Here are a few things that I’ve learned from individual and marriage counseling that have been helpful in restoring my marriage and helping me get to a place of sanity.
Counseling helps to start working on what’s going on inside of you. We need to get to the root of what led you to acting out in the first place. I would recommend a CSAT or Christian therapist. I’ve been to a few that were secular and thought that masturbation was normal, and that is probably exactly what you want to hear if you want to keep acting out and not recover. But for lasting sobriety you can’t do any of that if you actually want to get better.
Finding someone that you can chat with 1 on 1 who is licensed to help you work on what’s off on the inside is another tool to add.
Getting a personal counselor will be huge in helping you turn your life around and working through the pain that you have from childhood. Many of us do not even realize that we have so much pain and trauma from what we picked up growing up. When we can start to understand the root of a lot of our pain that caused us to act out in the first place, we can start to heal those wounds and combat the lies that we have told ourselves since we were young.
Marriage counseling for the guys who are married is big too. Learn effective ways to communicate with your wife. Communication is so simple yet so hard at the same time. Men and Women are so different. A lot of times we have no idea what language they are speaking and the same goes for them. Having someone who will help the two of you on your behalf will improve your life and your marriage and heal many of those wounds that you both have prior and during the marriage.
One quick tidbit. If you think that if only my wife changed to see things my way, or I just need a different woman who will understand. Take a good look in the mirror. Change comes from within, it takes humility and being able to honestly access yourself. Nobody is perfect but if we expect everyone else to change without being willing to do so ourselves, we will keep running that marathon of pain always looking at the outside being the problem.
When we take accountability for our actions and emotions it opens up a whole different worldview. The world tells us we are weak if we admit our struggles and wrongdoings. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Saying hey this is where I am wrong, let’s work together and move on is healing.
I cannot emphasize how important it is that the counselors that you see have a faith background. When you finally cross that bridge over to god, the way that you view the world changes. Its hard to explain, but take everything that you think you know, and be prepared to relearn everything. Yes I want to repeat that statement. Everything that you think you know about the world, about how things work, about god, be prepared and come in humble ready to relearn everything. With secular counselors its just tough to tell what is the main purpose here. Faith based are putting god at the forefront. God never changes, his laws, his plan to follow never does. Outside of that people continue to change and ideas do. So stick to help that is coming from the one who never does change. For example, for how many thousands of years of all humanity we didn’t have to think twice about what a man is and a woman is. But within maybe the last 10 years, now all of the sudden we have no idea what a woman even is? God never changes, humans do, and what we try to push as truth, we keep running away from the real truth.
It’s interesting because counseling has really helped me in my recovery and then the more that I learn about myself I realize that I will probably be in counseling the rest of my life. Especially as you are trying to change your life and turn it around this is a great place to work on yourself. Now I would say especially in this area, go with a Christian counselor. I’ve had secular therapists and while they have been helpful for being a better person, they can’t reach the full potential of what god can do for you. In fact, you might run into one that thinks that pornography and objectification is normal for men to do. I used to think that, and then got married and couldn’t find the off switch. So get a Christian therapist to help you work through this one on one.
Marriage Counseling
Here are a few things that I have learned from marriage counseling. We learned how to communicate our feelings, how to look for connection, and how to trust.
My first day in marriage counseling our counselor had us work on the double loop. Where my wife would share how she is feeling, and then I would in turn reciprocate back to her just to make sure I understand you feel X,Y,Z. Once I was able to understand how she was feeling then it was my turn to express mine. This worked wonders! However, the first day I was unable to do it, because I was so caught up in me, I never listened to her. That put me on the hot seat right away.
The Double Loop
The “double loop” is a simple but powerful communication tool, especially in marriage or close relationships. It was one of the first things our marriage counselor taught us. I used to wait for the other person to finish talking just so I could jump in with my own thoughts, without really listening to what they were saying.
The double loop helps fix that.
Here’s how it works:
First, you ask your spouse how they’re feeling. This can be after an argument, at the end of a long day, or anytime you want to check in.
Let’s use the example of a long day at work. Your spouse might respond with something like:
“I feel angry, hungry, tired, overwhelmed, stressed, anxious, and scared.”
Instead of responding with your opinion, your job is to reflect back what you heard. You might say:
“Just so I understand—you’re feeling angry, hungry, tired, overwhelmed, stressed, anxious, and scared. Did I get that right?”
If they don’t feel fully understood, they can clarify or add anything you missed. Then you repeat the process until they feel accurately heard.
That’s the first loop.
The second loop is your turn. Now you share how you feel—either about what they said or your own emotions. For example:
“I feel X, Y, and Z.”
Then your spouse reflects it back to you in the same way:
“Just so I understand—you’re feeling X, Y, and Z. Is that right?”
Again, you repeat until you feel understood.
When both people feel heard, you’ve completed the double loop.
This process might seem simple, but it makes a big difference. When someone truly understands how you feel, it becomes much easier to move forward. It builds trust, intimacy, and connection.
