– Marriage Counseling is Hard. Why?

Last Updated on February 22, 2015 by Chris Roberts

PUTTING SOME LANGUAGE AROUND WHY MARRIAGE COUNSELING IN NASHVILLE TN IS DIFFICULT.

It’s no secret Nashville marriage counseling is difficult.  Most people intuitively know this.  But explaining why marriage therapy is hard is another story.

Marriage counseling is difficult ultimately, because it is about two people who have committed to living their entire life together for the rest of the lives.  People are complicated.  This is a beautiful and tragic reality.  As humans, we want to find patterns and systems in life in order to make things simpler and easier.  This trait of being human is normal and necessary.  We can’t continually live in a state of newness.  It would overwhelm us.  We need systems and patterns to make living the other parts of lives possible.  When we enter marriage, or really dating, everything feels new.  This is exciting.  It is often the reason we make a commitment to another person.  We want to continue this feeling of newness and hope and enjoyment of each other!

Marriage counseling usually becomes an option for couples when they reach the realistic stage of long-term commitment where the feelings they thought would last…don’t.  The hope, the excitement, and automatic feelings of joy and pleasure aren’t as tangible and as frequent as they were when you first starting dating each other.  This HAS to happen!  These automatic, unconscious feelings of elatedness must settle down, precisely because we pick up on our partner’s patterns and rituals.  We settle into routine.  Again, we MUST do this in order to put our attention into other things that were more or less neglected as we were consumed with every detail of our lover.

Marriage therapy asks couples to do the very thing they, in a sense, have already done, but are usually too afraid to admit: The automatic feelings of connection and intimacy don’t work anymore.  The reality is they can’t.  The neuroscience behind what happens in the brain when we fall in love is unfathomable.  Some people have equated the sensations in the brain of falling in love to that of incredibly powerful drugs.  Some even believe that the intoxication of falling in love has greater addictive power than cocaine or heroine.  I am not here to argue the validity of that statement.

Marriage counseling in Nashville, TN on many levels, asks partners to accept the death and end of that intoxicating type of addictive love.  It would be too much for anyone to live in that state of love for too long a period of time.  The question becomes: How do we continue to live in love with this person we’ve committed to, without settling for a numbing dormancy that most people fall prey to?

Marriage therapy is difficult, because it asks couples to name the death of an old way of relating to each other, and begin a difficult journey of finding new and life-giving ways of connecting.  It is there.  It always is.  It just takes tremendous courage and honesty to accept the death of the old, and forge through to a different way of being in love.  It’s hard and always will be.  But I believe it is always worth the effort.

If you and your spouse are looking for marriage therapy in Nashville, TN, because you have found your love for each other cold and distant, we here at Two Trees Counseling Nashville would love to be of help in your search.  Chris Roberts is a marriage therapist with experience in working with couples to bring their love life back to a place of freedom and enjoyment.  Chris would also be happy to refer you to another therapist in Nashville with whom you will find the greatest success in having the marriage you want.