Lingering Stigma Around Therapy
There isn’t an area of mental health where no work needs to be done to reduce social stigma. While it can sometimes feel to a counselor that progress has been made over the last few decades (and it has), it is always worth checking that creeping sense of complacence in the matter.
Marriage counseling seems to be one of the most pressing areas where this is true. Maybe you’ve noticed that the divorce rate has actually dropped in recent years, which might look encouraging at first. However, closer inspection shows us that the marriage rate is also falling in tandem. No matter what the cause, it is at least clear that one of the most central institutions to our society is in decline.
On a much more anecdotal note, I work in a building with a handful of general practice attorneys. More and more, it seems that the cases coming in are all divorce filings. Perhaps some of these marriages truly were destined for failure regardless of any intervention. If not, though, would it not at least have been worth reaching out for help if it were available? If so, it might also be true that the perceived embarrassment surrounding the idea of getting marriage counseling deterred some of those couples from reaching out.
So, When Do I know that I should Reach Out?
Let me respond to this question with another set of questions. When is the right time to get a physical? When is the right time to go to the gym, or to get a physical trainer? When is the right time to take up music lessons or to take a class that interests you?
Presumably, you would take music lessons before you book your first show, you would get a physical before you fell ill, and you would go to the gym before your muscles atrophy. It seems, though, that marriage counseling is often the final tool to prove a willingness of effort before calling it quits.
This is not to say that more severe cases are absolutely hopeless, but early intervention clearly produces the highest chance of success. So instead of thinking of marriage counseling as a badge of shame that suggests your marriage is failing, we can use it as a way to strengthen a marriage that simply has areas to improve upon. At the end of the day, this is the purpose of marriage work. To restrengthen a marriage to its peak.
After all, life already has so many obstacles and unknowns. You don’t have to let marriage be the one that you struggle through without a helping hand from the outside.