Marriage counseling can actually begin before the
wedding. Some churches may require marriage preparation classes that include
premarital counseling as a condition of performing the ceremony.
This counseling might include talking about the
couple’s individual family histories and the family they plan to build
together, including the possibility of children, whether they will be raised in
the church and how you might deal with conflict.
You can also go to a marriage or family counselor
with your intended for premarital counseling, which should help you to start
your marriage with a clean slate.
It can be a way to clear up any resentment or fear
of marriage and give you a safe place to talk about things like if, when and
how many children you want, how you might deal with money issues or other
stressors on your relationship and to make sure you have similar values and
goals for your relationship, your family and your life together.
Taking the time to do premarital counseling also
sets you up to be more willing to engage in marriage counseling later on if you
should need it.
It isn’t
just about fixing things, but building stronger roots.
The most common reasons couples choose to go to
marriage counseling include lack of communication within the relationship, lack
of emotional support or engagement and worries that they might be headed toward
divorce.
Other issues that often send couples to therapy
include fighting or specific relationship issues like infidelity.
Other people simply want to make their marriages
stronger and look to professionals to help.
Before
trying a counseling, be clear about what you want from it.
Most couples engage in marriage counseling after
issues have been simmering for months, or even years, and the longer you wait
to seek help the harder it is to work through the issues. Some experts say the
average couple waits six years longer than they should to start counseling.
Know what you want from counseling from the beginning.
Are you and your partner all in, fully committed to saving the marriage, no
matter how much work it takes? Or are one or both of you pretty sure you want
to break up? Knowing the answer will help define what a success looks like, but
either way, you should maintain an open mind about the process.
Learn all you can about the counselor you are going
to see. A license is a baseline, but what kind of training do they have in
marriage counseling? What’s their success rate at keeping marriages together?
What is their style? Do you feel comfortable spilling intimate details of your
life to them? Take the time to find someone who feels right to you both.
Research
and find what’s best for you and your partner is a must.
Now that you understand that marriage counseling can
be so important to a marriage, you maybe thinking about how it’s really like
and whether there’re things you should take good care of before trying it.
Let’s take a look at some of the things you should know before going to a
marriage counseling.
What marriage counseling
is like?
Some counselors will see each person in the couple
separately, then bring them together for sessions where they can work through
issues as a group. Meeting together or separately can sometimes lead to
resentment because a member of the couple might feel their partner is getting
more attention or that the counselor is taking their side.
A popular and effective form of couple’s counseling
is Emotionally Focused Therapy, or EFT. The idea behind this approach is that
emotional responses are tied to our individual needs, and that changing
emotions can lead to changes in attitude and approach within a couple.
The aim is to rebuild the attachment bond by
focusing on the emotional needs of each partner and changing their interactions
based on the other person’s needs. The EFT process involves stages that take a
varying amount of time to work though, depending on the issues the couple has.
Marriage
counseling doesn’t guarantee a happily-ever-after marriage, but it does
improve relationships.
Research into the effects of counseling find that
most people who have been through couple’s therapy are satisfied with the
result. The American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists has found
that 98% of people surveyed said they received good or excellent therapy, while
97% said they got the help they needed.
That doesn’t mean all those couples stayed together,
of course. About a quarter of couples that receive counseling will get divorced
within two years, and about 38% will break up within four years.
But going to marriage counseling can be just the
thing to turn a troubled relationship around, and is certainly better than not
trying to fix things that aren’t working in a relationship.
PS: Drop your comment to know how you feel about premarital counseling
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