Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons
We’re the Vallottons, and we’re passionate about people! Every human was created for fulfilling connections in relationship and family, but it’s not always what comes easiest! We know this because of our wide range of personal experiences as well as years of working with people. So we’re going to crack open topics like dating, marriage, family and parenting to encourage, entertain and equip you for a deeply fulfilling life of relational health.
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Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons
129. When Marriage Counseling Doesn't Work
Counseling is incredibly valuable. Jason and Lauren are huge proponents of marriage counseling, coaching and investing in marriage in a way that invites outside input from experts who can give great feedback to help couples grow in their connection. But it’s so common for couples to spend years in sessions and workshops and retreats without ever experiencing lasting breakthrough. Why? Because no matter how good the tools are, they don’t work if certain foundations aren’t in place.
In this episode, pastors and coaches Jason and Lauren Vallotton unpack some of the hidden reasons couples stay stuck—even with professional help—and how to create the kind of environment where real change is possible.
They explore:
- Why solving problems without first building connection is like trying to spend from an empty bank account.
- How misdiagnosing root issues keeps couples treating the wrong thing—and stuck in painful cycles.
- Why communication tools and boundaries fail if you don’t understand your actual relational cycle.
- How “making things fair” in sessions can unintentionally block radical ownership—something both spouses need in order to break patterns.
- Why safety is the soil for growth, and how tools can feel like weapons if emotional safety isn’t present.
- The importance of “turning toward” your spouse and focusing on one clear target at a time.
This conversation offers fresh perspective and practical guidance for anyone longing for deeper transformation in their marriage.
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We're the Valetins and we are passionate about people.
Speaker 1:Every human was created for fulfilling relational connection.
Speaker 2:But that's not always what comes easiest.
Speaker 1:We know this because of our wide range of personal experience, as well as our years of working with people.
Speaker 2:So we're going to crack open topics like dating, marriage, family and parenting to encourage entertain and equip you for a deeply fulfilling life of relational health.
Speaker 1:Welcome back everyone to Dates, mates and Babies with the Valetins Guys. We are sorry that we missed last week.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sorry about last week folks.
Speaker 1:We'll fill you in on what was happening.
Speaker 2:We will.
Speaker 1:Yeah, everyone was throwing up at the house.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was not pretty.
Speaker 1:No, we couldn't get out of there. I don't know if you guys have been through that this season or not, but I'm the only one that made it out alive.
Speaker 2:I know Jason survived.
Speaker 1:Yes, but me.
Speaker 2:actually it was Edie first, then me, then Liam, whoa, we had a wild 48 hours.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But you know what, here we are. It's a Monday again. We get a redo.
Speaker 1:We're back.
Speaker 2:We're back in action, ready to rock and roll with a great new episode for you guys.
Speaker 1:I know, yeah, this week's going to be fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we wanted to talk about why marriage counseling doesn't work sometimes. Yeah, why marriage counseling doesn't work sometimes.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And let me explain. So you know, jason, even more so than me, spends hours and hours and hours and hours countless hours countless hours every year coaching up people, oftentimes married couples, who are stuck. You know people at church, people on our teams, who are stuck and need some help getting out of cycles inside of their marriage and it's funny because by the time somebody gets to Jason's office they've often already done marriage counseling different. You know marriage classes, marriage retreats people because you know what Coaching courses?
Speaker 2:everything Nobody wants to be in a hard marriage. No, Everybody wants to be in a great marriage, Of course. Marriage we want our marriages to be amazing. So people in the church, people in our community who come to Jason's office are rarely there, it being their first time ever trying to work hard on their marriage. And there's some common threads that we've discovered over the years of like, okay, so when you have a married couple who's really worked at their marriage for years and years and years and still feel really stuck in certain areas, why is that? Like what has gone wrong or what hasn't happened yet? That's keeping married couples from fully thriving, even after marriage counseling, even after marriage retreats. So we thought today we would unpack for you guys I don't know five or so of the top reasons why we see people still stuck after they've already been working hard on their marriage.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So let's dive into the first one. Great you want to do that. Yeah, let's do it, okay.
