What I am Learning in Marriage Therapy

By KCY

1.     I’m an awful listener. This was a shock to me. My friends had always told me I was a great sounding board, a great friend. And maybe I was to my friends, but I wasn’t to my spouse. I didn’t know how to reflectively listen. To actually hear what my spouse was saying before becoming judgmental and defensive if I disagreed. To repeat back to my spouse what he said, in a gentle manner, pushing whatever biases and ideas I may have. This is a skill. A skill that takes many years of practicing. I think if our world leaders did more of this, perhaps our relationships would improve. 

2.     Our definition of what a family should be like is heavily influenced by our own childhood upbringing. This can create conflict if spouses have been brought up differently. My husband grew up the “nuclear family”: mom and dad, older sister and himself. No big extended family around. His parents worked but one parent was always available for the children. They took trips together as a family, lived in a house in the suburbs. I, on the other hand, came from a “broken home.” My parents divorced when I was nine and I moved with my mom and sister to San Francisco, where she grew up. Because my mom was a single parent, I had to learn at an early age to be independent and self-starting. We didn’t take vacations and we lived in a tiny apartment in the city surrounded by extended family: grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins. Complete opposite upbringing and neither way is right or wrong. It’s just different. But both my husband and I keep thinking that our upbringings were better than the other. This is something we are still working on. 

3.     That we all bring our own baggage to the marriage. Even if someone seems like they had a perfect upbringing, a charmed life, believe me, there is still some baggage there. We need to unpack that baggage, and we need to do it ourselves. Our spouse, family, friends, can help but it’s up to us to unpack it, deal with it. The baggage we bring into a marriage can weigh a marriage down. 

4.     Even if divorce was in the future, we would still need to learn to communicate effectively because we have children. This is a very important tidbit I never knew until I went to marriage therapy. Even if we divorced, we have children together, and it is in their best interest, for us to have a good relationship. So, yeah, sometimes people do still split up after marriage therapy, but it can teach a couple to have a more amicably split and children can still grow into well-adjusted adults if their parents know how to treat each other with kindness. 

5.     My husband is capable of change. That’s something I didn’t expect. But it’s what is happening. He is actually utilizing the tools the therapists is arming us with to become a better husband, father and man, and this gives me hope.