Importance of Wise Counsel

In today's Podcast, we talk about the importance of wise counsel in our marriages.  Thriving relationships have a habit of getting help proactively, early, and often.  Don't wait years to see a counselor.  Our marriages are worth investing in and prioritizing.

Transcript

sg:
Hello, Hope Relentless Marriage. It's so good to be here with you guys on this podcast and we're excited to talk about some things that are going to impact your marriage. Remember, marriage impacts families. Families impact communities and communities impact the world.

Chad:
That's

sg:
So

Chad:
right.

sg:
my Chad David, Chad David actually has a birthday coming up tomorrow, you guys.

Chad:
Yeah.

sg:
And so I'm excited to celebrate him. He's gonna be 25. Actually not. Chad, I don't think men really care about how old they are like women do, huh?

Chad:
I know I don't. I can't speak for all men, but I don't.

sg:
So he's gonna be 39 actually, which is still a young buck. I'm two and a half years older than him. For those of you who don't know, he reminds me of it consistently. But anyway, what are we going to talk about today, Chad?

Chad:
Well today we're gonna talk about this idea of reaching out for marriage help. You know, there's different ways and seasons of life, but the first thing is just we wanna celebrate that reaching out for marriage help is a sign of strength and

sg:
Yes.

Chad:
not weakness. And so we really want reaching out for help around relationship or marriage counseling to be something that is celebrated, something that is promoted, something that is encouraged.

sg:
Right. And so typically most people reach out for help when they're in a crisis. And a lot of times the calls that we get, people are about to divorce and they say, this is our last chance. This is our last opportunity to see if we can salvage this. And the reality is that's amazing that they're reaching out. But the reality is it might be too late at that point, because at that point, hearts are hardened and they've already gone through a lot. together that has been not very productive. And so we want to encourage people to reach out still, but there is a better way and there is a better season when we can reach out for help.

Chad:
I think one of the other seasons is premarital, right? Like

sg:
Yeah.

Chad:
right from the get go. If we can get counsel and wisdom and support early in our relationship, then there are some of those crisis moments that we'll avoid completely. Now, every relationship has challenges. Every relationship has obstacles. So it's not like, oh, go to premarital counseling and never have a problem. But I think premarital counseling... can position our relationships with an incredible foundation and protect us from going into some of those spaces that have we simply known better, we might've been able to avoid.

sg:
Right. And so not to jump back and forth, but one of the things that I'm reminded of is John Gottman. He's a marriage researcher and he had a stat and I might be butchering it, so don't quote me, but this is the idea. This is the heart behind it. On average couples wait five to six years before reaching out for help, even though they have the situation, they have the problem. So they're dealing with it and they're waiting. five to six years before they actually reach out for help. The only difference is the amount of time might be different, it might be seven, but the point is many of us wait way too long to reach out for help, and all of us continue to do that because of the mentality, the mindset we have. So at Hope Relentless, we wanna help you reframe what it looks like to reach out for help. It's not just in crisis. As Chad said, premarital is huge. I love working with premarital couples. I get a little giddy, to be honest, I tell them, honestly, my goal is not to keep you together when you're in premarital, it's to help you become aware of the person that you hope to marry one day and decide if it's actually going to be a good fit. Decide if it's actually someone that you feel like you could build a life together with. So premarital is crucial. It's a time of fun, but oftentimes, there are a lot of rose-colored glasses when it comes to premarital counseling.

Chad:
Well, I just think about that stat you share with Gottman of how long we take to reach out. And it's kind of heartbreaking, right?

sg:
Mm-hmm.

Chad:
And I know in different seasons of our relationship, we have struggled with kind of the same, I think Gottman calls them perpetual problems.

sg:
Mm-hmm.

Chad:
And the reality is there's other areas of our life where we understand this concept of reaching out better. I think about our physical health, right? If somebody breaks an arm, breaks a leg, or experiences some type of physical injury, that would be a crisis, they go

sg:
Right.

Chad:
and get help. And I think that's where in relationship counseling, sometimes we mimic that. We experience a crisis, and so we look for help. But also, when I think about medical, like we have young sons who have never experienced, thankfully, any major injury, but they still go for annual physicals.

sg:
Mm-hmm. Yeah,

Chad:
even

sg:
that's true.

