Less Stress, More Joy: The Power of Family Fun

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Soccer practice, piano lessons, theater rehearsals, youth group…many parents today feel like their family life happens in the car. We’re constantly running from one activity to the next, hoping that the time we invest in our kids’ activities will pay off.

Instead, 65% of American parents say they are just “getting through the day” rather than actually enjoying it, according to a 2024 Harris Poll.

What’s worse, overbooked kids often experience higher levels of stress, anxiety, and anger, child health experts say.

If all of this sounds familiar, Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak have a simple suggestion: make more time for family fun.

Regularly playing together as a family reduces stress and increases joy, they explained on a recent episode of the CatholicHŌM podcast. Even better, family play rituals strengthen relationships and fortify a healthy, holy lifestyle.

Fun is the Glue That Holds Families Together

A wealth of research shows that kids who have strong family relationships tend to thrive during childhood and adolescence—and even later on, as young adults. Family fun time plays a big role in developing strong, rich relationships between children and their parents.

“When we have fun with our children, when we make time to play…we become the people that they know they can trust and enjoy,” Lisa said.

The trust that develops between children and parents when they have fun together lasts into adolescence and beyond. Children who regularly play with their parents know who to turn to when life gets hard. On the other hand, over scheduled children may learn to turn elsewhere for connection.

“The people that your children have fun with are the people that your children trust,” Lisa continued. “So if your children are only having fun with other kids their age…who are they going to turn to when they have a broken heart or a difficult question…? Their friends.”

But not all time spent around our kids strengthens our bond with them. Parents often assume that showing up for their children’s activities is the same thing as spending time together. But kids don’t see it that way, the Popcaks said. They cited research that found that kids view their parents’ attendance at sports and rehearsals not as an investment in them, but as an opportunity for parents to socialize with other parents.

Attending games and rehearsals matters, but it’s not the same as shared, face-to-face fun, Dr. Greg explained: “They’re not interacting with us, and we’re not communicating to them how Christians enjoy each other and enjoy life.”

The temptation to over schedule comes from good intentions. We want to give our kids opportunities, build their skills, and support their passions. But when the family calendar is too packed, something vital is lost. Spontaneous fun disappears; relationships become transactional (“Did you finish your homework? What time is practice?”), and stress replaces joy.

Holy People Have More Fun!

Family play has another important function: it’s one of the ways we disciple kids into a healthy, holy Catholic vision of life.

When families have fun together, they teach their kids that Christianity isn’t just something for church, but for all areas of life. More than that, they teach kids that Christian values can actually enhance fun and recreation.

“The fact is, if we aren’t teaching our kids how to enjoy life and how to enjoy each other in healthy ways, the world is more than happy to suggest a million ways for our kids to enjoy themselves in sinful and destructive ways,” he said. 

Reclaiming Time to Play

So how can families reclaim time for play in a world that rewards busyness?

First, start by making family fun time a priority—and that means being intentional about scheduling time for it.

“Play rituals don’t just happen on their own,” Dr. Greg emphasized. “We need to treat family time in general, and play rituals in particular, as things that are on the schedule that we plan other stuff around.”

You can set aside routine times for family play, like after dinner and before prayers, or you can schedule family fun time as you meet to plan out your week.

Prioritizing family play rituals doesn’t mean pulling your children out of sports, theater, or youth group activities, the Popcaks emphasized. But it may mean cutting down on the time they spend on those activities so that there is time available for your family to connect.

Second, don’t be afraid to start small. Family fun time doesn’t need to involve a major, Monopoly-level time commitment. You might begin with as little as 15 minutes, Lisa said: “Just begin by asking, can we get 15 minutes today? What would we like to do with that time?”

If even that feels challenging, look for ways to spark little moments of joy during the day. Lisa described how her mother asked her father to come home from work with a joke for the family every day.