Speaker 1:The first one to me is okay, so.
Speaker 2:Can we just start with this like? Formula, formula right, because I want people to track like yeah, go ahead the best. Marriage counseling won't work if dot dot dot.
Speaker 1:Number one you solve problems without building connection between the couples right so the best tools in the world don't fix a problem if there's no connection in the bank. And I started to realize this. I used to be so guilty of this for a long time. I'd have a couple come in and I would hear where they're at right, five years, 10 years, 15 years of craziness, of these cycles and patterns and frustrations, and I'm watching them talk to one another and they're using really poor communication skills and poor boundaries. And but then you start to realize, okay, so what I would do is I'd get into like, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's talk about how to communicate your pain, let's talk about how to set healthy boundaries. What is she saying? What is he saying? And I would really hammer over and over and over again in every appointment the tools this isn't going well because you are. Do you hear where you're cutting her off? Do you hear how you're sending a message? It's not actually an iMessage, it's a. You know it's a, it's a statement of judgment and I would work really hard on couples to do that. But the missing piece that I have realized in the last I don't know four years or so, is if a couple is really locked up and they don't have any connection, which most couples who are locked up for a long time don't have anything in the bank. They have zero. All they have is accusation, pointing fingers, judgment, all these cases and reasons why I have to protect myself from you, why you're the problem or whatever, or why I'm failing in this marriage, and when they come to you, if you don't somehow get them on the same page of I married you because I loved you. I left my parents, I left the comfort of my home, I left all these things because you were worth it and I chose you because this was the best, absolute best path for my life. Okay, best path for my life. Okay, now, from there can we build some, can we teach couples how to turn towards one another and pour in some affirmation. And this was going to be really hard because there's all these cases. So what I've done recently lots of times, over and over and over again, and we can address the challenges, but over and over and over again is a couple will come in. They're super locked up.
Speaker 1:I had a couple that was locked up for two years. They were in a sexless marriage for two years, sleeping, one of them sleeping on the couch, sleeping, one of them sleeping on the couch, super painful and on the brink of divorce, and instead of getting into, hey, your communication's terrible, hey, your boundaries are terrible. We actually spent a lot of time going let's look at why your marriage isn't working, and we'll talk about that in a little bit. But what I did in the marriage, what I did in the first session with them, was to go hey, do you wish that this was different? Have you to the man, have you contributed to this in a way that you wish you hadn't had? Yeah, totally. And have you contributed to the woman in a way that you wish you wouldn't have? Yeah, totally. So I get them to agree that they haven't all been perfect.
Speaker 1:Can we start from that place and go? Instead of untangling all the stuff that's happened in the past? We have to have something in our bank accounts that we're building from. And so I get them to both apologize and acknowledge to one another that I've sewed things into this marriage that have caused you a lot of pain, and I know that in their so they're both saying that. And then we're going to spend the next week just turning towards one another, literally just sewing into the bank account. And I ease their anxiety. Right, because here's everyone's anxiety. Well, we still don't have any tools for communicating. They still don't have great tools for setting healthy boundaries. They have all this stuff from the past that they haven't worked through. I tell them very clearly we're going to give you good tools. We're going to even address some things in the past. I know that this marriage has been painful for both of you, but if we don't start with something in the bank account, then we end up trying to use tools with zero connection.
Speaker 2:It doesn't work.
Speaker 1:And it doesn't work because I still, when we don't have any connection, I'm protecting myself from you.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And the tools only work in the really. The tools only really work well in the context, or I should say this they work best in the context of connection.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So you know we have a couple other episodes that dive deeper into these, this topic specifically, but just for like 60,000 foot view 40,000 foot view, let me just say this connection isn't built over an exchange of information, exchanging emotion with one another. And so if you've done a lot of marriage counseling or a marriage coaching focused on logistically improving your communication style or logistically improving, you know, sharpening the tools in your tool belt, but you're not actually exchanging emotion with one another, you're still at a distance, you're still, you know, you don't have an actual fondness for one another or an emotional connection with each other, then your tools could be really great, they could be really sharp, but you're not going to hit the mark, You're not going to actually get your way out of this pickle because you only build connection through exchanging emotion.
