Can Couples Counseling Save Your Marriage?
Posted on | October 1, 2009 | 2 Comments
Marriages are breaking up at an alarming rate in the US.
It is estimated that 50% of first marriages end in divorce, while 67% of second and 74% of third marriages end in divorce. Fortunately, a National Vital Statistics report for the year 2007-2008 showed a decrease in the divorce rate, now the lowest since 1970 with only 3.5 divorces per 1000 people.
Couples counseling could be the key to saving your marriage.
Couples Counseling Can Open Lines Of Communication
The two biggest issues causing marital breakdown are financial and sexual issues.
Often, a lack of honest communication is at the root. Communication requires people to put down their own agendas and listen to the needs, wants, and hurts of the other person without judgment or defense. Marriage counselling can help untangle the web of hurtful words, misunderstandings, and wounded hearts that often lead to divorce court.
Today, more people are heading to the counselor’s office than ever before.
Evaluating Marriage Therapists
Finding the right counseling services can take time and effort. Many wounded spouses don’t want to go into counseling.
They fear the counselor will side with the other partner or tell them that their selfishness is the cause. Most people are reluctant to be vulnerable with a spouse that has hurt them emotionally, verbally, or worse, physically.
Marriage counseling can actually be a safe place to verbalize the hurt and have a neutral third party pull the nuggets of truth from the carnage.
Seeking Counseling Is A sign Of Maturity-Not Failure
Relationship counseling is not a sign of failure.
It is a sign of courage.
It takes personal integrity to dig down to the well of the human spirit and wrestle with past hurts, grief, and fear and to lay them out on the table for others to see. But the result can bring powerful healing to partners who once loved each other enough to pledge their lives.
Couple’s therapy can get to the bottom of toxic shame, unhealthy fear, or addictions that keep people from true intimacy.
Some issues can be addressed in one or two sessions. But, more often, A rule of thumb is that couples therapy requires two months for every year the behavior has been exhibited.
That means for a couple relating dysfunctionally for ten years, it could take more than a year and a half of counseling.
Marriage Counselors Should Address All Family Members
Sometimes the couple’s troubles have affected other family members, especially children. That’s where family counseling might help.
Symptoms of a couple’s issues affecting children and teenagers could be bedwetting, thumb-sucking, compulsive behaviors like hair-pulling or cutting, depression, or threats of harm to self or others.
Less obvious signs of distress might be stomach aches, headaches, unexplained crying, poor academic performance, or rebellion.
Consider Couples Counseling Early
If your relationship is failing, couples’ counseling could potentially save the marriage and prevent the downward spiral from affecting innocent family members.
Couples’ counseling should not be the last resort; it should be the first.
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Tags: counseling services > couples counseling > couples therapy > family counseling > marriage counseling > marriage counselling > relationship counseling
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2 Responses to “Can Couples Counseling Save Your Marriage?”
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November 19th, 2009 @ 3:58 pm
[...] Can Couples Counseling Save Your Marriage? [...]
May 27th, 2010 @ 1:30 pm
Enjoyed reading your articles.
To add,
Now You Can Stop Your Break Up, Divorce or Lovers Rejection…Even If Your Situation Seems Hopeless!