“He would run around the office toward the end of the day saying, ‘I need a joke. My wife won’t let me in the door without a joke,’” Lisa said. “And we can do that with our kids: bring a joke to the table for dinner time and start everybody laughing. Just having a moment of joy together is better than not having joy together.”

Just Do It!

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all model for how to have fun together as a family, the Popcaks emphasized. Talk about it together and experiment to find a rhythm of play and fun that works for your particular family. Be prepared for family play time to evolve as your kids get older, too: the ten minutes you spend tickling and roughhousing on the living room floor might become ten minutes of throwing a football around in the yard.

Above all, don’t be afraid to dive in, Lisa said.

“So often, we over schedule ourselves because we’re afraid to just have fun with our family. What if they don’t see me as an authority figure? What if they think I’m silly? What if it messes up the house? What if I can never get them settled down to go to bed? We have a million fears about just enjoying our children and our family time together in a fun way.

“I promise you, if you start making fun part of your family rituals, they will look at you with more respect, more love. They will trust you more. The emotional temperature in the house will come down over time because you’re not always being punitive. Play has a million wonderful fruits (that come) with it.”

When families reclaim time to laugh, play, and enjoy each other, they rediscover the joy of being a domestic church.

To learn more about weaving play and other rituals into daily life, explore the CatholicHŌM app, where you’ll find community support, downloadable resources for family fun, and videos and podcasts addressing common challenges that arise around family time. Plus, you can listen to CatholicHŌM podcast Episode 88: “The Family That Plays Together Prays Together.”

Why They Keep Bringing Up the Past (And How to Stop the Cycle)

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It starts with something small—a forgotten chore, a missed text, a minor disagreement about dinner plans. But before you know it, you’re hearing about that time you were late to their birthday party three years ago, or how you “always” do this particular thing that drives them crazy. What began as a simple conversation has become an exhausting replay of every conflict you’ve ever had.

If this sounds familiar, the good news is that you’re probably not dealing with someone who’s simply being unfair or manipulative. According to Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak, there’s a predictable psychological reason why people drag the past into present conflicts—and once you understand it, you can learn to break the cycle.

The key isn’t defending yourself with facts or logic. It’s recognizing that when someone brings up old wounds, they’re not really arguing about the chore you forgot or the ice cream you finished off. They’re telling you that something deeper is happening, and they need a completely different kind of response.

It Started with Soured Laundry…

A recent caller to Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak’s More2Life radio show brought up exactly this situation.

During eight years of marriage, Bill made a conscious effort to meet his wife’s needs and requests. So when she went to visit her sister one weekend, he decided to clean out their chaotic garage, a task that she had asked him to tackle.

By Sunday evening, the garage was cleaned up and organized. But in the middle of all that work, he’d forgotten one small thing: moving a load of laundry from the washer to the dryer. By the time his wife returned at the end of the weekend, the clothes had soured.

When she got home and discovered it, she “lost it,” accusing him of never helping around the house and not respecting her. It didn’t matter that he’d just spent the weekend on a major household project.

This incident had become all too familiar in their relationship. “Whenever my wife and I have an argument over something, she brings up a mistake or a slight that I’ve made in the past that might be slightly related to the present argument, but she uses it to prove that I’m ‘always’ against her or that I’ll never change,” Bill said. “It’s defeating, I feel run down, I don’t feel particularly loved, and I don’t know how to get her to break this habit.”

Why Your Good Points Don’t Matter (In the Moment)

A good starting point for addressing this dynamic in a relationship is to understand where the other person is coming from.

First off, it’s helpful to know that when someone’s emotional temperature spikes, their thinking brain goes “offline.” In the midst of this emotional flooding, the person’s “child self” takes over.

Second, when someone habitually brings up past issues, they are often tapping into every similar disappointment they’ve ever felt, Lisa Popcak said—sometimes stretching back to childhood experiences that have nothing to do with you at all.

