Communicating your feelings to your partner is the time-tested secret of a successful relationship. It’s actually a simple thing to do but not every couple knows how to do this.
The husband and wife need not immediately resort to separation for an unresolved conflict. There’s help actually, and it’s available through an unbiased third party. Take your pick, psychologists, shrinks, or marriage or marital counselors.
How counseling helps
Marriage counselors don’t usually give advice or judgment to couples seeking solutions to their problems.
Counselors give more of a direction to the conversation, or perhaps more clearly, they control the flow of traffic during the sessions. “Sometimes, the parties tend to get out of focus and ramble about their feelings,” said Pilar Garilao, marriage counselor at the Ateneo de Manila University’s Center for Family Ministries (Cefam) since 1996.
Marital counseling helps couples identify the root of the problem as well as understand each other. “We give options, yes, but we do not give advice especially because it’s a case to case basis. We apply different approaches to different couples.” The ages and profiles of couples undergoing a crisis may range from 20s to 50s. “And how long they have been married varies too,” Garilao, who has been married for 37 years with four daughters said. “I once had a couple who had been married for two weeks.”
“There is probably no marriage that didn’t go through a crisis at one point,” said Garilao. “Imagine bringing together two different individuals coming from different backgrounds raised by different parents.”
An important vocation
Marriage is a vocation just like being a priest, a nun, a social worker, etc. It is a choice that two people make and once there, they just have to make it work no matter what it takes. This is the “path that they chose.”
“Marriage as a vocation is a path to becoming truly and fully human,” Garilao explained. “Why would you get married in the first place? How do you know that you are truly and fully human? That is when you are a loving person. We have to grow in love. The more we become loving, the human we become.”
Difficulties encountered
The first thing Garilao asks couples is “What is marriage all about?” and they will start talking. There are parties, however, that remain uncooperative or “don’t want to look at themselves.”
Cefam counselors usually give couples 8 to 10 sessions. “If I cannot help them after 8-10 sessions, maybe I cannot help them at all.”
Opening up
Infidelity is the most common culprit in a crashing marriage, at least based on Garilao’s experience who is also the executive director of Cefam, followed by insecurity, pressures in society, and in some cases, unmet emotional needs. However, infidelity may stem from low self-esteem, according to Garilao, and that’s when the unfaithful one tries to look for self-affirmation outside the marriage. This is where communication should come in.
“In marriage when you feel you need your partner’s support, you say it,” said Garilao.
Intimate communication or conversation, aside from the usual day to day talk with your partner, opens up a lot of possibilities, Garilao explained. “When the other half knows about how you’re feeling then together you can come up with something. Many times, the other half just doesn’t know and often too, the other half presumes the he or she should know.” Sounds like a guessing game but relationships are not guessing games. Even parents who raised their children for years don’t know them inside and out. At times, they also get surprised by the turn of events in their lives, how much more two strangers who met only a few years ago and decided to get married.
But being open, much more intimate, with their feelings can be very challenging to some people who are not used to it. “It forces you to really challenge yourself,” Garilao said. “If I want this marriage, I have to risk now being intimate.”
Usually, one party (the hurt one) comes first for counseling. More often, the hurting party would eventually joins in after a few sessions. “There may be some reluctance on the latter’s part but he or she opens up after a while,” Garilao said. There were few instances too that the unfaithful party would seek help first which means he or she is determined to save the marriage.
After counseling
Couples usually don’t come back and there’s really no way of knowing if they succeeded or not until they find themselves in the same counseling room after a few months or a year. Then they go through the same process again. Cefam doesn’t do follow through because the couples will most likely seek help if they need one especially when they have already experienced counseling.
Other reasons couple come for counseling include “difficulty resolving certain issues, feeling that they are not understood by their partners, feeling distanced or general feeling of dissatisfaction in the marriage.”
A marriage survives if a couple loves each other, adheres to having communication and intimate conversation by articulating their thoughts, feelings, and aspirations, and treading together the path they both chose. It sounds not too difficult but it is and that’s what makes marriage a vocation because when couples worked out a marriage, it becomes stronger.
Pilar Garilao has an undergraduate business degree at Maryknoll College and obtained a one-year Professional Diploma in Family Ministries from Loyola School of Theology in 1996 and an MA Major in Pastoral Ministry (Family Ministry and Counseling) in 2003. Cefam is located at the Spiritual-Pastoral Center, Ateneo de Manila campus, Loyola Heights, Quezon City, Tel. No. 426-4289 to 92, 426-4285. It has a satellite counseling site at the Don Bosco Parish, Arnaiz Avenue, Amorsolo Street, Makati City. Tel. 895-5932 to 34.
