Christian Counseling - Preserve Your Marriage While You Still Care

While couples still have some reasonable sense of connection and feeling for their partner is the time to preserve the relationship. This is in contrast to far too many who wait until they are almost hopeless and disconnected from feelings of love, romance and sex. A large number of these battle-fatigued couples enter counseling looking not so much for a therapist but a magician who can pull a rabbit out of the hat or success out of thin air. I really do own a magic-looking wand that sits atop my desk, but I don't know how to use it. I tell my clients when I figure it out I will let them know.

Joking aside, it's tragic for one individual or a couple to wait until he or she doesn't care about their partner anymore. This is perhaps the most significant reason marital counseling is not successful more than about 50% of the time. Some couples rationalize that in their wait they are learning to be tolerant, accepting and unconditionally loving. Without a doubt, these are good qualities, but the majority of couples I have seen are not able to discern when the waiting is helping them learn and develop those characteristics and when it's slowly and subtly destroying their relationship. Consequently, late in the game, they discover they don't care and can't deal with the marriage any longer. It's only then most finally get serious about seeking outside help.

Most of us are familiar with sayings, such as "Make hay while the sun shines" and "...now is 'the day of salvation"' (2 Corinthians 6:2). Common sense wisdom meets scriptural truth in these, which point to the idea that the time for decisive action is when a person discovers something and is emotionally connected and motivated. When a person still deeply cares about his or her partner is the time for pulling out all the stops and taking advantage of all opportunities.