In this state, your logical arguments feel dismissive of them. If Bill pointed to the clean garage to prove he wasn’t “always” failing her, his wife probably wouldn’t hear “Look how much I care about you,” but “Your feelings don’t matter” and “You’re being unreasonable.”

That’s why the pattern escalates. The more you defend with logic, the more emotionally flooded your partner becomes. And the more flooded they get, the further back they reach for evidence that supports how they’re feeling right now.

Dr. Greg acknowledged that this can be really frustrating; many people wonder, “Well, if I can’t respond to what the person’s actually saying, then what am I supposed to do?”

The Empathy-First Response That Actually Works

The Popcaks recommend a completely different approach: respond to the feelings first, not the accusations. Then, gently redirect the conversation toward finding solutions.

For example, instead of pointing to his work on the garage (a defensive move), Bill might say: “I can tell you’re really frustrated right now, and I’m sorry you’re feeling this way. What can we do together to get to a better place right now?”

This pivot from defensiveness toward empathy and solutions probably won’t have an immediate effect, the Popcaks note. But acknowledging the other person’s emotions and asking them to pivot to shared solutions at least keeps the argument from escalating.

“You’re not arguing back,” Dr. Greg told Bill. “You’re not trying to discount what she’s saying. You’re just validating the fact that she’s in a bad place and that you’re sorry that she’s there and you want to work with her to help her feel better.”

If the other person continues to be emotionally flooded and keeps bringing up past grievances, keep gently acknowledging their feelings and redirecting toward problem-solving.

This approach does something powerful: it validates the person’s emotional experience without accepting blame for things you didn’t do wrong. You’re not agreeing that you “never help” or that you’re “always like this.” You’re simply acknowledging that they’re in pain and offering to work together toward a solution.

Building a Buffer Against Old Wounds

While this “pivot towards solutions” is useful in the heat of a conflict, the Popcaks also suggest two other practices to prevent this unhealthy cycle from happening again.

Debrief and Plan

Once you’ve navigated a tense exchange and emotions have cooled, revisit the conflict in a calm moment, Dr. Greg suggested. Open the conversation with words like these: “Now that we got through this, how could we handle things differently the next time something happens that makes you feel this way?”

As Dr. Greg explained, your success with the empathetic solution-focused redirection approach outlined above gives you the credibility you need to have this conversation. And by inviting the other person into creative, collaborative problem-solving, you are shifting away from a competitive, winner-takes-all conflict style to a more cooperative, “we’re a team” approach.

Foster a Positive Perspective

Lisa Popcak suggested another practice that can help reduce conflict. Each evening, sit with the other person; each of you should write down three to five things you appreciated about the other person that day. Exchange the lists so each person can read the other’s. Then, at the end of the week, get together and review the list you’ve accumulated that week.

This practice creates what psychologists call a “positive sentiment override”—a mental bank account of goodwill that makes it harder for old grievances to completely take over during conflicts. When someone has a running record of your care and effort, they’re less likely to slip into “you never” and “you always” thinking.

Goodwill Makes Healing Possible

If someone in your life keeps reopening old wounds, remember: you don’t have to let the past dominate the present. Start with empathy. Invite them into solutions. And keep building the goodwill that makes healing possible.

For more practical tools for transforming your relationships, explore the Popcaks’ books at CatholicCounselors.com, including How to Heal Your Marriage & Nurture Lasting Love. Or, for one-on-one support, reach out to one of our pastoral counselors today.

Extravagant Affection in Marriage

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Guest Post by Jacob Francisco, LMHC, Pastoral Counselor at CatholicCounselors.com

Need To Be Loved 

Every human being has a God-given need to give love and feel loved in return. This desire for unity with another is a primary motivator to find a mate. 

 

If you do not feel united or connected to your spouse, or have the sense that your spouse feels that way, part of the problem could be too little affection.

