Deciding to go for marriage counselling can be difficult for many a couple. However, if you’re having relationship troubles with your partner, it’s more helpful to seek help than ignore issues or hope they go away on their own.
When should you seek counselling?
Unfortunately, many couples don’t seek marriage counselling soon enough and then realize that years of resentment and bitterness have built up, making it difficult to change the situation without getting hurt.
Certainly, the sooner you seek help, the better it will be for your relationship. If you’re facing any of the following issues in your marriage, it’s time you consider counselling:
When you try to communicate with your spouse, it feels like you are encountering a brick wall
Your conversations go on and on without reaching a meaningful conclusion
After talking to your partner, you feel confused and frustrated
Your conversations quickly lead to a shouting match
You fear bringing up a certain topic as things may get even worse
You’ve nothing to say to each other
Is marriage counselling helpful?
Yes, it’s effective, but it may also ruin a marriage. Marriage counselling does have its benefits but it also has some drawbacks. To make your marriage stronger and healthier, you need to know when marriage counselling can work and when it cannot.
How marriage counselling can help couples
A couple can start to explore their issues from a whole new perspective.
A couple can learn new methods to identify and resolve issues using the tools given by the counsellor.
They can improve communication between themselves that may have weakened their interactions. It’s normal for partners to reach a deadlock and lose the capacity to trust and be vulnerable to one another.
Counselling can offer couples a “neutral territory” in which they can work through serious concerns or unload “baggage” that stops them moving on.
Couples may decide to give their marriage another chance and renew their commitment, or clarify reasons for wanting to end the marriage.
Situations where marriage counselling may not work
The issues in the marital relationship are too longstanding and entrenched for counselling to work.
One or both parties have already made the decision to quit the marriage and are using counselling as a means to announce their intention.
Mental illness or addiction is seriously affecting the marriage because it hasn’t been dealt with before attending sessions.
Physical or verbal abuse is a major problem in the marital relationship and one partner fears for their well-being or safety so they clam up during sessions.
One or both spouses are reluctant to complete the homework required to turn around negative relational patterns.
The counsellor isn’t qualified to attend to couples owing to inadequate qualifications or training; or the couple and the counsellor aren’t a good fit.
To sum up, for marriage counselling to work, bother partners must be ready to take their fair share of blame in the problems, accept each other’s mistakes, and be motivated to mend the relationship. In addition, it’s important for partners to have reasonable expectations since it takes a lot more sessions to address the dynamics and initiate the change process.