Marriage Counseling
Restore Your Marital Bliss
Marriage counseling is an important part of changing the environment in the home because marriage becomes a behavioral model for so many relationship practices. For example, how to resolve conflict, how to treat a partner or spouse, how to ask for what you need in a relationship and how to create a partnership. When these balances of power in these areas are off balance, we can feel emotionally and physically ill. The research is clear that the relationship with the domestic partner contributes to physical illness, weight management and stress level. For those who have children or pets, it influences their ability to function emotionally as well.
My Approach to Marriage Counseling
Because I understand the emotional and physical importance of these relationships it becomes critical that each member in a relationship understand their childhood unresolved issues that may be contributing to the partnership. We teach people how to treat us, but so many of us had no role in how we were taught what we deserve in relationships. So this is where we have to start our work. You have to know you deserve more in order to ask for more. So marriage counseling involves both individual and joint sessions. The goal is that when you know yourself better, you understand why you matter, but you also start to see how your partner’s needs matter as well.
Schedule a consultation to get started on a marriage that supports your emotional, physical health and well-being instead.
The wedding seems like it’s difficult to plan, but no one tells you how hard the marriage is. If this feels like you were more prepared for the wedding day than the marriage then before it’s too late schedule a consultation today.
Most couples seek counseling when it is too late to save their marriage. They hope they can change someone or they feel like they are just asking for too much, but these issues even if they seem small can make a huge ripple in yourself, the marriage, and your family.
Issues that marriage counseling can help you understand
Trust
Loneliness
Intimacy
Parenting
Blended families
Connection
Understanding quirks or idiosyncrasies
Negotiating
Extended Family
Marriage involves two people meeting and falling deeply in love and then wanting to spend their lives together. Because they love each other they will make whatever issues come up for them work because love or a higher power can really make all things possible. Right?
When I sit with couples to discuss their relationship, there is often an issue that is so painful that it becomes the straw that breaks the camel’s back. For me, this means that it is not the issue, but it is one of the issues. This one issue finally wore down the impatience. There have been several things that have irritated someone, and they have tried to grit their teeth and bear it. One person usually bears this more than the other. The issues become that each person feels they are bearing more of the brunt of it than the other. This inability to read any situation based on someone’s perspective or how each person sees the world ends up being a foundational stone that has to be secured in order to heal each person and ultimately the relationship.
James Baldwin said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. This is the way the issues that arise in any relationship, but especially marriage must be considered. Some things cannot be changed because they are an elemental part of who that person is. More things can be changed once we understand what it is we are really looking at. For example, we can say the issue is that someone is really inconsiderate. You just mopped the floor so why would someone walk in with their muddy shoes when you just mopped the floor!
However, when we are able to see this in a neutral way, someone walked across the floor and there has to be a good reason because why would someone do that when it looks so clean and they live here and like it clean as well. This is when you notice they did not walk across the floor, they hopped and were rushed. This is when it occurs to you they are trying to run to the restroom and it is an emergency.
When we are convinced someone is out to hurt us, we cannot take in all the information that is there, we see what justifies that story we are making up in our head instead of what actually is. Knowing how to tell the difference between someone being inconsiderate that we just mopped the floor and someone who drank too much water in traffic and has to run to the bathroom can be the difference in feeling like a team or enemies.
Being able to tell the difference is what takes a relationship towards an adventurous but meaningful marriage versus a divorce. Schedule a consultation to learn the difference and learn what you might need to face to determine if it can be changed.