Couples Therapy and Marriage Counseling

Sometimes, it’s hard to deal with differences between people. In some cases, your partner’s views about things may be very different from yours. And it’s not always easy to be resilient and understanding. Some couples exist in an ongoing environment of struggle and conflict. This can take many forms: bickering, arguing, hostile comments, criticisms, complaints. It can feel like a battleground of anger, resentment, retreat, and blame. You are trying to make your point, perhaps for years, and so is your partner, but neither can hear the other. It can be painful for the two of you, and indeed, for children.

Couples therapy or marriage counseling will help you address this frustrating dynamic. You will learn to really talk to each other and listen to one another to identify, understand, and resolve the difficulties between you and feel united rather than divided.

Healthy and successful marriages combine friendship, affection, attraction, admiration, trust, and commitment. That’s a big list that can sometimes slip away as time goes on and the pressures of life proceed. Rather than working collaboratively, some couples find themselves at a distance from each other. Not feeling known and understood, difficulties with communication, problems resolving conflicts, feeling unimportant to the other, ongoing hostility, criticisms, or avoidance may lead to painful estrangement.

Closeness is replaced by disengagement, disinterest, withholding, or withdrawal. Or it may just be a general feeling of going through the motions without much heart. It’s hard to come back from this state, and sadly, it can feel safer to stay away.

Marriage counseling or couple therapy can address this rigid system of protection. In this safe environment, each of you can begin to open each other again, reconnect and rediscover the heart of your marriage.

Most would agree that marriage and relationships are built on trust and respect. When infidelity occurs, the impact is devastating. It can seem to challenge every assumption and every security. The process of healing is painful, but recognition and acceptance are critical. The initial stages usually involve accountability and reparation. But eventually, both partners must face the difficult task of honestly evaluating what has happened and how and why this occurred in their marriage. Both people count. For many, this betrayal comes after years of unmet wants and needs of both partners. This turning away, this betrayal, is heartbreaking, but it can also be regarded as a call to attention to finally address the conflicts that caused such a divide.

Repairing a relationship isn’t easy, but neither is ending the relationship. Whether you stay together or part, you will benefit from examining carefully what really happened between the two of you. You will know and understand yourself better. And you will become more capable of honest intimacy with another human being. The psychotherapy process with a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist is powerful and valuable to prevent repeating old patterns.

Not unlike the situation of estrangement, the task of many years in a long marriage creating a strong family unit, tending to the kids, the house, work, and finances may have been put in front of the intimacy of the marriage. Perhaps there is companionship, but closeness may be all but vacant. Once the kids leave home, couples often turn to each other with some hesitation, ambivalence, and even anxiety, wondering what is still there between them. You have worked together for so long co-parenting, it may feel uncomfortable to wonder if there is still a romance left between the two of you. Commonalities and differences, lifestyle, and physical intimacy all may need negotiating. It is a time of loss, but also a time of freedom and choice.

In this life stage, marriage therapy or couples counseling can be a powerful guide to reigniting your relationship. Taking the time to evaluate whether your connection still works and how you can build and strengthen it is critical. It may be a revival or a reinvention, but everyone deserves satisfying connections.