Marriage Counseling is often a scary prospect. Couples have voiced they are concerned it will create problems where none exist or open a Pandora’s box of pain and blame in areas that are unresolved or off limits between them. In my work with couples, although this list is not all-inclusive, I gathered a common theme of reasons from couples I have worked with on their decision and goals to achieve in Marriage Counseling.
1. Strengthens Your Relationship
Marriage Counseling, from the “premarital stage” all the way through to your “golden wedding” anniversary, can infuse your relationship with strength. Learning to actively appreciate and communicate with each other helps secure the ties that connect you. Learning to meet transition and trouble with the help of a trusted, objective third party can help you stand strong against anything that threatens to weaken your connection.
2. Helps You Learn How To Repair Conflicts
Therapists and relationship experts agree: the benefits of Marriage Counseling are closely linked to a couple’s motivation toward relationship repair and how quickly they go about it. Your relationship is precious. Any damage to it deserves prompt attention. Why wait for persistent problems, unresolved conflicts or troubling thoughts and interactions to eat away at your happiness? Why not seek to repair your bond now? Timing matters when it comes to fixing broken connections, otherwise issues can continue to linger.
Marriage Counseling can also help you maintain love and respect productively and compassionately. You want to disagree and come together with a sense of growth and appreciation to ensure your union becomes a problem-solving partnership.
3. Inspires Communicating Differently
Marriage Counseling uses and promotes communication skills that are proactive, supportive and preventive. Often couples don’t know that their communication could benefit from a tweak or two. Perhaps a boost to your listening skills, your partner’s clarity of expression, or your mutual ability to be empathetic might change how you connect.
Working to encourage responsiveness and compassion through your communication is work worth doing. A wealth of research finds that couples who secure key communication skills develop more honest, respectful friendships and longer lasting love.
4. Can Deepen Feelings of Connection
Being a healthy couple is a team effort. Creating an increasingly stronger team bond is an extremely rewarding part of being a couple. Marriage Counseling is a place to practice productive, intentional connection. Moreover, the more you come together, the more you deepen your appreciation for each other. It’s hard not to feel bonded to a partner who is willing to work at being closer to you.
5. Helps Rebuild Trust
Hurt, betrayal, and abandonment creates walls in relationships and trust may be hard to come by as a result. The work of rebuilding trust is very important to the long-term survival of your relationship. Fortunately, a trained professional can help you process grief, tackle self-examination, and navigate fruitful reconnection. It also makes room for you both to breathe, lower your defenses, and practice safely sharing your thoughts and emotions again.
6. Supports Commitment to the Relationship
Therapy helps support commitment to one’s relationship and helps rework shaky, uncertain aspects of your interactions. Whatever happened throughout the course of your life together can be addressed in healthy ways in a dedicated, focused manner.
Finally, your relationship is too important to simply “hope for the best.” It’s perfectly okay to seek help, protect your love, and restore it. Sometimes it is time to optimize your efforts, challenge yourselves to make beneficial changes, and accept some support when things get rough.