Speaker 1:So can I add something to this? Yeah, is the? The coach or the counselor here is adding a ton of security into the relationship because they're the guide and they're going. I'm going to help you guys. Like, it drains the room of anxiety If a coach or counselor can go. We're going to address that other stuff. We're also going to address how you guys communicate to one another. We're going to address the poor boundaries. We're going to address these pain points for this one week or for these two weeks. Just pour in this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just yeah, trust the process To pour in this. Yeah, Just yeah, trust, trust the process To building that connection, yeah.
Speaker 1:If the coach or counselor doesn't do that, the couple probably won't be able to be vulnerable enough to go hey, great job with the kids today. Hey, well, done over here. Hey, because they have this thing screaming inside them that says you're just going to end up back in this terrible marriage You're going, says you're just going to end up back in this terrible marriage You're going to. You're going to have him run over you or her. You know, uh, flood you. This isn't going to work. So the really rely on the coach or counselor to guide this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Secondly, you know years and years and years of marriage counseling will seem like it hasn't worked if you're trying to solve problems without the couple being able to tell themselves the correct story about what's happening inside and how they got there. So we would say a couple needs real feedback on the real cycle. They have to understand what the root issues of their problem really are or else they won't actually break free.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's. Marriage counseling doesn't work if you don't actually understand the cycles and the triggers and the full story of what's happening for the couple.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we would say like not only does the coach or the counselor need to understand the cycle and what's actually happening, we actually need the couple to be able to tell the correct story about the problem.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So what you have to think through is what you misdiagnose, you mistreat every single time, and why this is really important is, at this point in our life, everything is automated, right, your brain automates everything. So my brain is automating how I communicate to you. My brain is automating how I communicate to you. It's it's automating even what I'm why, uh, every aspect of our day, from making breakfast to getting ready for work. It's automated and so, which means I don't often understand consciously what's going on, because, right, it's so much about the lens that I've developed over time, it's so much about what my patterns and pathways have been. It's these cycles, and you know, your nose is right above your mouth and you're the last one to know that you have bad breath. That's a perfect picture of what marriage looks like. A perfect picture of what marriage looks like is so often, couples are the last ones to be able to see what they actually do when X happens. How did we get here?
Speaker 1:What was my piece in contributing to this? So, um, I mean every single week, every week that I sit with a couple at this point, what I do is especially ongoing couples. So I had a couple last week and they came back. They came in and they said um, I won't give up names or anything, but I said how, how was your week? And they go oh, our week was really hard. Now I've been with them for a uh, a year, so before I've heard what happened, I said okay, what could you have done different? I don't know what's happened yet, but I want you to start to look back and gain the tool of going where did you contribute and where did you contribute and what actually happened. And I want them to get used to really seeing and understanding the real story of what happened.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Not what they think happened, but Right, not just the on paper details.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we have to. We have to be able to pull back from our emotions and look at it objectively, right, and go okay, what really happened? And because when a couple really understands, they have a deep, deep understanding of why they are where they're at.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That it's no longer. It's not just because a couple doesn't have, uh, good communication skills, or it's never just because a couple doesn't have good communication skills, or it's never just because a couple sets healthy boundaries, it's, we also have these belief systems. That's driving all the other things. And so, if they don't and it's not just the belief system, it's also the role that I'm playing in marriage as well, and so it's really marriage is like so simple and so complex at the same time. And so I'm thinking about a couple that I had this last week.
