Marriage is a bond that two people get into after having grown in their relationship where positive emotions like love, happiness, and joy are involved. But, every relationship comes with some challenges as it involves two individuals with different personalities, needs, and wants. So, there also exist negative emotions like anger, hate, and resentment towards each other. Therefore, these factors can affect the relationship and it can get very challenging that sometimes it gets difficult to get to a solution. Then, marriage counseling or couple counseling comes into the picture.
What is marriage counseling?
Marriage Counselling is a type of professional alliance where couples go to receive help from a counselor when they face difficulties in their marriage. Difficulties can be in the form of having basic conflicts on a regular basis, arguments about sharing responsibilities, infidelity issues, etc. Sometimes, individuals may be facing problems personally that may be affecting their relationship, marriage counseling has proven to work for this matter also.
How does marriage counseling works?
In marriage counseling, there is a therapeutic alliance between the couple and the counselor who holds a specialty in this type of counseling. The couples place their problems in front of the counselor who helps them by actively listening to both partners, giving turns to both to speak and then mutually coming to a solution. The marriage counselor can also want to meet the partners separately if he feels that there are certain issues that require the attention of both persons separately. This can at times prove to be very beneficial for both the individuals in understanding their own problem areas and then dealing with them.
There can be moments of deep anger outbursts, and feelings of hatred between the partners which the counselor tries to calmly manage by asking both of them what they want and then helping them to come to a mutual conclusion. The counselor is trained and They use the methods which have been proven to work with most of their clients.
Reasons to seek marriage counseling
Marriage counseling can help both individuals separately as well as mutually. There can be various reasons to seek marriage counseling. People just need to understand their problem areas and the importance of marriage counseling.
- According to Dr. Prema Kohli, Marriage has four pillars. If couples find any of the pillars falling down, they must seek marriage counseling. The four pillars are-
Communication- communication is the key to a healthy relationship and it is very important to communicate whatever a person feels or else understanding each other can be very difficult.
Finance- financial issues are one of the major concerns because both might have differences of opinion about this matter which can get difficult at times.
Family- both persons come from two different families with a different sets of upbringings. This can be a major reason for adjustment between them.
Sex and intimacy- this can include issues like lack of emotional or mental intimacy, impotency, lack of sexual pleasure, etc.
- Difficulty in sharing responsibilities can be the other reason- most couples have complaints that the responsibilities are not divided properly between the two individuals and so one person feels over-burdened. This problem can be dealt with without any blame games in the marriage counseling environment.
- There can be other reasons like bringing the past into the present relationship, comparing with other people, insecurities from any partner, feeling low n the marriage, always having complaints with each other, kids, missing the spark, etc. All these problems can be dealt with by a marriage counselor in a safe environment which the counselor makes sure of.
Why go for marriage counseling?
Marriage counseling gives both individuals a safe environment to discuss all the issues as the counselor makes sure that everything is kept confidential and also that they can discuss everything in a healthy manner without getting into heated arguments and getting pointers to understand what actually both of them want.
The benefits of marriage counseling are:
- It is a non-judgmental and unbiased environment, both the partner’s views are taken into consideration before coming to any conclusion.
- The counselor acts as the mediator which plays an important role as when two individuals are involved there can be differences of opinion which may require a mediating force.
- It helps the individuals to deal with their own issues or their behaviors also which might be a contributing factor in the conflicts.
- Counseling helps to improve communication by providing better communication tools in which the counselor is trained.
- It also helps individuals take their own responsibility if they know they are wrong in any situation.
- Finally, marriage counseling helps in setting realistic goals as there may be instances where individuals must have expectations from each other which is very much difficult to cover in real-life situations.
There is also a therapy called pre-marital counseling which can help individuals to understand the difficulties they might face after they get into a bond of marriage. It is advised to those couples who are about to get into marriage so that it helps them understand better.
Which type of couple can seek marriage counseling?
Marriage counseling is for every couple who finds it difficult to deal with certain situations in their relationship. It s for those who are about to get into the bond of marriage. It’s also for those who need to deal with their own problems individually as it might be adding to the conflicts.
Summary
Marriage counseling is a therapeutic alliance between the counselor and the couple who is seeking therapy. It is the therapy in which couples are counseled regarding the issues they are facing in their relationship. There can be many problems between two individuals, like differences of opinion, financial matters, issues regarding the family, kids, personality issues, insecurities, etc. It is mostly advised to go for the therapy in the initial times without letting the problems exaggerate. There are trained professionals available for help throughout every stage of the problem. The only step that is needed to be taken is to reach out.
HopeQure says
Marriage counseling is available to help couples to come out of their difficult phase and feel all the positive emotions they can being in a relationship. People can go for online counseling and therapists are available on the HopeQure platform.
Online Couple Counselling & Therapy
Relationship-centered therapy that connects you and your partner