My wife and I started Couple’s Therapy.

The show.

But to be clear, the real thing is a must-do in life and love. I highly recommend going before you think you need it. In fact, stop reading this email and go book an appointment. I’ll wait.

Orna.

PAUSE IT. WAIT. PAUSE IT. OKAY SHE’S JUST MAD BECAUSE SHE’S ACTUALLY MAD AT HERSELF FOR BEING TOO DEFENSIVE BECAUSE OF THAT THING THAT HAPPENED WITH HER MOTHER AND NOW HE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT TO DO SO INSTEAD HE’S JUST NOT DOING ANYTHING AND HE SHOULD BE HELPING HER!!! OKAY YOU CAN PLAY IT NOW.

We used to sit quietly and watch a show together at night. Slowly burning off the last few drops of energy left after putting the kids and house to bed.

Sometime it’s a new show. Sometimes an old show. Sometimes GMM or Evan and Katelyn or if we’re in a weird mood aussie guys dropping things off things.

Rarely do we pause a show to jump in with guesses about what is going on. But then again, rarely are we as invested as we have been in Couple’s Therapy.

Even if you aren’t a couple. I encourage you to check it out. I’m sure you and your cat have some things to work on.

For those unfamiliar, Couple’s Therapy is a reality-docu-series chronicling real couple’s counseling with real couples and a real therapist.

That therapist is Orna Guralnik, and she’s amazing.

There are a few things I want to dig into here, but I’ll let you dig into the show yourself. Just let me know if you’ve seen it.

I honestly believe every couple should go to counseling at least once.

I’ll be the first to admit I was hesitant scared. But it didn’t feel like a suggestion so much as a demand when the officiant of our wedding asked my wife and me to go to counseling before we got married.

Was something that obviously wrong?

No. He simply believed that it does a couple good to be on the same page before taking the next step.

Now I believe that too.

It was helpful and eye-opening to have a third party in the room to ask us the real, difficult questions. To force the conversations. To call out the elephant in the room.

That was six years ago, we went four times, and I have never regretted it.

Do it.

Orna has a cool hourglass.

Therapy is on the rise.

According to Google Trends, searches for ‘therapy’ have roughly doubled in the last 20 years, and that gives me a lot of hope that we are starting to break down the stigmas around mental health and more people are getting access to help.

Interestingly, there seem to be consistent dips in search volume every year around Thanksgiving and Christmas. I’d like to think that means being together helps, though the spikes surrounding those dips certainly suggest otherwise.

Maybe the 8 million Betterhelp ads are finally working.

The book that teaches you how to talk about hard things.

If you are thinking about going to therapy, I would suggest you read Crucial Conversations. If you aren’t thinking about going to therapy, I would suggest you read Crucial Conversations. If you think therapy is dumb, I think we should have a crucial conversation.

It has been around for a while, but the tools outlined in this book are incredibly powerful at keeping the difficult conversations in life healthy.

Read it? Let me know what you think.

be good

z