 

Here are some signs that you might not be sharing enough affection in your marriage: 

-Frequently feeling lonely around your spouse

-Frequently feeling irritable towards your spouse

-Frequent miscommunications or defensiveness about deeper feelings, thoughts, hopes, dreams and fears

-Feeling you cannot share thoughts and feelings for fear of being criticized or shamed

-Often jump to negative conclusions or assumptions about your spouse or their motives 

 

When more than one of the above items is generally true for you and/or your spouse resentment can build and spouses slowly drift away from each other–they become disconnected.

 

Shared affection is one solution to these struggles.

Affection maintains a connection in good times and in bad.

The truth is we are all called to generously give of ourselves to others as Christ did for us. This is exponentially more true in our marriage. 

 

But we all love our comfort too much, and often (even without realizing it) prioritize our own comfort over the call to generously give ourselves.

 

We tend to approach loving others from the direction of how I like to love others, such as service or time together. Ultimately, this is backwards and incomplete. I need to be asking “How does my spouse want to be loved?” 

 

I might not consider myself to be an “affectionate person” or a “touchy-feely” type. But God’s call to generous self-giving outweighs our comfort. 

 

As for receiving love from my spouse, this can be, and often is, difficult when my wounds get in the way. Being receptive to love requires vulnerability and openness.

 

How often do we receive a compliment and immediately dismiss it in our mind, or even out loud? Does your spouse compliment your appearance, or tell you that you look nice, and your first reaction is “No, I don’t feel that way”?

 

If we reject or deflect when someone else expresses affection often enough, chances are they will give up trying. If I stiffen up or cringe when touched, my spouse may eventually get discouraged and stop.

 

The Benefits of Extravagant Affection

Affection establishes a link between myself and the other person on the physical, mental and even spiritual level, beginning with the body. Holding someone in a close embrace allows our heartbeats to sync together.

 

This has a calming effect on the nervous system and fosters a sense of safety and closeness in the relationship.

 

Safety and closeness reduce tension, conflict, negativity, resentment, loneliness, and fear. 

 

How often is “extravagant?”  

 

Marriage research through the Gottman Institute recommends a 20:1 ratio of positive to negative interactions.

 

The 20:1 ratio is a helpful way to communicate the general guideline: start with what seems extravagant to you, and then stretch yourself to do a little bit more than that. 

 

Don’t “keep score” on this point. It’s a guideline, not another way to show your spouse how far they fall short. Focus on your own contributions to the ratio. Reject transactional thinking: “If I give her compliments then she should give me a compliment.” 

 

What qualifies as affection? 

There are three important elements: frequent physical contact, warm interactions, and responsiveness.

 

Frequent physical contact includes a wide range of touch: a brief touch on the shoulder, holding hands, or cuddling for long periods of time. 

 

Warm interactions are kindled through non-verbal cues like facial expressions and tone of voice, choice of words, gratitude and affirmations. If it is ‘warm’ it draws you towards the other person and helps you feel connected.

 

Responsiveness is how consistently we return a “bid” for our attention. Affectionate couples make eye contact with one another often when talking and also make an effort to acknowledge when their spouse says something.

 

Do you look up from your phone or the TV when your spouse starts talking to you? Do you demonstrate that you received their message?

 

Practical Tips

Golden Rule: Express affection in ways that your spouse enjoys.

 

Love list: This exercise is for both spouses. Each spouse writes a list of 25 ways that they want to be shown love in non-sexual terms. About 20 of them should be small and simple. The other 5 can be bigger or more complex. Small things might be: kiss my forehead, rub my feet, tell me “I adore you,” bring me a drink. Bigger things could be: organize a date, give me a massage, buy me a gift. After both spouses finish, exchange lists. Try to do 2-3 things on your spouse’s list daily. 

 

6 Second Rule: Once a day, when you hug or kiss your spouse, linger in it for 6+ seconds. This gives you both enough time to slow down, sync up, and melt into the affection.

 

Compliment Catch: Take turns giving each other compliments and affirmations. Be genuine, thoughtful, and sincere. Continue the activity at least until both spouses are laughing and smiling. This is a good activity for dates, during time together, or after a conflict.

