An Early Step For Saving Your Marriage

Find a Counselor Suitable for Your Wife and You. In That Order.

(Before we get going… This is Article #1 in the series, 12 Things a Husband Can Do to Save His Marriage. But wives, you’re welcomed here too. As you read, remember this is a reflective list. It’s simply what worked for me. I hope you find some of the insights helpful. Feel free to take what you find useful. Leave what you don’t.

Thanks for reading.)

Husbands, today I want to share with you why I believe finding the right counselor for my wife and me was an important first step to healing our relationship. I’ve worded some things carefully here, because sometimes the order matters. Particularly when it comes to putting your spouse first.

Please understand while I believe finding a counselor is an important first step, it might not be the first step. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, no universal formula to addressing challenges in marriage. Frankly, there were a lot of things that had to happen for us before we got to the place where we sought a counselor. In fact, you even might say our marriage hitting rock-bottom was the first step.

A step I tripped over.

But once we were there, finding the right counselor was an important early action.

As I set out to write this, nearly two decades of hindsight and hard work illuminated things I hadn’t noticed before. What began as a straightforward piece quickly grew several hundred words longer than I intended.

These new discoveries seem significant—personal growth always is. In fact, I suspect what I’ve uncovered is just as important as finding the right counselor. The growth happened in the process itself.

Let me share that journey with you today.

First, let’s set the scene, at least in relation to how my wife was feeling about the whole idea of counseling.

In short, she wasn’t interested.

She was exhausted from years of trying to help me understand what was bothering her. The things in our marriage that I needed to address. She knew me better than anyone, and if she couldn’t find a way to explain it that made sense to me, she doubted counseling would make a difference. I still remember her rolling her eyes and shaking her head when I first brought it up.

Then why did she agree to go?

Looking back, I think there were two reasons.

First, when I asked her to go with me I shared some personal things with her that she didn’t know about me, even after years of marriage.¹ She still cared about me as a person and the father of her children, so I think she wanted to get me in front of a counselor one way or the other. Married to her or not, I had things I was going to need to work through.

Second, she wanted a counselor to help me understand just how done she was, and that it was time to move forward in life without her.

It was for these two reasons she agreed to go with me.

There was one thing, however, that she insisted upon. She would not see any counselor or therapist who might guilt her into staying with me. She didn’t need to explain this to me—I understood and completely agreed. We both felt this way because of the limitations and demands, whether real or perceived, that our faith had placed upon us.

Part of what I was hoping we’d discuss with our counselor was the relationship we had before we were married. Primarily, the premarital sex. In the evangelical Christian milieu² in which we were raised, sex before marriage was the mother of all sins. We believed one of the reasons we decided to get married was to absolve us of some of the moral baggage. There was a lot to talk about.

Sexual Samsonite in tow, I knew by then that trying to dodge sin was a bad reason to get married. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake when it came to staying married. Doubling down on flawed reasoning didn’t make sense.

Still, I did hope to find a counselor who had first-hand knowledge of our Christian faith. It seemed logical that someone who understood the community that raised her and me and how the baggage may have influenced us throughout the years would be most suitable to help us understand our story and situation.

The last thing Joy wanted was to sit across from a counselor, spill her guts, and be told she had to stay married because a Bible verse said so—lest she upset sweet baby Jesus and His Dad. I realize that might sound irreverent, but it captures the frustration we felt. Her pain—and mine—needed more than shallow platitudes or simplistic answers. We didn’t need a God who just handed down rules; we needed one who could meet us in our brokenness and help us find a way forward.

So, I was adamant that we find a counselor that would guide us towards a place of health even if it turned out that health could only come as the result of a divorce. I wanted a counselor who understood divorce could be the healthy outcome.

I set out to find one.

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This is where I must pause to address a couple important things that happened before I found the counselor. Today, with years of hindsight to consider everything, I think I’d already unknowingly taken two different actions towards making things work. (See, I told you the order of steps wasn’t so cut-and-dry!)

I believe two things were crucial:

1. I took initiative in something.

Me taking charge of finding a marriage counselor for us was no small miracle. In our marriage, I wasn’t in the habit of taking charge of anything. I’d let my wife take charge of every responsibility in the relationship, save home maintenance and yard work. This resulted in an inordinate amount of stress for her, a person who was already exerting a significant amount of intellectual activity at her professional workplace.³

Taking initiative in finding us a counselor was an action which showed I wanted to take more responsibility, even if I didn’t understand it that way at the time.

2. I prioritized my wife’s needs over the demands of my faith—whether those demands were real or ones I only imagined.

This wasn’t a small thing for me. My faith was everything. It had been for her too. And again, all these years later, I see this was a step of growth for me too. I’d given up faith tenants before, but for selfish reasons.

The first time it was about sex.

