Marriage Counseling Intensive

“After 20+ years of marriage, my husband and I finally came to the conclusion that we were not perfect, separately or as a couple, and that we needed help We were both talking (me more than him) but neither of us was understanding. It seems so simple but it is the hardest to really listen to another person, to REALLY listen. Lots of things look simple though: bike riding, playing basketball, even just running in a marathon. It’s funny how each of those activities involves having someone give us instruction. Obviously, not everything is as easy as it looks.Our issues had been going on for years and both of us were deep-to-the-bone weary of them. Once we jumped that hurdle to pick up the phone and call for an appointment, it was such an enormous relief. To know that help was coming was an incredible sense of a burden lifted. The option to pursue counseling in a Marriage Counseling Intensive setting was explained. Frankly, I am a cheap person and the option to save on gas costs factored into my head. Another thought was that I could just take a day off work which is much easier to explain away than regular appointments that would be more noticed by co-workers (We are both very private individuals). Having the children in school so they didn’t have questions was another benefit (haha, like they didn’t know we had too many arguments).It was definitely the best decision we could have made. By the time the first 45 minutes were up, we had discussed ourselves, our concerns, our issues, our problem, and our hopes for the future. If we had ended our session at that point, it would have been such a letdown. As the day went along, so many things came together.A long day like that could be exhausting but a long day of getting help, of being heard, of understanding what the other person was trying to tell you, all of that was so liberating that it was no more exhausting than continuing to walk around under the burden we had been carrying. It was a healthy tired feeling at the end of the day because you knew that you had accomplished something and there was hope for a happy, peaceful, future. Not everything was solved for us in one day; we had other long sessions (we became firm believers in that) but we made huge progress each time.I view it as similar to taking a 5 day Z-pack versus a regimen of antibiotics. Who wouldn’t want to feel better in a shorter time rather than a longer time? Especially after carrying around such heavy loads of sadness for so long.”