Marie Kondo-ing Your Relationship is the First Step in Marriage Counseling
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my two passions, couples therapy and minimalism. To be honest, I’m one of those people who dives into whatever interests me and continues to learn and absorb information; I’ve been a self-proclaimed therapy geek for the past 10 years. Although I’ve only started exploring minimalism in a more tangible way for the past year and half, my deep diving has led me to realize there is significant overlap between marriage counseling and minimalism.
So what’s up with this Marie Kondo-ing your relationship idea? For the past 5 years, I’ve had my private practice in League City, Texas, and one thing I always explain to people about my process is how the first few sessions are structured. In the first session, I meet with both partners as a couple, and I like to think about that time as though we’re going to dump everything on the table, the same as you would if you were decluttering your closet.
Much like physical items, people tend to hold onto stuff in relationships, especially in marriages. We can’t help it, it’s human nature. That fight that wasn’t resolved last week, it’s still hanging around. That rude comment a few years back can rise to the surface in a moment’s notice under the right circumstances. Those old patterns you haven’t worked out yet, and my goodness those family messages and passive aggressive comments are there. Couples come to therapy with an overwhelming amount of relationship clutter they’ve been carrying around, so it makes sense they don’t know where to start.
If you’re at all familiar with the idea of decluttering, you probably know Marie Kondo says you start by pulling out all of the items and looking at them so you can see what you’re actually dealing with. I believe the same thing is important when I begin my work with couples. The good news is that in reality, not all the things we’ve been holding onto are actually important, or need to be worked out in therapy. I know that sounds weird, but stick with me here.
Most of the issues you discuss or find yourselves in conflict over as a couple revolve around “content.” Content is what the fight is about, such as disagreeing about what punishment to implement or what couch to buy for the house. There are thousands of content-related conversations you will have with your spouse during your lifetime, so you can’t possibly cover each one in therapy. Part of my job is to look at all the things couples lay out on the table during the very first session and help them gain a better understanding of their clutter. The first goal is to identify what is irrelevant, which is bogging them down and keeping them stuck, and starting to let go while identifying significant relationship patterns and beliefs.
What’s more important is two-fold: 1. The content related issues couples bring into therapy can be refocused into process related solutions that result in longer lasting and more meaningful changes, and 2. The relationship clutter you’ve been holding is a symptom and distracting you from dealing with the real issues in your marriage.
These truth bombs will be the focus on my next two blogs, so stay tuned for a deeper dive into these concepts. For now, I’d love for you to comment below or back on whatever social media platform you found this blog on and let me know what kind of fights you’ve had about content that have stuck around and turned into major clutter in your relationship. Mine is about my spouse ordering excessive amounts of hand soap! Everybody’s got something.