Couples Therapy
Do You And Your Partner Need To Reignite Your Relationship?
Have you and your partner drifted apart or become emotionally disconnected?
Is it difficult for you to understand one another’s feelings and perspectives?
And are you tired of negative interactions dominating your time together?
Communication setbacks affect couples of all kinds. Whether you’re in the beginnings of a serious partnership or years into a marriage, it takes work to maintain an effective and satisfying relationship.
Maybe you feel like your relationship has been injured in some way. Your connection may have been shaken up by loss or a significant life change, or perhaps you’ve slowly grown apart with more attention being paid to work or childcare than to one another. You and your partner may be having a hard time navigating a specific transition together, like empty nesting, a new medical diagnosis, or death in the family. As a result, one or both of you may be struggling with substance abuse or dealing with ongoing mental health symptoms. Or perhaps your relationship is in crisis following infidelity or another breach in trust.
Your partner may seem unfamiliar to you, causing you to wonder who they are and what connected you together in the first place. Without as much room for intimacy, it’s hard to feel seen and understood by them. As such, you’ve probably noticed a decrease in romance, shared goals, or sex. And it’s likely you’ve become increasingly agitated or argumentative as a couple. You may feel like the two of you are caught in the push-pull of seeking connection and subsequently being overwhelmed by intense, emotional discussions. Yet, despite feeling out-of-sync with one another, you’re desperate to return to the ease and harmony that once defined your relationship.
Family Issues May Be Impacting Your Ability To Work Together As A Team
If kids are involved, there is likely additional stress on your relationship or marriage to maintain healthy family dynamics. Maybe your issues as a couple have seeped out into other relationships at home, or vice versa—challenges with childrearing have led to increased arguments and tension with your partner. You also might be in the process of blending families or learning how to co-parent together, encountering challenges with unity and consistency along the way.
No matter what circumstances you’re navigating as a couple, it’s important to know how to skillfully and empathetically problem solve as a team. Fortunately, couples therapy at A New Day Family Counseling can help you balance your relationship, family dynamics, and individual needs.
Relationship Issues Are Common But Often Overlooked Until A Breakup Or Divorce Seems Imminent
Our relationships are essential to the way we live our lives. When we experience bumps in the road in our most intimate relationship—that with our spouse or partner—it can have severe emotional consequences.
Unfortunately, we live in a high-pressure society that puts a lot on us as individuals, partners, and parents. There is so much to manage in all of our relationships, and it’s easy for our primary relationship to fall by the wayside as we prioritize other things. We may struggle to “keep up appearances,” whether that’s through competing with neighbors and coworkers, portraying the “perfect” family on social media, or brushing issues under the rug out of shame.
Inevitably, misunderstandings happen, tempers flare, and we’re left feeling helpless and hopeless. These emotions often drive us to extreme measures to be seen by our partner, which can result in unkind words, explosive arguments, and a seemingly never-ending cycle of hurt feelings.
Many Couples Avoid Counseling Out Of A Sense Of Shame
We’ve all heard the statistic that half of all marriages end in divorce, but that number doesn’t tell the full story. Many couples will spend years having the same fight and ultimately pursue divorce over seeking counseling with a marriage therapist. While it’s easy to think that some relationships are destined to work while others aren’t, the truth is that every partnership encounters its own trials and tribulations.
According to marriage therapists and experts John and Julie Gottman, there are two types of couples: Masters and Disasters. Master couples demonstrate healthy communication through constructive criticism, empathy, gratitude, and respect, while Disaster couples use tactics of blaming, name-calling, and avoidance. These counterproductive behaviors tend to become so ingrained that many couples believe there is no hope for restoring a healthy connection once the damage has been done.
But couples therapy is a meaningful way to address ongoing conflict and gridlock. By working with a trained, objective therapist in counseling, you and your partner can find lasting solutions to the unique obstacles you face as a couple.
Therapy Gives Couples A Chance To Make Individual Improvements And Strides In Their Relationship
You may be thinking that couples therapy is just another opportunity for you and your partner to engage in an argument about setbacks in your marriage or relationship. Yet, in the safe space of counseling, you can calmly manage your relationship issues with a professional who can enhance your emotional awareness, communication, and problem-solving skills. Both of you will be responsible for addressing your role in your relationship’s dysfunction—and taking the steps to repair it.
The Process
The first step of marriage therapy at A New Day Family Counseling is an initial session that will help your therapist better understand your strengths, weaknesses, beliefs, desires, and goals as a couple. We have experience working with a wide variety of couples in counseling and take a culturally aware approach to therapy, regardless of sexual orientation, religion, or cultural background.
From there, you may be asked to fill out an assessment created by John and Julie Gottman themselves so that your therapist can more effectively tailor couples counseling to your needs. These initial steps will set the stage for the transformative work that will take place throughout treatment.
Because Gottman Method Couples Therapy is primarily skills-oriented, ongoing counseling sessions will focus on building safety, trust, bonding, intimacy, friendship, and love. Our marriage counselors will help you learn to recognize when escalation or disengagement occurs, guiding you toward a focus on shared goals. We will also provide insight into how patterns from your past may be affecting the way that you and your partner engage with one another.
Though the Gottman Method is paramount to our practice, we also use Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) and other couples-specific approaches. These evidence-based modalities allow our clients to become more emotionally aware and regulated communicators. And for couples who are newly engaged, married, or living together, our Relationship Prep course is an invaluable way to receive individualized guidance for learning lifelong communication, relationship, and stress management skills. The course also meets specific criteria for those seeking certification through a church or government entity.
With therapy, you can become a Master Couple who enjoys enhanced intimacy, better communication, and a clearer shared vision of the future. At A New Day Family Counseling, we’ll give you and your partner the tools you need to reignite the spark in your relationship.
Considering Counseling But Unsure If It’s Right For Your Partnership?
-
Like any therapeutic treatment, couples counseling requires that both of you work towards improving your relationship. Of course, one partner can try to improve your relationship through individual counseling, but that will take more time and persistence. Therapy works best when both partners are willing to commit to the process.
Though we can’t tell you how everything will work out in the end, we can tell you that counseling is a meaningful way to address your issues as a couple. Research supports that the skills you develop in couples therapy can vastly improve the chances of your marriage or relationship surviving.
-
The time you and your partner spend in counseling greatly depends on how much you invest both as individuals and as a couple. Some couples attend therapy and make positive changes in just a few months, while other couples need more time to repair the relationship. If there has been ongoing conflict or damage to the relationship, couples will likely spend a longer time in counseling. That’s why it’s important to seek the professional support of a marriage counselor when issues surface, as opposed to waiting for years before seeing a therapist.
-
In many cases, couples therapy is covered by insurance. An initial assessment will be done by your marriage therapist in order to understand the severity of your individual symptoms and how treatment will be covered. But don’t worry—your therapist views the relationship as the client, not the individuals in it. As such, client-therapist confidentiality remains intact, even when insurance companies are involved.
Learn To Reprioritize Your Relationship
If your marriage or relationship lacks intimacy and effective communication, therapy at A New Day Family Counseling can help you reconnect as a couple. For more information, visit our contact page or email us.
Recent Posts
