“My Husband Refuses to go to Marriage Counseling!! What should I do?”
I hear these words from women all the time. They call me and ask how they can get their husbands to come in to my office for marriage counseling. They have tried everything— pleading, threatening divorce, withdrawing but nothing seems to work.
My question to them is: “So what are you going to do?… Are you going to wait for him to change his mind? He may go to marriage counseling a couple of times and then be too busy at work, be out of town on a business trip, not be able to afford it, etc…” I say to them : “Take back your power and change your life today”.
Right now, everything he does or doesn’t do, says or doesn’t say, affects how you feel about yourself and the relationship. This means you are in constant alert and all your attention is on what his actions/inactions mean about how he feels toward you and the marriage. But if you are so focused on someone else, who is focusing on you?
Another pitfall is to compare your relationship to someone else’s. And as they say Compare and Despair. It may be true (although I doubt it) that your friend’s marriage is picture-perfect. But what are you really gaining from the comparison? What purpose is that serving except to increase your feelings of discouragement and discontent? Your friend and her partner are two completely different people and so their marriage is bound to be different from yours.
Moreover, you are so focused on what the marriage is not that you miss out on what it is. Your husband and children may not be perfect, they may not do things the exact way you believe should be done, but have you stopped to appreciate the things that they actually do? Each person in your family brings unique gifts and when we are too rigid and fixed on what it should be, we are unable to see those gifts.
Also, what about living your life? Your efforts to change your marriage takes up so much time, energy and brain power that you have let go of your own life. In bringing your focus back to yourself, you begin to do things that you enjoy. Maybe you wanted to paint or write but never actually gave yourself permission to do it. Well, how about starting now? This is your time. As you begin to focus on your life, the clothes on the bathroom floor, the papers on the kitchen table will not bother you as much. You will be happier and everybody in the family will be happy to be around you.
Nothing that I have suggested here seems easy. How do you let go of expectations? After all your expectations are reasonable. But my question to you is “you have held on to these expectations for a long time, maybe years. And, how has it worked for you?” If holding these expectations worked for you, you would probably not be reading this article. The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again, and expect different results.
I am not minimizing really serious problems that may exist in some marriages. These may be financial or sexual dishonesty, verbal, emotional or physical abuse, etc. But you may have a better sense of what you want to do about these problems once you let go of trying to change your partner and bring your focus back on what you want out of your life.
When we wait for someone else to change, we label ourselves helpless. And we are…because none of us have the power to change another person. I have seen many marriages change with and without marriage counseling. While there are no guarantees in a relationship, one thing is true in all situations: when we put our focus on things that are out of our control (like changing someone else), we tend to become anxious, neglect ourselves and feel unhappy. When we bring our focus inward, we are calmer, happier and fun to be around.
About Rochna: Rochna Hazra is trained in Marriage and Family Therapy at Virginia Tech. She includes the emotional, psychological, spiritual and family aspects of a person in her work. Originally from India, she combines the Eastern traditions of mindfulness, non-judgment and a holistic approach to healing with the Western approach of realism and solution-focused action.
Rochna uses Cognitive-Behaviorial techniques to help you overcome anxiety and depression.
Rochna is also a Certified Advanced Relapse Prevention Specialist and trained in Sex Addiction and Mindfulness-based Therapy and Relapse Prevention.
Click here to learn more about Depression treatment and Anxiety treatment and my practice in Leesburg, Virginia
