In the aftermath of your spouse’s cheating, you may have considered going to a marriage counselor. There are many benefits to going to counseling, there are also some potential dangers. Before going to a counselor, you need to consider what are you going to the counselor for? Are you going there to work on your marriage relationship? to work on yourself? or to have someone validate your experiences and decisions? Are you going to have the counselor ‘whip’ the cheater into shape? Are you going to counseling to ease your conscience, so that you can say you did all you could do?
There are many reasons for going to counseling. There are also many agendas brought into the counseling session by you and your spouse. Counseling can turn bad, when there is a big discrepancy between what you say you are going to counseling for and what you use the counseling to accomplish. You need to be honest with yourself, your spouse and the counselor about what your agenda is. Going into the counseling with a hidden or secret agenda is probably something that you spouse has seen you do many times in the past. They know you play games. The counselor’s office is merely the latest place for you to play your games. When your spouse knows this, they will come in prepared for your games. They will likely react with their own game to ‘neutralize’ yours. The move-counter move dance that the two of you have been doing has a new venue.
When you are ready to get off the merry-go-round of move-counter move dancing and make serious changes, these are some of the steps you can take:
1. Be honest with yourself
2. Focus on understanding rather than agreement
3. Be willing to hear, rather than defend
4. If something is not working for you, be willing to change it.
5. Remember that you can “be right” or you can be” in relationship”.
Putting these items into practice will help you obtain the maximum benefit of counseling. Doing the opposite, telling lies, insisting that everyone agree with you, defending your position, continue holding onto behaviors rather than changing them and insisting on being right are sure ways of sabotaging any benefit of counseling.
These and other ways of improving intimacy and communication are in my e-book on “Surviving Your Partner’s Affair”. You do not have to blindly stumble through your relationship. You can know what to do, what to talk about and how to change the marriage by putting these ideas into practice.
Best Regards,
Jeffrey Murrah