You may not always agree on the situation, but you can still understand each other’s emotions—and that’s often what matters most. Consistently checking in this way helps create a deeper, stronger connection over time.
The 3 A’s: Affirmation, Attention, Affection
Giving your wife these three things daily can help her feel more connected, valued, and secure in your relationship.
Affirmation
This means intentionally speaking encouragement and appreciation. Simple statements like:
- “Honey, you’re doing a great job.”
- “I see how hard you’re working.”
- “I really appreciate how much you care about ___.”
Affirm who she is as a person and recognize her efforts. Done consistently, this builds confidence and emotional connection.
Attention
In a world full of distractions—especially our phones—it’s easy to give very little focused attention to the person who matters most. Be intentional about setting aside time each day, even just 10–15 minutes, to check in and be fully present.
Without this, it’s easy to slip into “going through the motions.” You may be functioning as teammates, but not truly connecting. Real attention helps you stay emotionally in sync and strengthens your bond, especially when working through deeper issues.
Affection
Small, consistent physical gestures go a long way. A kiss goodbye, holding hands, or a quick back rub can make a big difference.
These simple acts communicate care and closeness—especially if physical touch is meaningful to your spouse. Over time, they help reinforce a sense of connection and warmth in the relationship. At their core, the 3 A’s are about being intentional. Small, daily actions can create a stronger, more connected relationship over time.
Personal Counseling
A personal counselor can help you understand and get to the root of that pain that you have going on inside. When you start to identify the pain and the root cause of it, it loses its power over you one day at a time. This takes a while to overcome, you may have believed this to be true about yourself for 90% of your life, but over time you can say this is who I am, that was who I was.
I always was looking for validation, for someone else to agree with the way that I felt, or take my point of view and using that as an establishing point of credibility. You don’t need anyone to validate your feelings, how you feel is how you feel, understand the truth about your situation and take the right steps to move forward in peace.
Conceptually Simple, Practically Difficult tools to use:
The Peace Cycle (aka the truth about yourself)
Learn your Truth/Peace Cycle
- Say what you feel-Pain Words
- Say what you normally would do-Get frustrated,Lie,resentment, lose temper
- Say your truth- Whats the truth about this situation
- Say what you will do instead-ACT rather than react first words out of your mouth are not the best
This was really helpful for me being a people pleaser and feeling inadequate. Whenever someone would say something that was conflicting or about me in general, I shut down and believed it was true. I would get angry and frustrated if others didn’t give me the respect that I deserved. Once you utilize this peace cycle you can analyze situations and figure out the truth about yourself helping you move along. This is how it works.
Say what you feel-pain words
Say what you would normally do
Say your truth
Say what you will do instead knowing your truth
An example that I will use is from a driver that honks at me because I didn’t go right when the light turned green.
What I feel-Feel Angry, frustrated, resentful, defensive, attacked, not good enough (root)
What I normally do- I normally would honk or yell and scream out obscenities blaming the other driver and thinking that they were the idiot and I did nothing wrong.
Say the Truth- Truth is it could be so many things, maybe they have diarrhea, maybe the wife is going into labor and they need me to go asap, but the underlying feeling that I have from this episode is that I did something wrong, which automatically means I am not good enough and therefore uncapable of love. That was long winded, here’s the truth, they could be in a rush, and just because I was wrong or not perfect doesn’t mean that I am not deserving of love
What I’ll do now knowing the truth- Since I know the truth about myself and I am good enough. I’ll say a prayer for them and hope that they can solve their problem that made them rush away today. I had no idea a simple honk got that deep.
When you know the truth about any situation, there is no reason to get mad. It’s very frustrating when we cannot get others to see the truth. But we can look at this in a different way. We can all agree that 2+2=4. But would you be mad at someone if they said no, it equals 5! You can argue till the cows come home and show all the evidence in the world but if they believe its 5 then there is nothing you can do. So why be mad that this person won’t believe in the truth. Do you know what the truth is? So how do we solve this problem then? Prayer. Pray and ask for God to enlighten this fellow that 2+2=4 instead of what they believe it equals. Because you know just as well as I do, if they don’t understand that simple math equation then it’s going to lead to so many problems down the road.
Destructive entitlement
I feel entitled to so many things that I did not receive as a child. LOVE, forgiveness, gifts, etc. Destructive entitlement is where you grow up without receiving things from your parents, and then later on in life you expect to receive without having to give. This made so much since why it was hard for me to give love to others, yet I expected it to come back to me in relationships. What this looked like for me is my significant other had to love me for me and give me grace, but I didn’t have too because I have never received it.
Learning about this was really big on understanding more about myself and my inability to love. Since I never received love growing up, how was I to give it? Think about it like two people sitting at a restaurant one has a cup full of coffee the other does not. If you ask the person without anything in their cup to share with you, they can’t. They never received any coffee, so it would be pretty challenging for them to share with you what they don’t have. The other person who has a full cup, can freely share and share quite easily since their cup is full.
These are some of the things that stood out to me in counseling and helped our healing journey. Hope that some of these can help.
God Bless.