WHY I SHOULD NEVER BE A MARRIAGE COUNSELOR, WORKPLACE MEDIATOR, OR ANYTHING INVOLVING OTHER HUMAN BEINGS – Part 1
Growing Old at the Speed of Dark
I’ve reached an age where I occasionally sit around contemplating what I might do when I finally decide to leave the construction safety profession. It’s a difficult matter to consider because, as we get older, and not always gracefully, our perceived return on investment seems to decline right alongside our testicles, waistlines, and the general geographical placement of our body parts.
Now, before anybody gets excited, I’m not announcing my retirement. I’m just exploring my options. However limited they may be.
Some men dream about buying a boat. Others want to travel the country in an RV, visit national parks, or spend their remaining years perfecting their golf swing.
Me?
Apparently, I’ve been considering becoming a marriage counselor. Not because I have any particular qualifications, but because stupidity isn’t exclusive to any particular demographic.
I know.
What the actual fuck?
This is what happens when you get older, drink too much coffee, and allow your brain to wander into areas where it has absolutely no business being.
I’ve spent a considerable portion of my adult life working in construction safety, law enforcement, security, and other professions where people frequently do things that make you question whether evolution has simply given up.
I’ve witnessed grown men attempt tasks that would make a reasonably intelligent squirrel stop and reconsider its life choices.
I’ve watched supervisors turn relatively simple situations into full-scale administrative disasters.
And I’ve attended meetings where fifteen people spent an hour discussing a problem that could have been resolved in five minutes if somebody had simply asked, “What the fuck are we actually trying to accomplish?”
Naturally, I thought these experiences might qualify me to help married couples work through their differences.
After further consideration, I believe this may be a terrible idea.
But let’s examine the possibilities.
CHAPTER ONE: THE MARRIAGE COUNSELOR
First, let me establish something.
I believe in marriage.
I believe in commitment, communication, compromise, and occasionally pretending not to hear something because I enjoy sleeping indoors.
I’ve also made enough mistakes in relationships to qualify as a cautionary tale.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where I believe my qualifications begin.
Who better to explain the consequences of poor decisions than someone who has personally conducted extensive field testing?
I’ve screwed up enough things in my lifetime that I could probably develop an entire training curriculum around the subject.
Marriage Counseling 101: Things I Did That You Should Absolutely Avoid.
My first counseling session would probably begin with a husband and wife sitting across from me, looking uncomfortable.
I’d have my coffee.
They’d have their emotional baggage.
And somewhere in the building, a licensed therapist would be quietly preparing an incident report.
The husband would begin.
“She just doesn’t seem interested in being intimate anymore.”
I’d lean forward.
“All right, brother. Let me ask you something. When’s the last time you took a shower?”
He’d look confused.
“What?”
“A shower. Soap. Water. The magical combination that removes yesterday’s ass sweat.”
His wife would immediately begin nodding.
And I’d know we were making progress.
“Listen, you can’t spend fourteen hours sweating in the garage, come inside smelling like a raccoon crawled into your underwear and died, and expect this woman to greet you like you’re the leading man in a romance novel.”
Then I’d continue.
“And another thing. You can’t just walk into the bedroom, throw your balls in her face, and expect her to respond like you’ve presented her with a bouquet of roses.”
His wife would probably laugh.
He’d probably ask for a different counselor.
I’d probably lose my license before lunch.
But somewhere in that conversation, there would be an important lesson.
Intimacy doesn’t begin when you take your pants off.
It begins with how you treat someone throughout the day.
It’s the little things.
Listening.
Helping.
Being considerate.
Remembering that the person you’re married to is an actual human being and not a vending machine that dispenses affection when you insert the correct number of compliments.
Unfortunately, I suspect my delivery would need some refinement.
THE KITCHEN INCIDENT
Eventually, the conversation would turn toward household responsibilities.
The wife might say:
“He never cooks anything.”
I’d turn toward the husband.
“Is that true?”
“Well, I work all day.”
“Congratulations. So does half the fucking planet.”
He’d explain that he doesn’t know how to cook.
And I’d ask whether he knows how to operate a vehicle.
“Of course.”
“Power tools?”
“Yes.”
“A smartphone?”
“Obviously.”
“Then explain to me how a grown man capable of operating a motor vehicle at seventy miles an hour becomes completely fucking helpless when confronted with a frying pan.”
Now, before the ladies get too comfortable, this counseling service would provide equal-opportunity accountability.
If the husband complained that his wife only knew how to prepare dinner in a microwave, I’d have questions for her, too.
“Ma’am, I understand everybody gets tired. But if this poor bastard has eaten melted plastic on cheese toast three nights this week, perhaps we should explore the possibility of introducing an actual cooking appliance into the relationship.”
Of course, there are legitimate reasons people struggle with cooking, including exhaustion, disability, finances, and simply never having learned.
Those deserve understanding.
But if two reasonably capable adults are arguing over who should prepare dinner while both are perfectly capable of doing it, perhaps the solution isn’t marriage counseling.
Perhaps it’s a cookbook and a fucking calendar.
And here’s where I’d probably get myself into trouble.
I’d tell them both:
“Marriage isn’t about keeping score. It’s about recognizing when your partner needs help and occasionally getting off your ass without requiring a formal written request.”
That sounds reasonable.
Unfortunately, I’d probably follow it with:
“And if either one of you needs a participation trophy for loading the dishwasher, I’ve got some bad news about adulthood.”
THE PROBLEM WITH BEING RIGHT
Now, here’s the first legitimate reason I probably shouldn’t become a marriage counselor.
I have a tendency to want to solve the problem.
Immediately.
Tell me what’s wrong.
Give me the relevant information.
Let’s identify the contributing factors, establish corrective actions, assign responsibility, and move the fuck forward.
Unfortunately, human relationships don’t work like construction projects.
You can’t always develop a corrective action plan, assign responsibility, establish a completion date, and expect everybody to be emotionally satisfied.
In construction safety, identifying a problem and correcting it is generally the objective. Someone identifies a hazard, we evaluate the risk, determine the appropriate controls, and implement corrective action.
Simple enough.
Unfortunately, you can’t walk into a marriage, identify the contributing factors, issue a corrective action notice, and expect two people to sign off on the resolution before the end of the day.
I’ve come to realize that sometimes people don’t want solutions.
They want to be heard.
They want someone to acknowledge their feelings.
They want reassurance that their experiences matter.
And sometimes the appropriate response isn’t:
“Well, here’s where you fucked up.”
Sometimes it’s:
“Help me understand how that made you feel.”
I know.
Terrifying.
Because my natural response to that question would probably be:
“Well, I’d feel pretty fucking stupid if I did that.”
And there goes another counseling session.
The problem is that being right and being helpful aren’t necessarily the same thing.
You can win an argument and still lose the relationship.
You can explain exactly why someone is wrong and completely miss why they’re hurting.
And you can spend an entire afternoon developing the perfect solution to a problem that someone simply wanted to talk about.
Apparently, listening without immediately offering a solution is an actual skill.
Who knew?
I’ve spent a good portion of my adult life telling people what they need to do to avoid getting hurt, making mistakes, or creating unnecessary problems.
Perhaps the more difficult lesson is recognizing when someone doesn’t need another person telling them what to do.
Sometimes they just need someone willing to sit there, shut the hell up, and listen.
I’m still working on that one.
And that’s probably why my first marriage counseling appointment should be with a marriage counselor, rather than the other way around.