple thought encouraged in a counseling session can get to the core of the apple, so to speak.
Run a Google search on the topic of how to approach your partner about couple’s therapy and see what comes up. There is a good chance that you will find a number of posts offering similar tips, including this one: talk about yourself rather than accusing your partner. The idea is to express what you hope to get out of counseling based on your desire to be a better partner.
That’s it!
Just that one simple thought gets to the core of most relationship troubles. People do not even realize it, but attitude is everything in a relationship. How one views themself as a contributor to that relationship matters. Both partners having the right perspective is what makes relationships work. If you are confused, no worries. The following paragraphs will explain it all.
1. Being Your Best Self
A Huff Post article from July, 2022 is one of those pieces that gives tips for approaching your partner about going to counseling. One of the tips is talk about what you hope to get out of it. Author Caroline Bologna goes on to advise “talking about how you want to show up as your best self for your relationship, identifying and acknowledging the things you would like to work on in yourself in order to be a better partner.”
Give Bologna a gold star for that advice. It is not so much that you want to go to therapy just to get, but rather, that you want to be a better partner. If couples could master this one simple concept, they could forget everything else about marriage counseling and still come out ahead.
2. True Love Is Selfless
At the core of most relationship problems is a misapplication of love. Our society makes it too easy to think of love as physical intimacy. We see it depicted on TV and the silver screen all the time. Couples do not truly love one another if they aren’t having sex, right? Wrong.
True love is selfless. It is not about what I can get out of a relationship, but what I can put into it. Relationships built on selfless love are strong, solid relationships capable of weathering the toughest of times.
In a counseling setting, the early temptation is to blame the other person. It is to tell the other person what they can do to change. If couples are not taken off that track and put on a new one, counseling will ultimately fail. The new track they need to get on is one of self-examination.
3. Working on Me
The counselors at Relationships & More in Rye, NY advocate a ‘working on me’ strategy. If you were to seek them out for marriage counseling, your goal would be to make changes in your own life so as to be a better partner. Your spouse would have the same goal. If you are both working toward being better partners, you’re more likely to succeed.
The formula for success is to not view marriage as a 50-50 proposition. It is to view it as a 100-0 game. You give 100% and expect nothing in return. If your partner does the exact same thing, both of your needs will be met in a selfless way. It all starts with one simple thought: how can I be the best partner possible?
