Marriage Articles  

A large part of my practice is made up of people interested in relationship advice. Not really by design (I started out working with teenagers), it just sort of worked out that way. Most often when someone comes in they want to know what to do.

They request a 5 step plan to fix their problem, and they will be on their way. I must confess, for years I tried that “5 step” type of approach. Reading book after book and experimenting on my clients. While I have personally seen marriages seemingly miraculously healed, it just wasn’t happening every time. The magical formula never came, at least not in the form I had expected.  

What I did discover was that relationships are more than meets the eye. As I have mentioned in previous article, if you have suffered any type of injury or trauma as a child, your brain and heart have an overriding goal for you. They will protect you at any cost. Even if it that method of protection causes you pain and loneliness. It is often primitive and deeply rooted. Here is an example.

Let’s pretend that I have a client named Alan (I made him up). Alan meets a woman named Cindy. Alan really likes Cindy and proceeds to call her every 5 minutes. When he comes into my office I tell him, “Lets not call Cindy every 5 minutes.

Women don’t like that.” The next week he comes back in and says, “Bob, I have improved twice as much. I only called her every 10 minutes.” While I appreciate Alan’s 100% improvement, what Alan needs is to do is improve exponentially and not call Cindy any more than once a week.

You can guess Alan’s reaction; he will grasp his heart as though I stabbed him. This surely can’t be the Lord’s will to abandon something that seems so right? It seems so right to call her, yet those feelings betray him. Every time Alan gets nervous he picks up the phone and calls Cindy. It keeps his anxiety away.

Some use cigarettes or alcohol for the same anxiety relief. What I want is for Alan to be anxious. He must allow himself to feel out of control so we can find out what the anxiety is trying to tell him.

His feelings will give him insight, if (and this is a big if) he will allow himself to listen to those anxious feelings rather than acting them out.

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