Marriage Counseling

Marriage counseling, also called couples therapy, is a type of therapy aimed specifically at couples to help them address any issues in their relationship that are diminishing their joy, intimacy, and sense of fulfillment. Marriage counseling is often provided by licensed therapists known as marriage and family therapists.

Marriage counseling can help couples to recognize and address conflicts to improve their relationships. It is a safe space for couples to hash things out, and through marriage counseling, a couple can make thoughtful and informed decisions about rebuilding and strengthening their relationship.

Marriage counseling tends to be short-term as couples usually pursue counseling with a specific problem they are looking to solve.The sessions typically last for a few weeks to several months, depending on the issue the couple is working on. In most cases, both spouses participate in the counseling process, but depending on the situation, your therapist may create a treatment plan that will focus on one spouse.

If your spouse won’t go for counseling with you, you can still benefit from it by learning more about yourself and your reactions to the conflicts and situations you face. These tools can be taken and applied to the relationship.

Marriage counseling is therapy, and like most therapy sessions, marriage counseling may be emotionally uncomfortable as you dig into memories, experiences, and feelings you may not easily or readily want to talk about. While it might be uncomfortable, marriage counseling is nonetheless a safe place for you to share those feelings and thoughts that aren’t always on the surface or out in the open, and that can be tough for you and your partner.

It’s common for marriage counseling sessions to surface intense emotions, produce a few raised voices, and elicit some crying. These are all par for the course, and it’s okay to experience the whole gamut of emotions during marriage counseling.

The idea that counseling is reserved for those final situations where all is lost and everything else has been tried is thankfully dying a quiet death. Counseling addresses couples in a crisis when things are falling apart at the seams, and it is also helpful for couples that are going through a small rough patch, and those who are experiencing calm waters in their marriage.

In other words, marriage counseling is for every married couple and is useful for couples regardless of their situation. If you come across any struggle you don’t feel like you are equipped to solve on your own, or could benefit from an unbiased, trained, and objective perspective, a few sessions of marriage counseling may be able to provide the help you need.

Counseling helps not only with addressing crises, but it speaks to smaller issues that if left untended can fester and develop into something ugly. Because counseling can help a couple develop tools for intimacy, better communication, healthy expression of emotions and expectations, goal setting and planning, and good conflict management, counseling can be extensively used by a couple, so they continue to grow together.

You don’t need to wait until something is very wrong to make use of counseling or the tools it provides. The counseling space is versatile, meeting the couple where they’re at and helping them strengthen their relationship.

Every relationship has its problems, and it’s important to recognize that people in healthy, happy relationships also face challenges and experience problems and conflict. Happy couples also tend to argue about the same things that unhappy ones do, such as how to deal with money, the kids, and so on.

The significant difference tends to be how they manage the arguments and conflict.Marriage counseling is useful to address a whole swathe of questions and concerns that can arise for a couple. Some of these issues and challenges include:

• Parenting and being a couple after the birth of children
• Stress from issues such as money
• A lack of intimacy in the relationship (emotional and sexual intimacy)
• Building effective communication where feelings and expectations are communicated appropriately, and both partners feel heard
• Overcoming any trust issues stemming from infidelity and affairs
• Anger issues and resentment
• Substance abuse
• Dealing with a mental health issue such as depression, anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
• Blended family issues
• Conflict over faith or religious values

Marriage counseling does work!According to a survey taken by the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, most of those surveyed reported that they had benefited from therapy. While about ninety-eight percent reported receiving “good to excellent” therapy, ninety-seven percent said they got what they needed, and ninety-three percent had more effective tools in hand for dealing with marital problems thanks to marriage counseling.

So, marriage counseling is effective and helps couples to flourish. As with many other things in life, the efficacy of marriage counseling depends on several factors. With marriage counseling, (re)building intimacy, developing communication, having healthy boundaries, and much else that people seek counseling help for, success depends on at least two things:

How willing the couple is to put in the work to change how they relate to one another. Therapy requires the couple to come with an open mind and heart and to be willing to do the exercises and implement changes their therapist suggests. If you’ve been relating to each other in one way, turning that around takes effort and isn’t always easy. You need to come willing to do the work and change where necessary.

How developed the issue was that brought them to counseling. Couples that seek help earlier tend to achieve better outcomes than those who wait to resolve it. According to Dr. John Gottman, one of the leading experts on relationships and marriage, couples that get counseling before problems become severe may benefit a great deal from counseling. Many couples, unfortunately, tend to wait until things have deteriorated significantly before they seek help. Find help sooner rather than later.

Therapy requires vulnerability and can make you feel vulnerable. Because of this, it works best in an environment of trust. It helps you immensely to be wise by doing your due diligence to get the right therapist that you and your partner both trust and can work with.

You can get a recommendation from people you trust or talk with a potential counselor to ensure that you are comfortable working with them. They can provide you with the information you need so that you know how the process will work and can set realistic expectations.

Marriage counseling typically takes place between the couple and their counselor. Your counselor will apply the most appropriate methods that will suit your unique story, needs, and goals, and they may use therapeutic techniques such as emotionally focused therapy to help you work through your situation.

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)addresses any damaging emotional responses you may have and helps you as a couple to develop your capacity to relate to one another in healthy and productive ways. Another effective method with a high success rate is insight-oriented marital therapy.

This therapeutic method focuses on the idea that we can function better and form more fulfilling relationships by first connecting with ourselves. Understanding who we are while discerning our own emotions and our motivations for acting in certain ways gives us insight into healing on many levels.

Apart from individual therapy, a couples therapy group can help couples walk alongside other couples dealing with similar struggles, under the guidance of a trained therapist. Christian marriage counseling helps build a strong, Christ-centered marriage. By combining the love of God and an understanding of the glorious purpose of marriage, Christian marriage counseling can help couples find faith-based solutions that will strengthen their marriage and make it last.

Your spouse might not hold to the same faith as you, and that may be a source of conflict, but Christian marriage counseling is sensitive to such dynamics, providing you both with tools to appreciate one another’s unique faith expressions and leverage them to grow as a couple, and to arrive at a mutual understanding of how to apply your faith in your lives.

Whether your situation seems bleak or beyond repair, Christian marriage counseling can provide you with much-needed hope and guidance to navigate the choppy waters your marriage may be experiencing. There is no problem too big or too small for Jesus Christ to address.

If you want to find out more about Christian marriage counseling, do not hesitate to contact us or browse the counselor directory to start your journey toward a healthy, happy, and fulfilled marriage.