Early on in my marriage, if one of my friends would mention they were in marriage counseling I immediately assumed the worst. I thought, that will never be me. Even though I had started counseling in college for anxiety and depression, the stigma around marriage counseling was strong in those early years. Flash forward to now, I think it’s one of the best things we’ve ever done.
The assumption that marriage counseling is only for people in real trouble is completely false. However, the shame was present for Penn too. He thought of marriage counseling as emasculating. Like somehow he had failed at being able to fix something he should be equipped to. A couple years ago when someone asked me about counseling, they used this analogy: “You’d never send your kids to play in the Final 4 without practice, would you?”
When It Finally Clicked
After that, it sort of clicked. Why wouldn’t you do marriage without practice? I wanted our marriage to be the best it could be. Luckily, in our conversation with Danielle and Adam Silverstein from the Marriage & Martinis podcast, they couldn’t agree more. For them, their therapist acted as a moderator for tough conversations where they had trouble seeing eye to eye. They are both passionate people who needed to win the argument and a third-party to look at disagreements in a subjective way was life-changing for them.
Danielle and Adam have also created an e-book called Date Night Questions. After years of going out to dinner and having the same conversations about kids, work, and schedules, they created some deeper jumping off points for couples to have productive and interesting conversations. They also hope it helps couples grow closer together.
You can pre-order Date Night Questions here and listen to our podcast conversation using the links below! Have you gotten marriage counseling or have you thought about it? Tell us in the comments.
