So It All Started When.....

It seems that as of late, many of my friends are having relationship difficulties. I'm not sure why this culmination is happening at the precipice of summer, but it is nonetheless. Natalie joked that maybe it is something in the air, something comparable to M. Nights "The Happening", only instead of out right suicide, some of us are committing relationship suicide.

I always thought that relationship counseling was reserved for couples that were married or had at least been together for a really, really long time. Not so. Relationship counseling is for anyone in a relationship in which both parties have come to a stand still, communication wise, or for couples seeking to iron out or even find out some of the areas in which improvement is needed.

For the record, I think counseling is a good thing. I think it can provide a couple insight into their relationship that they may never have had otherwise. It doesn't "fix" anything and I think a lot of people enter into counseling with impossibly high hopes that counseling will magically " fix " everything. What counseling does is provide the right environment and the right questions to lead a person down a path that might provide them with the right answers (i.g. Is this person I'm with really the right person? Can I make the sacrifices/changes needed to make this relationship work? Is the sacrifice/benefit ratio in my favor?) I think often times the individual's past allows the therapist to draw conclusions about why the person might be doing the things they do but at the end of the day, the responsibility still lies with the person in the relationship to make or not make changes.

In my opinion couple counseling can be good but it's only as good as each person's willingness to accept criticism. Both members must be willing to hear some things they may not want to hear and also be willing to accept advise about how to change. Whether they change or not, an openness to the process is a really big step.

It's hard to let go of something that you've put so much of yourself into. For a lot of people, when nothing else seems to be working counseling is a life line. However, I think that the line is only as strong as the couple's willingness to see it though, to listen to what is being said and to have the ability to follow through with whatever steps are necessary. Otherwise, you're just paying some geek to tell you how to run your life and that you are kind of a piece of crap for not realizing these things on your own. Oh ya, that'll be $160 bucks....