We’re taught, from childhood, to expect a fairy tale romance where passion never fades and where our partner meets our needs. Unfortunately, this is not realistic. The truth is that relationships/marriages are HARD work and require a great deal of effort, awareness, and maturity from both partners. We will not always feel like we want to put in the effort to make it last or that our partner deserves our best.
Most of the time, we have unparalleled expectations of a partner and relationship.
At Emerge Counseling Services, we know that couples ultimately want to feel connected with each other.
Marriage/couples counseling examines false beliefs that we carry into a relationship from childhood and previous relationships. It can also help to explore problematic behaviors, miscommunication, and unhealthy boundaries and habits. Your therapist can help you and your partner to develop realistic goals and expectations, set and maintain healthy boundaries, teach and encourage use of healthy tools and coping skills to work through challenges in the relationship, teach healthy communication, work through previous problems and hurts, and explore each partner’s love language.
When should a couple consider attending couples counseling?
- When you aren’t talking: Many relationship issues are simply challenges of communication. We often listen to respond instead of actually listening to hear what our partner is saying. A therapist can help explore barriers to effective communication, educate on and role play healthy communication, and identify communication misconceptions.
- When you’re talking, but it’s often negative: Negative communication can leave one or both partners feeling judged, shamed, disregarded, hurt, insecure, or a desire to withdrawal from communicating. Negative communication is not just the words we use, but also our tones, body language, and emphasis we place on certain words.
- When you see your partner as the enemy or against you: Though it may not feel like it at the time, you and your partner are not enemies, but are on the same team. A therapist can help explore barriers to feeling like a team and develop solutions to remove barriers so you feel that you’re walking and working together with your partner.
- When one or both partners are keeping secrets: Partners have a right to privacy, but keeping secrets can negatively impact trust and the relationship.
- When one or both partners have contemplated or had an emotional or sexual affair: If both partners are committed to their relationship, setting and maintaining healthy boundaries, being honest, and the therapy process, the relationship/marriage may not just be salvageable, but could become even stronger than before.
- When you’re experiencing sexual or other intimacy issues: Changes in sexual activity or other types of intimacy often signal that something is lacking. Please see the section on sex therapy to explore this further.
- When you argue over the same “little things” over and over: When this occurs, it usually signals a lacking of communication and differing love languages. A therapist can help explore the root cause of these issues and help to improve communication and educate on love languages to restore peace.
- When you feel like you’re living separate lives: If there is a lack of meaningful communication, quality time, intimacy, or acting out of obligation, a therapist can help to explore the cause of these things and develop solutions to help you and your partner feel like a couple again.
- When a partner says “I love him/her, but I’m not in love with him/her”: Oftentimes, we have a misconception of what love means and what is realistic in relationships. We also tend to not speak the same love language as our partner so our love bank is left feeling empty. A therapist can help explore barriers to feeling loved, appreciated, and connected in a relationship/marriage, educate on the different love languages, and teach how to effectively speak the love language of both partners.
- When you and your partner decided to terminate the relationship, but you want to amicably coparent: The reality is that not all couples choose to remain in the relationship, but still share parenting responsibilities. A therapist can help you and your coparent set and maintain healthy boundaries, learn to focus on your child(ren) rather than past hurts, and develop realistic expectations of your coparent.
- When you want to improve the strength of your relationship: We all have flaws and can be selfish. Sometimes we need a little help navigating the ins and out of being in a relationship. A therapist can help you to explore you and your partners expectations of each other and the relationship and work to reduce barriers to having an overall happy, successful partnership.
- When a couple is newly pregnant, new parents, parenting a child with special needs, experiences a loss of a child, or navigating parenting with older children: Parenting takes so much away from a marriage/relationship and if we don’t make time or aren’t aware of this, it can easily destroy a marriage/relationship. A therapist can help you navigate coparenting while maintaining and strengthening your bond as a couple.
- When you’re afraid to talk with your partner about something specific: Sometimes, it can be hard to bring up an issue, especially when it’s related to sex, money, parenting, or a partner’s habits. A therapist can help to address these issues in a safe, non-judgmental environment.
Grow together, not apart, in a safe, nonjudgmental space.
In couples counseling, we are on “both sides,” meaning both parties in the couple are given the same safe, compassionate, nonjudgmental therapeutic space. It is important that we understand both sides of the story. We encourage both partners to bring their best efforts and openness to the therapeutic process. We strive to find a balance between the conflicting needs and goals of each partner. The goal is to help you learn to function better as a team. This, in turn, leads to changes in the family system and the way couples live and behave together. These changes happen not just by talking, but by doing the work outside of the therapeutic office.
Emerge Counseling services welcomes heterosexual and LGBTQA+ couples/relationships.