Celebrating Progress in Couples Counseling

The post below was recently written for my Facebook business page.

“The road to heaven is heaven all the way to heaven, and the road to hell is hell all the way to hell.”

If you’re trying to become a millionaire, you don’t have to wait to celebrate until the day you save your millionth dollar. You’ll celebrate at $100, $500, $1,000, $2,500, $5,000, $10,000, all the way there! You’ll be celebrating constantly!

It’s the same way when you’re in couples counseling working on your relationship. You don’t have to wait to celebrate until your relationship is perfect. You celebrate when you recover more quickly from an argument than usual. You can celebrate when it’s going badly and somebody says, “Hey, let’s do that thing we learned in therapy.” You can celebrate when your partner says something hurtful but you manage to not get defensive. You can celebrate when instead of saying, “You hurt me“ you say, “I felt hurt when you did that.”

It’s a string of small victories, some so small your therapist may have to point them out at first. But gradually it gets better. You stop expecting the worst of each other. You remember you’re both good people. You’re proud of yourselves and each other for the work you’ve put in. You start feeling safe around each other again. You start liking who you are again when you’re around your partner.

That’s life on the road to heaven. If you’re struggling in your relationship, you probably already know what the road to hell looks like.