Remember? The premarital sex thing I mentioned earlier? At 19-years-old, I didn’t care what my faith community said about it anymore. I wasn’t concerned. I wanted to have sex, and I’d convinced myself she did too. I was far more concerned with what I wanted than what she wanted.⁴

This was part of why I wanted to find a counselor who would allow her to divorce me if that’s where we ended up.

It was a choice I owed her.

Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t think my wife noticed this and thought, Oh, look! He’s putting me first! This would be over-simplistic and a misrepresentation of what happened.

For sure, as we entered our first counseling appointment, she was intent on ending it all.

Eventually, she’d choose not to.

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I would, in fact, find a counselor who understood our needs. Much to my surprise, he was an evangelical pastor recommended to me by a person whose identity has faded into a part of my memory I can no longer access. But what this friend said was, “Have you considered Jimmy?”

I’d met Jimmy years before and he was the son of someone in our church family. I didn’t know him well, but he was someone I remembered as being caring and not particularly dogmatic. I let him know in no uncertain terms that we were already familiar with what the church’s opinion on divorce. We weren’t concerned about it and frankly, we didn’t want to have Bible verses tossed our way in an effort to coerce compliance.

He told us he was 100% committed to our goals. He promised that if he used the Bible with us it would strictly be to bless us or offer what he believed was wisdom. He explained that in his years of counseling people, he’d seen couple’s marriages flourish after counseling. He also explained there were many who ended their marriage because it was the better choice.

Reassured, we chose Jimmy as our counselor. He agreed to our stated goal.

A healthy future. Together or apart.

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As I said last week, there really isn’t anything about me that makes me qualified to give marital advice. There’s only this: At one point my marriage looked to be coming to an end. We fixed it, and today are gag-me-with-a-spoon twitterpated⁵ for each other.

In love.

But since you’ve read this far I do owe it to you to offer the advice of someone with more expertise.

Jeremy Mohler

is a Substacker I began reading a while back. I was sold on his commitment to helping men be better people. His credentials begin where mine end. He is, in fact, a professional counselor.

Recently Jeremy wrote an article you would find helpful if you’re looking for a therapist for any reason, not just marital counseling. It’s titled, How to find a therapist who (actually!) gets you!

As I was writing this article, I was reminded of his piece and returned to read it. I felt some relief as I did. Some of his words echoed mine.

He mentioned finding a therapist for himself after a friend recommend one. And how important it is to find one that understands you, and he gives some tips to get to that point.

When [speaking with] with each of them, let them drive the conversation. They will likely ask you what you need help with. Notice how they respond to what you share. See if you feel truly seen and heard.

Put some effort into the searching process. It’s important you find a counselor that helps you communicate.

In fact, this is probably the most important part of what Jimmy did for me and my wife, Joy. As I mentioned, Joy didn’t think counseling would work because she thought she’d communicated all her grievances to me.

But that’s the thing. What we needed was someone to help us hear each other. Jimmy challenged me when I wasn’t hearing what Joy was saying. And, Jimmy helped Joy see the areas of my life where I needed to be heard, including how she spoke to me sometimes made me feel devalued or disrespected. As I began to hear and work on the things Joy needed, she began to see me in a new light.

Interestingly, so did I.

As a reminder from last week, here’s where we’re heading on this journey.

1. Find a counselor suitable for you and your wife.

2. Decide if you want to be married.

3. Unlearn everything you thought you knew about marriage.

4. Let grace abound.

5. Decide if the person you are married to is the person you want to be married to.

6. Put your spouse’s needs before yours, including granting a divorce if it means she will be healthier.

7. Apologize for the things you know you did wrong.

8. Listen to the grievances your spouse has and decide if they are things you can change.

9. Reassess your goals in life.

10. Be honest about your addictions.

11. Learn to give her an orgasm.

12. Give her an orgasm every day.

Next time I’m going to get into another important step, Decide If You Even Want to be Married, which seems like it might be the first step. Maybe. Maybe not. Make sure you subscribe so you can see what I have to say about that.

There are a few questions you can help me with. I’m curious; maybe you have some opinions on this stuff…

• If you’re a person who found healing in your relationship, what steps did you find most crucial when working on it?

• What’s your opinion on me setting aside religious fervor to work on my marriage?

• If you’re someone who has experience in looking for a counselor or therapist for any reason, what would you recommend? Your tip might help someone else.

• Finally, am I full of it? Seriously, did I just get lucky?

Lastly, share this article if you think some other person might find it helpful.

1. This was critical, and you can read about it here. It was important for her and me. It’s a long story, which is why I didn’t even try to summarize it here. If you have something you believe you need to confess to your spouse, now is the time. Get to it.

2. Um, this is pronounced “meel-you.” You know, according to ChatGPT, which I asked because while I know what it meant (the culture in which we were raised and produced…me), I’ve always struggled with pronouncing it.

3. That is, the place that paid her money and supported our life together.

4. There’s no easy way to explain what happened. You can begin to read about it here.

5. It’s from Bambi. If you know, you know. If you don’t, watch the movie.