Welcome to the awesome marriage podcast.

I am your co-host, Christina Dodson.

This is an Ask Dr. Kim segment where people submit their questions for Dr. Kim Kim,

and he answers them.

Thanks for listening.

Today is an Ask Dr. Kim segment on the Awesome Marriage podcast, and I'm really excited about

what we're going to be talking about today.

Today, the question that was submitted is my husband is not open to counseling, but I think we need it. What do I do?

So we end up seeing this a lot here at us in marriage. We get a lot of emails, a lot of chats about

this issue where one spouse wants to go to counseling, but the other does it because either, you know, they don't want to put forth the effort.

They're concerned about the cost of counseling or they just don't think that they or believe that they need counseling.

So Dr. Graham, what do you think?

Can you force your spouse to go to marriage counseling with you?

Is that the answer here?

No.

I mean, I don't think it is.

I mean, I guess you could force someone.

I was trying to think, I was thinking through thing about this question. Has anybody ever forced their husband? Maybe, maybe it was kind of an ultimatum. It probably didn't go real well because they're there. You know, you want them at least to be open to the process, you know? And I think a lot of it is that sometimes guys are just afraid of counseling. We don't talk about our feelings well anyway, and we think, okay, you see something in the movies and somebody's

laying on the couch talking to someone pouring their guts out, well, they may be afraid

that that would be them or that they'll start getting emotional or cry or something. So I think

there's a lot of fears that can go with it. But it's not a good idea to force someone to go into

to go to counseling. Yeah, they kind of have to want to be there in order for it to be effective, I think,

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