 

If you would like to talk with a Pastoral Counselor, or learn more about Jacob Francisco, LMHC visit CatholicCounselors.com

Couple Time First: Protecting Your Marriage

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Guest Post by Jacob Francisco, LMHC, Pastoral Counselor at CatholicCounselors.com

The time and energy that spouses dedicate to one another overflows into the peace and well-being of the entire family.

My dad would come home from a day of teaching around 4:30 or 5.

After the customary greetings by my sisters and me, he would move us out of the kitchen to spend some quality time with my mom. They would have a cup of coffee together, work on dinner, and talk about the day for about 30 minutes.

Us youngsters were not allowed to eavesdrop or bother them “unless someone is bleeding” as they (jokingly!) said.

After the coffee was gone, we all came together again and had dinner as a family. Being home for dinner was mostly not negotiable. Mom and dad worked hard to limit any possible conflicts with our regular family meal. 

Protecting dinner time gave us the opportunity to create a space for lots of lively discussion, especially as we got older and grappled with questions about God, the world, and our friends.

These experiences helped pour the foundation for the man I am and the man I am becoming. Being given that space to reflect and talk with my parents helped me feel like I was standing on solid ground. A feeling I carry inside of me to this day.

But just as importantly, the conversational time my parents protected for themselves is one of the concrete ways I knew in my bones that they loved each other. Every child needs to know that their parents love one another, especially when parents are upset or stressed. 

The family dinner routine was how I knew that I was loved. 

That I belonged. There is a sense of security, well-being, and warmth in the knowledge of belonging.

 

By protecting the time they needed to reconnect as spouses, the graces of the sacrament could overflow into the whole family.

 

The importance of couple time first

A healthy and holy marriage isn’t something that just happens to people. 

The romantic passion will change over time and life has a way of stealing our time and attention. There will always be more things that demand our energy.

Our spouse deserves to be our priority because people are more important than things.

 

This is the person we chose to spend our life with and unless we guard that the world will try to take this away from us.

 

Couple’s time is “sacred work.” It brings grace to the whole family and consecrates family life to God.

Couples need to protect this time for themselves and for their kids just like my parents did. Children benefit because a connected couple has more to pour into their family relationships: more joy, more generosity, more warmth.

 

Couple time first is a paradigm or mindset, not just a certain time in the week.

 

The point is not always to have a rigid adherence to a single practice or activity. The point is that even when those regular routines do not (or cannot) happen, we intentionally make couple time a priority.

 

Life is messy and often unpredictable. Healthy married couples possess flexibility when needed without compromising the principle.

They follow up with each other later and make sure that they get in even just 10-15 minutes of time to connect every day. 10-15 minutes is no time at all, and most couples probably want and need more at least a few times a week.

 

So how do we make that happen?

  1.       Consider what you are already doing that you could be more intentional about. Perhaps there is a certain time of day you often spend together already, such as right before bed at night. Be more intentional about what you talk about then. Go a little deeper. Talk about those pesky feelings we tend to gloss over in the course of talking about what happened during the day.

 

  1.       Reflect on what tends to get in the way of this time. Do either of you schedule other plans during that time when it is not urgent or serious? Do you choose time together over other commitments, even good ones?

 

  1.       Guard your time against interruptions, even your kid’s wants. (By all means help them with their needs, but like the example with my parents, when my parent’s guarded their time together it helped them meet my needs more effectively).

Do we need to reduce some commitments or clear out our schedule a bit?

Do we need to make sure things like dinner together or time in the evenings are not often commandeered by other activities or distractions like TV?

            

Making couple time first does not always mean adding more activities to your life. The most important part of this mindset is that you are intentional and that time together is the first priority, not last.

 

Learn more about Jacob Francisco, LMHC at CatholicCounselors.com.