Speaker 1:They've been in marriage counseling and in coaching and they've done the courses and they've been married for 92 years and you know, they've done all of it. They got a billion kids, but they never actually understood what they looked like in marriage and they didn't understand. Oh, this is what we do and this is where it's breaking down. And, oh my gosh, I used to believe, I actually believed that she needs to get all of her needs met from God, and I didn't understand my role in marriage. And so, yes, they have good communication tools and they have good boundaries, but they're completely missing each other's roles. She's not playing, she's not actually meeting his needs. They're communicating well, they're setting boundaries well and he's not actually meeting her needs in marriage. They didn't actually understand their role and so, as a counselor, you could spend forever going well. You need to communicate well and you need to set healthy boundaries and you need to work on connection.
Speaker 1:But, if you don't understand the role that each other play for one another, then you're you're completely misdiagnosing what's wrong. And that couple will stay in a perpetual cycle of pain.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah. Back to what you misdiagnose, you mistreat yeah, so having that, having that true story, that correct story, that real understanding of the cycle, is so important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because, ultimately, you have to be able to go. Where did I miss it, right? Um, what? What do I need to do differently? Uh, you have to be able to. Each person has to be able to go. This is where this is my trigger. This is where I normally miss it. These are the skill sets I'm weak in this is what I have to really focus on, okay.
Speaker 2:So thirdly, uh, you could do years and years and years of marriage counseling and feel like it's not actually helping if yeah, I think if you have a counselor that feels like they continually have to make everything fair and the appointment. Yeah, okay, explain what you mean by that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So what happens often is, as a as a coach or a counselor, you want to build trust and, yeah, you really want to build trust with your clients and so obviously there's a lot of time where I'm in an appointment and I know that someone in the appointment is having a really hard time just being in the appointment. They're super scared.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:Uh, it's so intimidating.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And so it's vulnerable. Yeah, and so at first, at first, every, every coach, every counselor has to be careful with how much you give to that person and how much you dish out. The challenge can become if I am At some point, if I'm not willing to as a counselor or a coach, if I'm not willing to assign ownership to each person as it comes and not necessarily to make it fair, if I can't do that, then the relationship they'll never actually get well. And it looks like this. I know maybe it doesn't sound super clear at this moment actually get well. And it looks like this. I know, I know maybe it doesn't sound super clear at this moment, but it will. It looks like this I I often see where counselors try to make it fair I give you this to work on and I give her this to work on.
Speaker 1:I give him this to work on and I give her this to work on. Well, it's not always like that, it's not. I don't have to find. I found myself saying this last week in an appointment with a couple that I've been with for a long time, because one of them said hey, what are you going to give the other person to work on? I said it's not my job to like divvy out a little bit of work for you and a little bit of work for you. It's. Ultimately, it's my job to help you guys understand what didn't work.
Speaker 1:It's your job to take a hundred percent ownership and to go. If this is a hundred percent my fault or a hundred percent my responsibility or a hundred percent, I need to change this. Awesome, that's what I came here for today. The couples need to eventually come in and be in an environment where it's safe to take a hundred percent ownership. You can fail a hundred percent in your marriage and you're not going to get shamed, beat up, accused, and the only time when you have to divvy out perfectly is in a relationship where it's there's a lot of insecurity or you're insecure in yourself, and so we want to address that and get to a place where an individual is willing to take a hundred percent ownership of what they are doing and a counselor can keep them from that if you're not careful.
Speaker 2:That's good. Yeah, I think, like, like if we could just speak to like a culture statement. Like you and I are interested in creating culture inside of our marriage where we take 100% ownership over ourselves all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so when we're working with couples or like if we're leading a marriage intensive, for example, we're going to communicate in a way that inspires people to take radical ownership over everything you can possibly take ownership over hearing about their story and helping them grow the last thing we need to do is try to make things fair, because the whole goal is actually that we create a culture of taking radical ownership, so that fair thing doesn't actually lend itself well to stewarding that kind of culture.
