Couples therapy

Blend me your ears and welcome to another episode of 30 Mindless Minutes.

More specifically, another episode of Couples Therapy.

I'd like to welcome back to the show my life partner in crime, my girlfriend Tina.

Hey, welcome back.

Let's go.

Why couples counseling isn't helping your marriage and it's not your fault.

I have wanted to record this podcast episode for a while.

I have had so many conversations with clients about couples counseling.

Now, here's the thing.

If you go to couples counseling and it is working great for you, amazing.

But this is for the person that is going to couples counseling, that has gone to couples counseling, that is afraid of couples counseling, and these may be the reasons why.

Ultimately, I see a version of this where a person will come to me and say she has gone to counseling to fix things.

No, thank you for that.

So what I'd like to do with this episode is I'd like to start off with individual therapy and then we can go into couples therapy, just acknowledging that people who listen to the episode, they may work with one or the other type of modality.

So let's start off with individual therapy and how active affairs can show up.

And I've got a little hypothetical example that I'd like to take apart.

So there might be the opposite where they do not feel guilt or there may be a lot of guilt.

And perhaps they're looking towards a therapist for not permissibility, but an alleviation of that guilt in some way or form.

And I don't have training in couples therapy.

So I would use an ACT framework and I'd be like, but it's incongruent with your values here.

Excited to be here.

And Ben, is it true that you didn't quite know that you were getting into a couples therapy session today?

I didn't know what it was.

I saw it on the, uh, on the calendar.

But it really is.

I can't wait to hear about this.

So here's the interesting thing about you guys and couples therapy.

People know you for having a very happy, fun relationship, right? I mean, that's kind of a little bit about who you are, your personality, your...

Do you value family time? Are you the type of person that wants to get married and have a family in the future? Are you the type of person that if you become a mom, you would like to stay at home and spend more time with your kids? And if so, is he the type of man who would be willing to work hard for a family? Or is he going to require you to also work because he doesn't expect to provide everything for your future family? What are your core values and make sure that that aligns with the core values of the person that you're going to marry.

Now, I know it's a very complicated topic because how can you do that, right? But I guess the premarital counseling really helped us.

Because in premarital counseling, before we even got engaged, four months into our dating, our pastor told us, you know, guys, dahil nagde-date na kayo, mag-premarital counseling na kayo, para ngayon palang mag-break na kayo kung hindi talaga kayo meant to be, or para magkaalaman na yung mga values nyo kung talagang aligned, so at least alam nyong pwede kayo magpakasal.

And the reason for that is, in premarital counseling, you talk about your past, you talk about finances, you talk about your future.

Do you want children? How many do you want? Where do you want to settle down? When do you want to get married? Yung isa pala sa inyo, gusto nang magpakasal next year.

Ikaw pala, gusto mo in five years pa. Kailangan nyo pag-usapan yung mga bagay-bagay na yun because these are difficult topics that, if you ignore, will not go away.

It's we, I think we're used to it, but it doesn't mean that like, it doesn't still have its hard moments.

We do pretty regular couples therapy.

I think that's pretty important.

Obviously.

Now, did you do that?

Did you do that early on? Or is that something that happened? We started

doing couples therapy after.

We did a session

Each week, I will be taking you through a different topic as it relates to breaking up, healing from heartbreak, growing in your single life, dating, and getting back into happier and healthier relationships.

The goal of this show is to provide support, hope, tips, and to remind you that above all, this too shall pass.

Welcome back to another expert episode of the Heal Your Heartbreak podcast.

I loved today's guest so much.

We talk about what is mother hunger, how so many of us carry it with us, carry this wound with us, even if...

We didn't have a bad mother by any means, even if it was just little things that added up from when we were little and what that can look like into adulthood, how that translates into the relationships that we find ourselves in or the relationships that we might push away from.

We talk a lot about heartbreak and how heartbreak can very much activate things the original heartbreak that so many of us have which is with our mother and it's so fascinating I think you will find this episode so validating so validating and I highly encourage everyone we really skim the surface on all of the things that she talks about in her book mother hunger so I linked it in the show notes for you guys highly recommend if you felt like connected to this episode, which I think so many of you will, please go get the book and dive into it and really start looking at that so you can identify what's something that maybe you haven't even known that you've been feeling for your whole life.

So like I said, very validating.