By Joel Turgesen

We all seek balance in our lives…and then, there's marriage. What a roller coaster ride it can be. We careen from being too dependent to being too independent to forgetting who we are and who we love. The relationship struggles can chew you up and spit you out, make you feel like so much hamburger, dis-member you. The purpose of marriage counseling is to help you re-member yourself, to reintegrate, to learn how to resolve conflicts, to bring closure to hurtful things that have happened. You will learn how to honor and support, love and nurture each other. You will learn the meaning of interdependence.

Are you ready? Are you willing?

1. To make a full commitment to this work? Half measures avail us nothing; no resolution will result in marital dissolution.

2. To learn better how to see your spouse as of equal value to you. Men and women are very different and always will be (and Vive la difference!) and we are of equal value. We are equal in terms of worth and power. Disagreements are most often caused by differences in ways of seeing things that are both equally valid and equally flawed. (I will not be sitting in judgment about who is right and who is wrong on hot issues. My role is to facilitate your ability to dialogue together and to help uplift “reactive” thinking to “responsible” thinking.)

3. To agree to learn how to identify and surrender such core notions as: “since I am the man and you are my wife, you must give me whatever I want (e.g., giving me sex is her duty)”, or “since I am the woman, my husband's (and everyone else's) happiness is my responsibility, so controlling and worrying are how I show that I care”.

4. To believe that each human being is powerful, capable and ultimately responsible for the health of their own soul as well as for striving to treat their spouse as they would like to be treated themselves.

5. To be willing to learn the skills necessary to regain your balance from within whenever you get beside yourself with anger, anxiety, depression or horniness.

6. To embrace this work as a grand adventure of immense potential. Achieving a healthy functional relationship between two people is the most difficult of all human achievements. That would make it more difficult than climbing Mt Everest, so enter this journey with the awe and respect worthy of such a feat.

7. To be willing to discover, define and develop a working relationship with a spiritual power greater than yourself. Neglecting the spiritual aspect of this work will retard the process if not outright guarantee failure

8. To heal and forgive the past. The purpose of marriage is to help make you whole. Childhood wounds, as well as the wounds you've inflicted on each other have been triggered by your intimacy to the point where you may feel you have nothing left to give. The skills of forgiveness must be learned now in order to be able to give any more. You will also learn new ways of communicating that will empower you to help your spouse - and to help him or her help you.