3 Things to Know About Choosing a Great Marriage Counselor

After several counselor meet and greets I discovered what they are

“There are more bad counselors than good counselors out there,” says my sister.

I listen to her sage consult because she’s in the medical field.

When my sister proffers this advice, I do not realize I will ultimately spend more than a decade in the counseling and research of love, relationships, marriage, and divorce.

It was before this marketing/PR consultant became a freelance journalist, and former business columnist, and morphed into a relationship columnist.

But I never forgot my sister’s words.

When my marriage began to falter, my husband and I sought out a counselor. We were referred to a therapist through our church. We were in our early 30s and despite our problems, were still interested in working things out.

This counselor did something taboo in our first meeting.

Only I was too young and not yet a relationship expert, to detect this.

Regardless, she left both my husband and me with a bad feeling.

We had no desire to continue counseling with her.

3 Things to know about choosing a great marriage counselor.

1. A good marriage counselor will not make an immediate diagnosis

A good marriage counselor will not diagnose you on the first visit.

The counselor my husband and I met with was middle-aged but fresh out of earning a degree as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) and her textbook knowledge was front and center.

She asked about our family backgrounds.

I explained I was the child of a single mother and that my father had left when I was just five years old because he was an alcoholic. After that, I don’t remember the counselor focusing on anything else.

“You’re angry,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “That’s why we are in marriage counseling because I’m upset.”

“You’re the adult child of an alcoholic. That’s why you are angry,” she said.

I was speechless.

My dad had left at an early age. I had long ago forgiven him. He was not a stereotypical alcoholic. He was what I call a lampshade alcoholic. He was funny and kind and the life of the party. He wasn’t remotely abusive. He was a man who ultimately couldn’t overcome an addiction.

My husband and I got to the car.

“You’re not an angry person,” he said. “She’s wrong about you.”

Fortunately, we were young enough that we weren’t looking to prove one another wrong back then. We were just looking to save our relationship and my husband’s younger years were his better years.

Does the family of origin impact our relationships?

Absolutely.

But that counselor didn’t have enough facts to make that assessment. She had just met us. It was absurdly premature, not to mention unprofessional to attempt a diagnosis within our initial appointment.

2. A good marriage counselor will not alienate you

A good marriage counselor will not alienate you.

That particular marriage counselor should not have made a knee-jerk diagnosis. Again, she didn’t have enough information about either of us or our relationship to do so.

But she made another huge mistake.

She alienated the two of us.

My husband didn’t want to return. I didn’t want to return either. We were too young to understand why she gave us a bad feeling. We just didn’t feel like the appointment made sense.

It felt accusatory and not safe.

It felt like being labeled rather than self-discovery and recovery.

Do good counselors eventually tell you difficult things? Yes. Do they take you down a somewhat unwanted road of personal discovery? Yes. It’s hard to learn certain truths about ourselves.

But good marriage counselors earn your trust.

Because they want to help you and they need you to return to accomplish this.

I remember speaking to our second marriage counselor who was a psychologist. By this time, we were in our 40s. I felt as if he had been fairly direct with me so I asked him why he didn’t seem as forthright with my husband.

I’ll never forget what he told me.

“I have to be careful because I want to encourage your husband to return.”

Our second marriage counselor took many months to uncover our family of origin, our personalities, and our relationship. He doled out certain things along the way when he deemed each of us was ready to hear them.

He was accurate about my husband.

When our marriage counselor after quite some time and a battery of tests delivered our reality my husband never returned to counseling.

I was told I was a major, major enabler. Enablers tend to be overly caring individuals who put up with repeatedly bad behavior and make excuses for the one they love. They remain in unhealthy situations for too long.

The first marriage was correct my father influenced me.

But not in the manner she prematurely jumped to. My mother was an enabler who tolerated an alcoholic husband for too long. I was mimicking her patterns of behavior.

My husband was told he lacked empathy. And that it was a severe deficit. He was told that empathy is a developmental stage we receive in childhood and my husband never received it.

My family of origin meant that I had a father who physically abandoned me and I attracted myself to a man who emotionally abandoned me. It was two different things. An alcoholic and a narcissist.

But both brought the unpredictability familiar from my childhood.

3. A good marriage counselor will teach you to heal

A good marriage counselor will teach you to heal.

A good marriage counselor is by nature, a good listener.

They will endlessly absorb your pain, anger, and victimization.

But then they will teach you to heal. They will empower you. They will do this while still validating you. The two things are not mutually exclusive. A good marriage counselor will permit you to lick your wounds.

But they will coax you towards self-triage.

They will teach you about yourself.

This is important because we can’t control our spouses. We only have control over our own actions. We can’t change people. People can change but not because we beg them to.

True and authentic change comes when an individual arrives at self-discovery, not when we force them to.

Good marriage counselors will validate, teach, call us out, give us insights, be our sounding board, and promote our healthy individual and relationship journeys.

These are 3 things to know about choosing a great marriage counselor.

Your individual and relationship health deserves the best advocate.

Be choosy.

Interview several marriage counselors if necessary. Not to hear what you want to hear. That’s the wrong objective. But to get a sense that you have selected a quality marriage counselor who is truly good at their profession.

We all head to marriage counseling believing it’s our spouse’s fault.

But there are two people in every marriage.

I left a diagnosed narcissist and I still had an unhealthy enabling quality that kept me in that relationship for too long. That’s not victim blaming. It’s empowering for me to realize I had some control over my own decisions.

The best counselors leave us wanting to come back…

And itching to heal.

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