Speaker 1:No, it doesn't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, here's another one. So, like the best marriage counseling won't work a lot of the time if both people in the marriage aren't actually working to create a safe place to do the work.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We would say safety is the soil for growth in a marriage, and without it, even the right tools will feel like weapons instead of help Right yeah, it's true. We've all you know, we've been in situations I've been in situations in marriage where we're practicing our tools and because there's no felt safety, because there's not a lot of connection, your brilliant communication feels like a weapon against me.
Speaker 2:Or I can weaponize my own communication. If I know that you and I are disconnected and if I know that you don't feel safe because I have a habitual pattern of behaving a certain way inside of our arguments, I can use excellent communication tools and it feels like a dagger, it feels like a weapon against you when there's no safety or connection in the mix.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the most important thing that a household could have is this protection of emotional safety, this bubble of emotional safety in there, because if you have emotional safety, then you can show up, however right. If a wife's unsure of how her husband's going to come home every day, then she has to arm her up and she's not open and available to bring the creativity, to bring the nurture, to bring that connection that she naturally wants to bring to the relationship. And if a husband's not sure how a wife's gonna show up, then he's also armored up and she becomes the person that he's combating and protecting the kids from and protecting himself from, and she becomes his target for his uh, his dominance.
Speaker 1:And you know, and so it creates this dynamic. That is very brittle. We're walking on eggshells together. It doesn't take much to snap it. We want what you, what every couple really wants in a marriage is emotional flexibility, relational flexibility. You want a marriage that can really flex and bend and can. It's what you want in kids, right? You want a bunch of flexibility that comes through emotional safety. It comes. It doesn't come through doing every conversation perfectly. It doesn't come through having professional level, uh, boundary setting capability. It comes through this protection, you uh, this, this place of ownership, self-control. It's the fruit of the spirits, right? If we go through this, the fruit of the spirit, I'm, I'm, I'm peaceful, I'm kind, I'm loving, I'm patient, I, I'm in control of myself. I'm bringing to this environment that peace. Right, it's free of judgment, it's free of shame and guilt, of, uh, shame and guilt. So, uh, again, the best marriage counseling in the world won't work if we don't address the, the places in which, um, the thing, the underlying thing that's creating so much, uh, fear and pain inside of the marriage. Um, I have a.
Speaker 1:I had a couple that I was counseling a while ago and the big issue, uh, he said something to me that was really interesting. He said she treats her friends differently than she treats me. She's really inviting and she's bubbly with them and she's funny with him. And I said, yeah, totally. And how would that feel if she treated you like that? How would that feel? And he was like it'd feel incredible. I would feel warm and I would feel cared for and I'd feel seen and like it would. The environment would feel really open.
Speaker 1:I said yeah, totally. Do you know what the difference is? And he thought for a little bit and he was like no. I said well, when she goes to see her friends, is she afraid? Does she have to protect herself from what they might do? He said no. He said when you come home from work, she never knows how you're going to come home, your unpredictability, because he comes home sometimes and just stonewalls her, or he comes home sometimes and, you know, tries to connect, but his inability to regulate his own emotions, to really bring peace to chaos, to be gentle and kind, keeps her in a place where she's armored up.
Speaker 2:So, anyways, I'm going to have to keep going through that.
Speaker 1:That's great, really good, okay, last but not least, yeah, the best counseling in the world doesn't happen if there's not one clear target at a time. I guess I shouldn't say the best counseling doesn't happen. You looked at me with that, with a weird face well, I was wondering what you're about to say. I wasn't following I meant to say uh, counseling doesn't work if there's not one clear target.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you could be in a therapist's office for years, but if you actually don't know what your clear target is, then you're not going to see breakthrough and ultimately the thing is is like just even psychologically right, people really can only work at one thing at a time.
