Yeah, so I haven’t really spoken about it on acloudtree. But for about 7 months, my wife and I have been going to counseling.
*GASP* “What? Counseling!?!” you ask.
Yup, counseling. And let me tell you, I am thankful that we have been making the effort. Gracie came into our lives around October, which has been a welcome blessing. But we knew even before she was born, that we were already going through a rough patch.
Now in almost eleven years of being together, Jaimi and I have only needed to go to counseling once before. But this time it was different. We weren’t arguing a lot like the newly weds we were. We just seemed to be allowing the slow drift of discontent to wash our love away. The miscommunications to pile high and the unspoken assumptions to divide our hearts like a worn deck of cards.
Culturally, I realize that it is hard to wrap our western minds around counseling. Actually admitting to ourselves that we can’t do this. The blatant neediness. But let me tell you, neediness is a good thing. Letting my ego and pride get minced into tiny bits is a good thing. Spending focus time with the woman I have promised to love is a good thing.
A common thread I found, in asking people who they personally receive counseling from, is that everyone feels it is hard to find the “right” person. To trust someone with a closet full of skeletons all holding baskets of dirty laundry. But getting hung up here, is missing the point. For me, I’m not their to impress the counselor. I don’t care that he probably realizes I am a jerk at times. All I need the counselor there for is to make sure that I hear my wife, and that she hears me. And our counselor Layne is great at that.
The interesting thing in all of this, is that I get the feeling that Layne is more eastern in his mind set. Where as Jaimi and I grew up attending your standard Christian church. But where most people would run away from that difference, for fear of being “corrupted”, Jaimi and I welcome it. We always go in listening, then we keep what works, and drop what doesn’t. Acknowledging that the key in all of this, is that we will both have to submit, to humble ourselves, in order for the marriage to thrive.
The easy part this time around, is the “why”. Where before it was just Jaimi and I, battling our separate selfish sides. We now have this cutie to care about.
Ultimately we do this in hopes that Gracie can see her parents model a working love, not an regime of the heart. And so I encourage anyone reading this, especially husbands, to try and open up yourselves to the possibility that counseling can actually help your marriage.