How ‘Virtue Discovery’ Can Change Your Life

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When a client first meets with Grant Freeman, LMHC, they’re usually very focused on the problem for which they sought counseling. After an initial assessment, though, Freeman pivots the conversation in a surprising direction: “Tell me about some things you think you do well.”

His clients often resist this new direction—they keep wanting to circle back to the problem, but Freeman keeps redirecting them toward developing a list of things they do “well.” Not perfectly, necessarily, but passably—things like getting up in the morning, getting dressed, helping someone out.

Ultimately, the goal is to discover the virtues that the client already possesses, even if they are only as small as a seed, so that he or she can use those virtues to help solve their problem.

“You don’t talk about your problems, and they go away,” Freeman said in a recent interview. “You have to do something different.” Virtues are, in a nutshell, “behaving effectively” in a given situation, he said. “And if we behave effectively, then we solve our problems.”

For example, let’s say that you are at your wits’ end with your thirteen-year-old child; she doesn’t follow through on what you ask her to do, she’s argumentative and sassy, and lately, you’ve been getting in lots of fights.

Freeman might help you develop a plan for improving your child’s behavior, but in order to implement that plan, you are going to need to change your own behavior—namely, the way you typically respond to her provocations.

The virtue discovery process might help you identify virtues you’re already practicing in other contexts that would be useful to apply to this particular problem: restraint, perseverance, and gentle-firmness, for example.

But virtues do much more than help people solve problems, Freeman said; they are also the key to living a joyful, fulfilled life.

 

A Life Devoted to Virtue

You might call Freeman a “virtue evangelist.” Shortly after graduating from college, he gave up a promising career in an import/export business so that he could devote his life to sharing the joys of the virtuous life.

It was the all-boys Catholic boarding school that he attended in high school that first introduced him to that way of life. He and his classmates didn’t have CD players, television, or even radio—but they had lots of fun.

“They let us play very wildly and run rambunctiously,” he said. “We got to have a lot of fun, but it was governed. You didn’t have too many opportunities for getting way off the rails.”

After a few twists and turns in his life, he eventually decided to make it his life mission to share the “gift” he had received from his boarding school. That’s when he traded his role at the import/export company for a new role as a religion teacher at a Catholic high school.

To his delight, his students were very receptive to his message “that the good life, the beautiful life, is the life that is the most ethical, and that any fun that wasn’t virtuous was missing the mark of genuine fun.”

Eventually, he wound up at the Pastoral Solutions Institute, where he leads clients through the virtue discovery process—not only to help solve their problems, but to help them live a more joyful, satisfying life.

 

Discovering and Nurturing Your Virtues

The virtue discovery process isn’t difficult or complicated, Freeman said.

A good place to start is to realize that, as someone made in the image of God, you already possess the seed of all the virtues. All you need to grow them is the light of the Holy Spirit and some good soil—preferably, some rich rotted manure, which Freeman equates with the challenges and hardships we face on a daily basis.

“The virtues are all in there, because we’re made in the image and likeness of God,” Freeman said. “And they grow because of God’s grace, but also because they’re demanded of us. Whatever situations we’re in, we’re invited to grow in them. Now, to begin with, we perform poorly, and we will need to do some corrective work, but by hook or by crook, virtues can take root.”

To help identify and reinforce those virtues, Freeman advises clients to engage in a daily virtue inventory. The process resembles a simplified version of the Ignatian Examen. Here are the steps:

  1. Ask for the Help of the Holy Spirit: “This is not a ‘pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps’ sort of process,” Freeman said. “We can’t do anything without grace.”

Your prayer may be very simple: “Lord, show me myself. When you look at me, what do you see? Tell me about myself. You know me better than I know me, so reveal me to myself.”

  1. Review the Day: Take a few minutes at the end of each day to reflect on what went well. Ideally, write it down in a journal. If you can’t think of anything, ask your spouse or children or a friend who has your best interests at heart.

