One thing that comes up when a relationship isn’t working out how you planned is the option of marriage counseling. When it comes to keeping your marriage together and you’ve tried everything else, or there is communication breakdown that you can’t get past, marriage counseling is usually a last step for struggling couples. Getting through a tough time in a relationship can be hard, and when it comes to the crunch, marriage counseling could be the one thing that saves your marriage, or at the least make you realize that there is no saving.
What you need to know as a couple is that if you are both not 100% committed to fixing your problems you are unlikely to get the results you are looking for. Whether a marriage can be saved or not relies on several factors that the two partners bring to counseling. If you have both motivation and commitment, you can expect desired results, unfortunately, most couples have lost one or both of these, and it can be difficult find motivation and commitment.
Factors That Make A Difference
One of the biggest issues that can hinder the desired result from counseling is that couples tend to leave it until it is too late to visit a therapist. Quite often there has been so much damage done to a relationship by the time they have decided to take the plunge and get outside professional help. The key to success rates in marriage counseling is approaching the issues early and fix it before it becomes too broken.
Communication Breakdown
Communication breakdown is one of the leading causes for the need of marriage counseling. Sometimes couples have been holding a grudge about previous issues for years. Failing to tell someone how you are feeling about a subject or issue you have will eventually result in either a massive buildup that turns into a blow-up, or it builds so much that the couple can’t even stand the sight of each other anymore. This sort of lack of communication is one of the main causes of marital affairs and can often simply end in divorce before any of the issues are fixed. Silence is a killer in relationships, and especially if your communication skills aren’t great, marriage counseling could be the one thing that saves your marriage.
Blow Up Event
It can often take a massive episode that will force the couple into counseling, but the truth is that it should be begun before it gets out of control. Taking relationship problems seriously often takes a serious announcement, like an affair or the threat of separation or divorce and is usually the last straw before making a marriage counseling appointment.
How Marriage Counseling Helps
Unfortunately, if these issues are left too late, it may also be too late for reconciliation. Marriage counseling achieves the best results when issues are tended to early, and teaching communication skills is a great way to make a relationship in the early stages of disaster better, but it’s not going to be the only solution if you leave it too late. It takes both parties in the relationship to want to change. If you are not both in for a solution, then it may already be too late. The role of a counselor is not to fix the issues of your marriage, it is to bring the attention to what your issues are and offer solutions to fix them. The key factor here though is that you both must be 100% willing to listen, self-reflect and be dedicated to fixing the issues.
What’s involved?
The first step to marriage counseling is to put out any current fires that are burning out of control in the relationship. These immediate issues need to be stabilized to move forward to then work out the underlying causes of the problems.
Some things the counselor will bring up to immediately assess the situation include whether you and your partner are willing to learn new things about yourself, communication and relationships. They will need to know if you are able and willing to let go of the need to be right and accept responsibility for the areas where you fall short in the relationship and pass on the blame.
Marriage therapy takes motivation and commitment.