Mom. Student. Wife. Doctor?

Being married can be a tricky thing. It is not always easy for each of us to balance our lives in perfect harmony with the other. Living with someone and loving them are just two separate things that do not always go hand in hand. Especially where kids are involved and many things happening at once, sometimes the juggling and handing off of kids becomes a replacement for actual time together.

Of late my husband and I have been having some marital difficulties. We are constantly bickering over stupid little things and can’t seem to get past the small stuff. We finally decided that perhaps it was time to go into couples counseling to see if we could resolve our issues.

Well, I made a few phone calls and found a person for us to talk to. The rate was reasonable and he seemed really nice on the phone, so we made our appointment. On that night we dropped the kids off with a sitter, and drove in silence to the counselor. I think that we were both a little nervous to hear what he had to say, and to lay all our cards on the table. We went in and he took down a little bit of background information on both of us, and then we began to speak about the core problems we were having in our marriage. My husband proceeded to tell him about how mad I would get at him when he would feed the dog at the table and then yell at her when she begged. I told the counselor that I really hated the way that he takes care of the house, and that he doesn’t fold the clothes the right way. Well, needless to say we went on and on, back and forth about these serious problems in our relationship and after a few minutes, the counselor stopped us and laughed. He said that we didn’t have any problems expressing how we felt to one another, and that our differences were normal. It was actually okay to get angry and frustrated at the other person, and to be able to convey that to them effectively showed that we had a really strong relationship. Well needless to say the ride home was much lighter than the ride there had been. We kept laughing about the fact that we went in for some serious marriage counseling and came out with the counselor laughing at us. Now we were both laughing at ourselves as well.

I guess sometimes you just need to have a trained professional tell you that you are normal. Although, I would venture a guess that we are far from normal, but we are pretty stuck together through it all. It really felt good to have our feelings validated and to know that we weren’t on the verge of anything major. We really had such a great night that night and we went out for coffee after a big session and just kept laughing about having the counselor laughing at us. What a hoot!