 “Your children might say, ‘You made us a sandwich,’ or your spouse might say, ‘I’m really grateful that you went to work today and came home on time ready for dinner.’ It’s as simple as that.”

  1. Identify the Virtue: Name the virtue that enabled you to do well in those situations. For example, if you helped a colleague with a difficult task, recognize the virtue of generosity or friendliness. It’s not crucial that you identify the traditional name of the virtue, Freeman said. 
  2. Look Ahead: Consider the challenges you might face the next day and determine which virtues you will need to employ to navigate those challenges effectively.

    “Once you’ve identified the virtues, then you take a little look into tomorrow and see where you might intentionally use one of those virtues in a particular place, with a particular person, in a small way, so as to become more and more familiar with that virtue,” Freeman said. “So, I exercised restraint with my kids when they were annoying me today. Now, where am I going to use that tomorrow?”

Practicing this daily virtue discovery process helps to make you familiar with the tools at your disposal to best navigate life’s challenges and opportunities.

In college, Freeman wrestled with how hard it can be to live a virtuous life, and he is still working on it. While acknowledging that reality, he advises clients that it is well worth the effort.

“The Lord tells us that if you found a sturdy friend, if you found a treasure, do everything within your power to preserve it or possess it,” Freeman said. “And virtue— your own possession of the image and likeness of God—is the greatest treasure you could possibly ever fathom. So take care of it, strengthen it, shine it up, work it out. You know, don’t leave it in the garage; take it out for a spin.”

For personalized help with the virtue discovery process, reach out to Freeman or another pastoral counselor at CatholicCounselors.com.

How to Find Marriage Counseling That Really Works—and Why You Shouldn’t Wait

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Nearly half of all first marriages in the United States end in divorce, yet couples typically wait four to six years from the onset of problems before seeking professional help. That’s too bad, because numerous research studies have shown that marriage counseling can be effective at significantly improving relationship satisfaction and preventing divorce.

Why do couples wait so long to seek professional help? Many couples steer clear of marriage counseling because they are afraid it won’t work, or because they view it as admitting failure. In the meantime, they usually turn to the sources of support that are most conveniently at hand: friends, family, pastors, and so on.

But these sources of help usually fail to address the deeper issues in a troubled relationship. Worse, well-meaning friends can offer advice that actually causes more problems.

“No one sets out to destroy their relationship, but I cannot tell you the number of hours I have had to spend with couples cleaning up messes that were made from bad advice they had received,” Dr. Greg Popcak writes in his book How to Heal Your Marriage & Nurture Lasting Love. “Often, my clients will spend weeks undoing the problems caused by bad advice or poor support before we can even get to the original problem.”

When is it appropriate to lean on friends, family, and faith leaders for support, and when is it time to seek the help of a licensed marriage and family therapist? And how do you find a competent therapist—one who has training and experience in marriage counseling, and who is actually committed to helping you heal your marriage?

Dr. Popcak addresses all of these questions in chapter 11 of How to Heal Your Marriage, but we’ll summarize his advice below.

 

Family, Friends, Faith: The Limits of Common Marital Supports

Couples who encounter problems in their marriage often begin by seeking support from family and friends, and sometimes their pastor or another faith leader. Seeking emotional support and encouragement from family and friends can be a perfectly good first step, Dr. Popcak writes, when those people are able to provide informed peer support.

“The key words here are informed and peer,” he says. Peers are people who are on the same social level as you—not people who are emotionally or materially dependent on you. And an informed peer is someone who has demonstrated maturity, virtue, and good character. This is someone who is capable of lovingly challenging your outlook and assumptions rather than simply affirming everything you say.

While certain friends and family members can provide much-needed support, they are rarely a good source of practical advice for couples experiencing significant marital problems. That’s because friends and family are not usually in the best position to provide objective advice. Moreover, they usually lack the professional training and experience necessary to provide strategies that are research-tested and proven to work. Finally, Dr. Popcak says, in a culture where divorce is common, “most people intuitively know much more about what it takes to end a marriage than how to save it.”

