Answered questions(6)
Is Premarital Counseling Worth It?
I have been living with my girlfriend for 3 years. We are now engaged to be married. She wants us to get pre marriage counseling. I think it is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard of…but if it makes her happy I will do it gladly. For what possible reason would I need to get counseling to learn more about a person I’ve just had spent more than a 1000 days living with and getting to know everything about? Is there really any point in this? I would really like to understand the point and my fiancée is not really able to tell me why it makes sense….especially when we have a rather expensive wedding coming up to pay for.
Read answer →Spouse Reluctant to Move Overseas for Wife's Mission Work
My wife is a nurse and she has an opportunity to do mission work in Cambodia for a three year run. I am an electrician and general contractor and not sure what I’d do but she says that spouses of primary applicants can generally find meaningful volunteer work once in the mission country. We have two children, ages 8 and 11 who would also be coming, but I guess there is an international school they could attend over there, so it would probably be a good experience. My wife has always wanted to do something like this and she really believes she is being called to do it. I could probably leave for a few years and pick up OK once we came back, so there is nothing really stopping me from going. But I really don’t want to do it. I feel so selfish and I haven’t really even told my wife this, but I just don’t want to go. I don’t really like foreign food and hot weather and I am hopeless at learning languages and I also feel like I won’t know what to do with myself over there. I am used to being the family bread winner, so it’s also hard for me to take a second fiddle role, I guess. I know that the organization needs the spouse to be supportive and on board before they’ll sponsor. I know the right thing to do is to just go for it. Maybe I’ll like it and my wife seems to need to do this and it is truly God’s work. But the other hand is telling me it’s going to be a disaster and that because of the way I feel it’s going to really hurt us as a family. What should I do here?
Read answer →Does Psychoanalysis Work For Anxiety & Depression?
Does psychoanalysis (the Freudian method) work at all for depression and anxiety? I think that I have been anxious and depressed since I was a young adolescent and so I think that the cause of my present day mental illnesses is likely buried somewhere in my childhood – but I can’t figure out what it might be.
Read answer →Can Counseling Help a Pessimist?
Can counseling help a person who has a very gloomy outlook on life become a bit more optimistic? My wife is always looking at the dark side of things and this puts her into a bad mood a lot of the time, and many times it ends up being for no reason.
Read answer →Is My Wife a Hypochondriac?
Everyday there is something wrong with my wife. There is always some sickness of injury that needs special attention. I am not saying she is totally faking it but it is not really believable how often she gets sick or how she can oscillate from perfect health when she is unobserved to serious illness when she notices you are watching her or ask how she is doing. I don’t know how to deal with this. She is a great woman but this drives me crazy. If I ever try to call her on her behavior she goes into meltdown mode. She really loses it, it’s like there is nothing worse I can say than question her sickness. But at the same time it is hard to take her health complaints seriously every day all the time. So I mostly just ignore them…and then whenever anyone else is around and they see me ignoring her health concerns I look the bad guy! What do I do here? I think this is beyond her control and not done intentionally but it is obviously some sort of psychosomatic illness. But how can I help her to get better when she blows up whenever I even suggest that her maladies might not be real?
Read answer →Cure for Workaholism
What's the cure for workaholism. I am fed up with my husband and his always being at the office. We have had lots of fights about it in the past but last night I really got angry and I asked for a divorce. My husband was shocked and he swore he could change. I am willing to give him another chance but I think he needs some professional help, but I am not sure of what kind?
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