Chad:
athletes go for physicals and see doctors and personal trainers. It's not because they're injured, it's in prevention. It's to take care of their body. And so I think there's so much to be learned from that and transfer it over into our relationships. Yeah, let's not deal with something for five, six, seven years. And I just think about the patterns and the habits and the additional hurts that we'll pick up along that journey, where if we'll get help, there'll be a preventative element. And then there'll also just be, we won't find ourselves in those hurtful cycles for nearly as long.

sg:
Right. And so that kind of brings me into this other category of getting help with our marriages or getting wisdom for our marriages. And that's what we kind of call married and happy. And this is something that we are reframing to mean getting that investment or having that investment, that continual investment in your relationship, even when it's going good, especially when it's going good, because marriage is a lifelong journey. It's longer than a marathon, right? It is a lifelong journey and it takes a lot of investment. And we can see this in all realms of life. Like you said, Chad, with exercise, you're going to continue to exercise if you want to continue to be healthy. It just makes sense. When you stop exercising, you're gonna lose some muscle. And likewise with marriage, it's similar. And I think society paints a picture I think our own ideals about marriage paints a picture that says it's not going to take intentionality or work, if you will. It's almost like work is a negative word when it comes to marriage, but just in reality, anything that is good, that is worth having, that is worth growing takes work.

Chad:
Yeah, I think there's an element maybe culturally and I don't know if it's Disney, Happily Ever After kind of paints the wedding day as just bliss forever. And if you've been in a relationship longer than a couple of weeks, you understand that bliss forever is unrealistic. But I think

sg:
Right.

Chad:
one of those myths could be that if we're meant to be together, it should be

sg:
You

Chad:
easy.

sg:
saved it.

Chad:
It's just not, a relationship takes intentionality. and takes a proact requires proactiveness. Like we see in couples that are thriving over extended seasons, it doesn't mean they didn't hit obstacles, but there

sg:
Yeah.

Chad:
is a trend of investment into their marriage. And if you wanna call that work, whether that's listening to podcasts like this one or other marriage podcasts or reading a book or. going to a marriage counselor or a marriage retreat or a marriage webinar, but something where we are proactively investing into our relationship, it's so powerful. And that's, you know, I know those are some of the couples when they proactively reach out are just so fun to work with

sg:
Yeah.

Chad:
because it's about growth and not just the repair, right? There's opportunities to share vision and to move towards that collectively.

sg:
Exactly. And the reality is that we all need accountability. We all are so busy that it's just helpful to have accountability in our day to day life. And so that's what the married and happy group gets. And that, like you said, Chad, they're able to achieve more together than they could imagine because they're staying focused, they're staying accountable. And the reality also is we, most of us haven't seen good examples of marriage. And so then we jump into this marriage thing, we're two completely different people, yet we have no idea of where to even start. And so you think of driver's ed, you know, it's mandatory to go through driver's ed because it's important. Lives can be at risk if you don't know how to drive correctly. I would like to argue marriage is even more important because marriage impacts families, families impact communities, communities impact the world. And so... This leads me into just kind of sharing a personal example or a personal story about where this really came to life. I would say for me, I'll speak for myself and then Chad, you can kind of tune in. But I remember when I was working on my master's degree, one of the things that was mandatory was to get individual therapy. And so I had a counselor and it was great. And... I decided, you know, this is going so well. I kinda wanna have a date, if you will, and bring in Chad, and it'll be fun. We'll have couples counseling, it'll be fun. And so I brought in Chad, and there was this moment where, you know, I had already had rapport with my counselor, and so there was a moment where he was talking about, you know, saying sorry, and he said, "'Sarah Gale, when someone hurts your feelings, you feel like that, or you want Chad, like when he hurts your feelings, to say, He's sorry. And I'm like, yes, of course. And he's like, but not only do you want him to say he's sorry, you want him to almost be like, I will never do it again. I hurt you in this way, this way, this way. Please, please forgive me. You, you would even love Sarah Gale if he would kind of like get bow down and just show his remorse and his pain of hurting you. And I was like, my man, my counselor knows what he's talking about. Yes. That's what I want. And then my counselor betrayed me. And he said, no,

Chad:
Thanks.

sg:
that is not what is healthy. You are wanting Chad to say sorry for everyone in your life that has hurt you. You're wanting him to pay the price for all of that hurt and pain. And so we gotta work through that. And

Chad:
Yeah.

sg:
I was like, okay.

Chad:
I remember showing up to this couples counseling. I don't know, we were in Pasadena, so maybe we had our firstborn son, probably somewhere two, three years into marriage or so.

sg:
Yeah.

Chad:
And I remember showing up because if you did couples counseling, your master's program gave you extra hours. So

sg:
There's

Chad:
I

sg:
the

Chad:
was

sg:
DJ.

Chad:
like, oh, okay, we'll get extra hours. I was just approaching it from like a strategic, like, Let's get through this faster. And if I can pay for one hour of counseling and the program will give us credit for like three hours, like let's do this, right? So I was in it for that.

sg:
Yeah.

Chad:
Then the counselor starts setting it up. And I'm like, I'm never coming back. Like this

sg:
I'm

Chad:
guy was,

sg:
sorry.