What about your pastor? Your pastor may be able to offer you the spiritual support you need to tackle your marriage problems, but unless he has a professional degree in counseling, he is no more qualified to offer you marriage counseling than he is to treat your medical problems. That is not to say that you shouldn’t reach out to your pastor, but depending on the severity of your problems, most pastors will likely point you in the direction of marriage-friendly counseling.

 

Why Good Marriage Counseling Works

Human relationships, even between two people who love one another, are complicated, and the keys to a healthy relationship are not always obvious or intuitive. This is where a licensed marriage therapist can help. Drawing on decades of research, a competent marriage therapist can help couples learn the habits and practices that make for a happy, fulfilling relationship.

Dr. Popcak, for example, lists eight habits of happy couples:

  1. Regularly connecting through daily rituals of working, playing, praying, and talking together.
  2. Practicing emotional rapport and benevolence.
  3. Practicing emotional self-control, especially during times of stress and conflict.
  4. Practicing a “positive intention frame”—that is, assuming the best about your spouse even when they are at their worst.
  5. Taking care of one another as you work through conflicts.
  6. Practicing mutual respect, accountability, and boundaries.
  7. Learning from mistakes and learning to talk about “perpetual problems.”
  8. Finding good support for their marriage.

Couples who are struggling often think that the key is to solve the conflict between them. In fact, research shows that both happy and unhappy couples have about the same amount of conflict; the difference is that happy couples have the skills to handle those conflicts in ways that draw them together rather than pushing them apart.

A good marriage therapist serves as a sort of coach, helping couples learn these and other skills that will enable them to have a happy marriage. It is this long-term, expert guidance that makes marriage counseling so effective.

But how do you find a good marriage therapist?

 

Choosing a Competent, Marriage-Friendly Therapist

To find a good therapist, start by looking for someone whose training has prepared them to specialize in marriage counseling. Research by Gottman (2011) shows that therapists with specific training in marriage and family therapy have significantly higher success rates with marital therapy clients (over 90%) compared to general practice therapists (as low as 30%).

Ask about the potential therapist’s specific training and supervised experience in marital therapy. A qualified therapist should be able to describe their graduate coursework and practical experience in detail. If a therapist gives vague responses, they might not be the right fit.

Next, ask whether the therapist is marriage friendly. What is a “marriage-friendly” therapist? According to the National Registry of Marriage-Friendly Therapists, this is a therapist who believes it is preferable to help couples restore their marriage to health, if that is possible.

It might seem that most marriage and family therapists would hold this belief, but according to one national survey of 1,000 therapists, more than 60% said they are “neutral” on marriage versus divorce for their clients, according to the Registry.

For many Catholic couples, finding a therapist who understands and supports their faith tradition is also crucial. Research indicates that faithful Catholics prefer therapists with competencies in moral theology and other areas specific to their faith. Different faith traditions have unique perspectives on marriage, and working with a therapist unfamiliar with or unsupportive of these views can make counseling challenging.

 

The Path to a Happier Marriage

So, while many couples delay seeking professional help for their marriage because of fears or misperceptions about what it involves, the reality is that good marriage counseling is no different from the sort of help you would get from a coach, financial advisor, or a medical professional.

Throughout the Bible and two thousand years of tradition, the Christian faith acknowledges that good relationships don’t come naturally to us humans. We all need the help of God—and one another—to nurture happy, healthy relationships. Marriage counseling that respects clients’ faith and works from research-proven methods can provide the support couples need to fulfill God’s plan for their marriage.

For more advice about finding professional help for your marriage, see chapter 11 of How to Heal Your Marriage & Nurture Lasting Love by Dr. Greg Popcak. The National Registry of Marriage-Friendly Therapists can direct you to marriage-friendly therapists in your area. And you can always get tele-counseling marriage therapy from the many Catholic therapists right here at CatholicCounselors.com.