MARRIAGE & COUPLES COUNSELING

We all need help with our relationships sometimes.

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Feeling unhappy in a relationship is awful. Life can feel hopeless when your relationship isn’t firing on all cylinders. And, though I don’t think all relationships are salvageable, I’ve seen that couples can work past most of what’s getting in the way of being happy. After nearly 30 years of marriage and couples counseling, I know that if two people are willing to try, we can get past most relationship problems.

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It’s normal for couples to need help sometimes. Very few of us are experts at being in relationships, and most of us need outside help at some point in our marriages. Even for couples who are willing to work on things, they usually don’t know how to do the work. Though not all relationships can be saved, before we end relationships, we should try everything - we should leave everything out on the field, so to speak.  We should try couples therapy. The divorce rate in the U.S. is somewhere between 40% and 50%, so clearly, not all relationships are going to make it, but it’s always seemed like a real shame to me for a relationship to end when it actually could have been salvaged, and by salvaged I mean made much, much better. Part of why I like being a relationship therapist is that I’ve seen time and time again that two people willing to dig deep and work can build a better, happier relationship than they’ve ever had, regardless of how bad the problems were when they started therapy.

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It's easy to feel stuck in an unhappy marriage

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The fear of divorce can keep people stuck in an unhappy, dissatisfying marriage. Fear of how one’s financial life will change, fear of how divorce will affect the kids, fear of never finding another partner, and many other fears sometimes prevent people from taking action. I always encourage my clients to do something if they aren’t satisfied with their relationship. Often that simply means telling your spouse you aren’t happy in the relationship and insisting that you see a therapist. Relationship problems almost never improve without some effort, but this is an area where most of us lack the skills to make the effort.

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I don’t work with all couples in the same way because every couple is unique. Some couples need to learn communication skills to reduce misunderstandings, to listen better, or to more assertively speak their minds. For some couples, it’s about expressing the real feelings that are often underneath the anger and resentment. For others, couples therapy focuses on understanding how each person has been impacted by the families they grew up in. Sometimes, an addiction in one or both partners is what needs to be addressed. Sometimes, just being in the therapy room, where there’s a sense of emotional safety that might not be present at home, results in couples communicating in ways they never have before.