When your marriage seems on the rocks, marriage counselling can help. Marriage counselling or couples therapy can help you identify problems in your relationship, resolve your conflicts as a couple, and improve your relationship. It is essential to consult a marriage counselor or psychologist, who can help you unleash your options, learn from your weaknesses, and highlight your strengths so that you can make a thoughtful decision. A couples counsellors may identify and challenge your existing communication practices, as well as teach you how to interact with one another more successfully.
While you can always work things together, confide to a friend, or let the issue die on its own, you need professional help from a licensed psychologist, like someone from Psychologist Southern Sydney, to rule out the source of any conflict, hatred, dismay, anger, or repeated confrontation. However, there might be instances when you’re wondering if you should just give up or see a marriage counselor. There are signs you’ll observe in yourself, and your partner wherein couples therapy is highly recommended.
Ask for marriage counselling when you see these signs in your marriage:
1. Communication Problems
Whether you choose not to talk about the problem or ignore each other avoid a heated conversation, not communicating or a “silent fight” is a bad sign. You’re missing the opportunity to talk the root cause of the problem, thus ending the day without proper resolution. The longer you don’t talk about your issues and problems, the farther you move away from your partner.
You and your partner should talk and decide to undergo couples therapy to bridge any communication gap. Your children may eventually feel that something is wrong and they’ll get affected negatively as manifested by poor school performance and restless behavior. Communication problems will result in different consequences, and marriage counselling may prevent these issues from arising. If couples therapy doesn’t seem like a good fit, consider getting a separation attorney to temporarily give each other space while dealing with any marital issues.
2. Lost of Interest in Relationship
If one of both parties lost interest in the relationship, you may start keeping secrets from each other. It only reflects that there’s no transparency in your relationship. Do you still remember your best moments as a couple? You probably remember the times when you exercised together, watched movies, listened to your favorite songs, and shared each other’s problems and deepest secrets. It is because you had each other’s full trust and confidence.
A therapist can help you bring back the interest, trust, and confidence in your relationship by:
- Setting specific and realistic goals and boundaries as a couple. For instance, you can both agree to keep your social media accounts private, without sharing passwords or checking each other’s phones.
- Determining the root cause of mistrust and loss of confidence, such as broken promises, communication gap, or less time because both of you are too busy working and taking care of children.
- Working out on your relationship to bring back trust and confidence like setting 30-minute before bedtime to talk. You can have a dinner date or have a vacation as a couple or as a family after so many years to bring back the interest and intimacy in your relationship.
3. Loss of Sexual Intimacy
Do you treat each other as roommates, sleeping in separate rooms, or just not intimate or romantically involved anymore? A healthy marriage shows love and affection by kissing, hugging, and having sex at least once a week. Of course, many factors are affecting your sex life such as age, medical condition, distance, and your busy schedule. However, if you feel something is missing from the usual things you used to do, then you have a big problem.
Hiring a marriage counselor can help you spark intimacy in your relationship once again by:
- Identifying the source of poor sex performance, such as erectile dysfunction or vaginal dryness, and refer you to a medical doctor to get treatment and prescribed medication.
- If the issue has something to do with personal matters or psychological problem, sex therapy can help.
- Offering suggestions to promote and enhance intimacy such as watching romantic movies, tutorials, reading human sexuality books, or trying couples massage.
4. Finding Affection Elsewhere
Unresolved problems in marriage may result to finding love and affection from other people which may lead to unfaithfulness. If one party has an affair, then your marriage is in impending doom. During this time, anger, frustration, and impulsive decision-making are experienced by one or both parties.
Other people seek other outlets to express thoughts and emotions like alcoholism, gambling, or drug abuse. By undergoing marriage counselling, you will be given a chance to ventilate your feelings without feeling that you’re being judged or blamed for seeking attention and affection elsewhere or having an affair.
5. On the Brink of Divorce
Fighting every day is not healthy and it is a tell-tale sign that something is wrong in your relationship or you have a bad marriage. Before you even think of divorce, you and your partner needs to talk to a marriage counselor. It’s urgent to talk to a marriage counselor before you take any course of action. A professional psychologist won’t tell you what you need to do or not to do.
You won’t be pressured to resort to divorce or try to work out things together for the sake of your children. Instead, your marriage counselor acts as a mediator and will implement different marriage counselling techniques such as:
- Narrative Therapy
Through narrative therapy, you’ll be helped to explore your problems, identify its negative parts, and changed your perspective or a better. You’ll learn to connect the events or situations happening in your life. Thus, you’ll determine what has been causing your troubles you so you can find new solutions to help resolve the problem.
- Gottman Method
It is an effective marriage counseling technique that focuses on building your relationship through trust, sharing, commitment, conflict management, and positive perspective. It helps improve trust and affection to bring both of you closer, thus keeping your conflict discussions calm.
Conclusion
Other signs are subtle needing couples therapy. Even relationships that are currently stable and seemingly okay should still undergo marriage counselling to maintain a healthy relationship. Seeking an expert is a good investment most especially if your relationship or family is at stake. Improve your communication, enhance intimacy, maintain respect, and resolve issues with the help of marriage counselling.
