Should We See A Marriage Counselor?
Should you see a marriage counselor? It depends…did your marriage cause the current situation? If your wife has recently given you the "I love you, but I'm not in love with you speech" the marriage may or may not be the root cause.
If you walk in your home and feel a drop of water on your head, you'll likely look up and see a nasty water stain on your ceiling where water has been accumulating. In fact, the plaster has probably started to bubble up and crack making a pretty unsightly mess.
Your first reaction might be to call the contractor and have the ceiling fixed, right? Not so fast. If you have a hole in your roof causing the water damage, fixing the ceiling is not going to help – yet. By the same token, if your wife is having a midlife crisis causing her to feel restless, lost, confused, and generally discontent with her life, going to a marriage counselor at this time is going to put even more focus on your marriage.
You don't want her to focus on the marriage because (in most cases) it's not the fault of the marriage. Your marriage was functioning just fine before she became disillusioned with her life (as seen by her no longer liking her job, perhaps not being into her kids as much, and abandoning her former friends). You have become the most convenient scapegoat. She believes that if she can just get out of the marriage then she will discover her true happiness.
Not only that but, by panicking in general, you are reinforcing in her mind that you are undesirable as a partner and further her conviction that she needs to get away from you. Instead, I recommend being very confident (despite the blow to your male ego) and not in any way give her the impression that you think the marriage caused this problem.
I would be remiss not to mention, however, that if upon further examination you see areas where you could improve (spending less time at the office, sharing more of the parenting responsibilities, practicing more active listening, etc) then you should seek guidance in making appropriate changes in these areas.
Make these personal changes and improvements for what it will do for you. If she's to the point where she's contemplating ending the marriage, often a wife will get angry when she sees her husband improving because it takes away her justification for leaving in the first place. If, on the other hand, your self-improvement efforts are met with open arms, it's likely that the marriage was the underlying problem (but this is not often the situation).
So when should you seek marriage counseling? When you both realize that you want to be together but have some hurdles that you are struggling to work out between the two of you. In these cases, a marriage counselor can be a tremendous aid in facilitating open communication and helping both the husband and wife see the situation from another perspective.
If you walk in your home and feel a drop of water on your head, you'll likely look up and see a nasty water stain on your ceiling where water has been accumulating. In fact, the plaster has probably started to bubble up and crack making a pretty unsightly mess.
Your first reaction might be to call the contractor and have the ceiling fixed, right? Not so fast. If you have a hole in your roof causing the water damage, fixing the ceiling is not going to help – yet. By the same token, if your wife is having a midlife crisis causing her to feel restless, lost, confused, and generally discontent with her life, going to a marriage counselor at this time is going to put even more focus on your marriage.
You don't want her to focus on the marriage because (in most cases) it's not the fault of the marriage. Your marriage was functioning just fine before she became disillusioned with her life (as seen by her no longer liking her job, perhaps not being into her kids as much, and abandoning her former friends). You have become the most convenient scapegoat. She believes that if she can just get out of the marriage then she will discover her true happiness.
Not only that but, by panicking in general, you are reinforcing in her mind that you are undesirable as a partner and further her conviction that she needs to get away from you. Instead, I recommend being very confident (despite the blow to your male ego) and not in any way give her the impression that you think the marriage caused this problem.
I would be remiss not to mention, however, that if upon further examination you see areas where you could improve (spending less time at the office, sharing more of the parenting responsibilities, practicing more active listening, etc) then you should seek guidance in making appropriate changes in these areas.
Make these personal changes and improvements for what it will do for you. If she's to the point where she's contemplating ending the marriage, often a wife will get angry when she sees her husband improving because it takes away her justification for leaving in the first place. If, on the other hand, your self-improvement efforts are met with open arms, it's likely that the marriage was the underlying problem (but this is not often the situation).
So when should you seek marriage counseling? When you both realize that you want to be together but have some hurdles that you are struggling to work out between the two of you. In these cases, a marriage counselor can be a tremendous aid in facilitating open communication and helping both the husband and wife see the situation from another perspective.
Source...