Speaker 2:You really can't actually try to hit 10 targets at once and be successful, but one at a time is awesome and actually we found that when, when we're talking about like relational issues just in general our relational issues, like our relational conflicts, or where we don't actually meet eye to eye with somebody, it's all it all comes from the same root issue. So in a marriage, when you're struggling hard to find connection in certain areas, once you identify those big cycles that you have, or the story you're telling yourself or the root causes of your issue, it all stems from the same thing. So if you can clearly identify one clear target at a time, often when you hit that target and you find your breakthrough, it really does end up taking care of a handful of other issues, because they often all have the same root cause.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what I found is when you give a couple multiple targets to try to hit, this, stuff is like really hard to do. And when you're trying to build a habit, I mean, if you just get into habit building psychology, you have to start with one thing and keep it as simple as possible. Right, you can't do five or six, how you can't build five or six habits at one time Totally. And because, just because you can see five or six things that need to be fixed and worked on in a marriage, the I think this is one of the biggest mistakes coaches make or counselors is okay, guys, we need to work on this. And then I'm going to explain this, and then I'm going to explain this. And then you're going to, you know, and couples leave and they go like, wow, that appointment was great, but they have no idea what they're actually doing.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And so I love to draw on a whiteboard in my sessions. This is what I want you to hit this week. I put it so they can see it. This is your target and this is your target. So, now that we understand how your cycle is working, now that we understand what the big pain points are in marriage, now that you understand where we're going over time, here's your target this week, because I want them to come back next week and I'm going to go. How did that go? I can't move on to the next target until I troubleshoot that they know how to do this one right here, and so I may stay on this, whatever X target is, for two weeks or three weeks or four weeks, until they're doing it. When they graduate from this one, then it's time to address the secondary issue, or the.
Speaker 1:but until we can really do this piece, I have stayed on turn towards one another literally for three weeks with couples until we can do this piece right here, because this is eating, this is nutrients, this is until we get really good at this. I can't move on to this other thing. There's no point in doing that. Have to build really slow in order to grow really fast. Yeah, if you build really slow and you make sure that the couple can hit X thing really well, he knows what he's doing, she knows what she's doing, maybe the same thing, and we understand where we're going and we're all just all week long you're focusing on how did I execute that? Did I do that? Well, what went wrong? This one target man, you can grow so fast. If you try to solve everything, you won't solve anything.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So, it's great.
Speaker 1:I know there's tons, tons of other things. Why I like doing this is for two reasons when I think, when a couple goes to get help, they don't know, there's no way to know like, am I with a really good counselor or coach or am I not? And often, if you know, if you have an understanding of what it should kind of feel like and what the goal is, then you go in and you go okay, is this really working for me? Do I have clear targets? Do I understand what's going on in my marriage? Do I have someone that's helping me to really hit the same target over and over again?
Speaker 1:Right, like if you have a counselor or a coach that's really helping you through those clear steps and understanding all the stuff that we just said. Like you're going to have a successful time as long as you're taking tons of ownership, but if you're not, then you can go and you can ask for those things. You can say, hey, is it possible that we work on one thing for a while? I leave here and I feel really confused about what I'm supposed to be working on. Or I leave here and I don't actually feel like we've identified what the most important thing for me to do this week is I really need to know what I'm taking ownership for.
Speaker 1:That'll help a lot for that'll help a lot and then, for I think coaches and counselors who are listening to this, like these, are the simple things that I have found that's absolutely made the most difference in my approach to helping people is getting really, really simple and not breaking these rules and really helping couples um understand what the most important things are to work on in their marriage, what the clear targets are to hit, where we're going and, ultimately, what their role is. So hopefully this was helpful for you guys. Babe, do you want to talk about our Patreon account really quick?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've got a Patreon account. The link is in the show notes here and if our content is helpful for you, if you enjoy it, if you find yourself wanting to you know, like and share the episodes when they come out, then we would invite you to become a part of our community over on Patreon. Our members actually help us continue to be able to build this kind of content for free and get it into as many people's inboxes as possible. So we love your support and, yeah, join the team.
Speaker 1:Thank you, guys. Have an incredible week. We will see you next week.
Speaker 2:Awesome.