Chad:
this is no good. And then he flipped the script and I was like, yeah, this is, I like this guy. But I think outside of that, the bigger picture was he was trying to create an environment. a safe space where we could dialogue and learn and become aware of some of the potential hurdles that were in our relationship. We

sg:
Mm-hmm.

Chad:
didn't show up there with boxing gloves on trying to in a really difficult season. It was literally like,

sg:
Like, fun,

Chad:
hey, this

sg:
come

Chad:
is...

sg:
along, Chad, let's hang out.

Chad:
Yeah. But then we were able to learn and potentially avoid some of those moments or just... One of the things that I like about counseling, even in a good season, is it creates a safe space to potentially talk about challenging topics.

sg:
Mm-hmm.

Chad:
So a different thing that I remember was pre-marital. So it looks like there's a couple things that we've done right, and maybe we stumbled into them in our relationship journey, but now at 17, almost 18 years of marriage, we're reaping the fruit of that.

sg:
Mm-hmm.

Chad:
I remember we went to pre-marital counseling at our church. And the first time, I think I was like 19, because we got married when I was barely 20, you were 21.

sg:
Mm-hmm.

Chad:
And the pastor was just like, man, it seems like you guys are awesome people. It seems like you guys love each other. This is gonna be great.

sg:
Mm-hmm.

Chad:
And we both walked out of there concerned. We were like, eh, I feel like we need more than just a pat on the back. And I remember we were to a different pastor and he really gave us some practical tools. Some of those being on what it is, the different challenges that an interracial couple might face that is unique to them.

sg:
Yeah, it's crucial.

Chad:
And so I remember that helped prepare us. I remember the master's program. And so these are some of those proactive areas that I look back now and maybe it wasn't as strategic as I would have liked it to have been, but those moments of going... and getting counsel and getting wisdom outside of a crisis served

sg:
Right.

Chad:
us really, really well.

sg:
And even to this day, we have marriage mentors that we meet with every other week first a time and then monthly now, who just kind of so in to our marriage and, and we're so forever grateful for them. And there's just been people along the way that have, um, sewn into our marriage, but we have pursued that as well, right? Like we have tried to reach out and ask for this mentorship and ask for this help, whether it's individually with, you know, grief recovery that I have gone through, Chad celebrate recovery, different things where we're trying to be who we can be to add to the marriage. And so doing the work, getting the coaching, whatever it takes, but seeing it more with a mentality of not, oh, like I'm so broken. And so now I have to go to this person to fix me, but no, it's a place of strength where it's like, I have big dreams. I wanna live. you know, God's best for marriage. I wanna experience God's best for marriage. So I'm gonna do what it takes to experience that.

Chad:
Yeah, and so I think, you know, as we wrap up this podcast, you know, just kind of a specific action step is to encourage people, find different ways to proactively invest in your relationship. That

sg:
Yeah.

Chad:
could be working with a marriage counselor, that could be reading a book on marriage, that could be having an older couple that maybe they're not, you know, trained, but they've got a... thriving marriage and they're further down the road of life and can speak into your relationship, can speak into your marriage, but there's so much fruit to be experienced on the other side of taking intentional action steps to invest in your marriage. Your marriage is worth it. Your relationships are worth investing into and if Hope Relentless and our team of counselors can be a part of that. we would consider that an honor and a privilege, but find somebody who works with you, who's a good fit. If you go to a counselor and it's not a great fit, don't

sg:
That's

Chad:
just

sg:
good.

Chad:
stop there, try

sg:
Yeah.

Chad:
again, try again. I've been to restaurants, walk in, get food, the food sucks. It doesn't mean I've never gone to another restaurant, it's understanding that when we get counsel and encouragement and support, it's gonna help our life. thrive and continue to move forward.

sg:
Right. The last thing I'll say is we don't know what we don't know. And so the thing I didn't tell you guys is I went to my counselor and you know, when we, when I, when Chad came in with me and we did the couples counseling, that was supposed to be fun. A big part of our life at that time was I was having a hard time saying I'm sorry. And basically through this, you know, time with the counselor and with Chad, I learned, wow, this is why I don't say I'm sorry. there's more to the story than this. And so from that point, I realized my son was not saying I'm sorry.

Chad:
That's

sg:
And

Chad:
right.

sg:
it was all connected. And so after I realized through that couples counseling, what I was expecting Chad to do when he hurt me, and so this is why it was so hard for me to say sorry, because I felt like if I had to say sorry, I messed up as a person. Like it impacted my value. And so now I realized why it was so difficult. And then this is what I was perpetuating in the next generation. So this

Chad:
Wow.

sg:
is the pattern of getting just that different lens. You don't know what you don't know. And so we wanna encourage you, like Chad said, reach out for help. You're worth it. And it's going to be worth it. And I wanna tell you, the fact you're listening to this, well done. Wanna encourage you in that to continue to listening to our podcast, other podcasts. And... Just remember, there's always, always hope.