Everything You Need to Know About Couples Therapy
Couples therapy is usually a process that takes place when a relationship is broken. Infidelity, difficulty communicating, lack of trust, and the list goes on. With the help of a therapist, the goal is to re-engage the dialogue and listen to each other in a more productive way. Are you hesitant to skip the important step? Let’s take a look at the characteristics of couples therapy, and its benefits.
The goals of couples therapy
Engaging in couples therapy is not just about avoiding separation, as sometimes this option remains the only possible outcome. However, it can help to live through the breakdown more serenely, offering both partners some relief, hope, and constructive action items, regarding their discontent or resentment.
We embark on couples therapy when a lack of communication within the couple no longer allows them to understand each other and evolve together. The intervention of a third party therefore becomes necessary. It is the role of the therapist, also considered as a mediator, who will help everyone express their feelings, in a calm and respectful way.
When to start couples therapy?
As is the case with individual therapy, couples’ therapy is usually considered when there is suffering within the couple, in one or both partners.
Repetitive misunderstandings, shouting matches and silences contribute to creating a harmful atmosphere that is detrimental to the couple’s wellbeing. It is recommended not to delay consulting a registered marriage and family therapist, and start couples therapy before reaching a point where the situation can no longer be salvaged.
Couples may also have to start therapy to be able to get through traumatic or taboo experiences such as infidelity, but also an illness, a miscarriage or the death of a child.
How does couples therapy work?
During a couples therapy session, the couples therapist offers various exercises, such as role-playing, for example. The therapist may also ask participants to define certain key aspects within their relationship, and may offer constructive exercises to be performed outside of the session, throughout their daily lives.
The goal is that through various processes, the partners can take a new look at each other and learn to talk to each other again.
Each individual in the couple must be allotted adequate time to speak, and it is imperative that neither of them feel aggravated or frustrated when leaving the session, at the risk of creating distrust or some rejection during future therapy sessions.
In order to take a step back concerning attitudes and behaviors, some therapists choose to record the couple and reveal or focus on certain images, at the end of the session or later, with the client’s consent.
What are the most common reasons to consult?
Many reasons can lead a couple to therapy. However, a few common reasons frequently recur:
- Disagreements about children (blended family or not)
- Sexual difficulties
- Distance or resentment that takes hold
- Permanent conflicts
- Difficulties in communicating
- Misunderstandings linked to cultural differences
Each therapist has their own respective method for couples therapy, and will prescribe exercises accordingly. Contact Tom Caplan for more information on what can be done to better manage your relationship.
Learn MoreHow do I know my marriage needs counseling?
Marriage is one of the most important milestones in our lives. Congratulations on your commitment to the love of your life! As soon as you said “yes” or asked the question, you were probably already considering the perfect life that you two would share.
The simple truth is that every marriage goes through difficult times. Sometimes you can solve them yourself, but there are other times when surviving through these difficult times requires the kind of help a marriage counselor can provide.
What is marriage counseling?
Marriage counseling is sometimes referred to as couple therapy or couples counseling. It is a kind of psychotherapy or speech therapy to help people recognize the sources of conflict in their relationships and to give them tools to resolve them.
It can help you maintain a healthy and strong relationship. To decide if marriage counseling is right for you, consider the state of your relationship and assess your communication problems. If you are going through a medical, financial or family crisis, marriage counseling can be a good option. Also be sure to include your spouse in the decision.
When should you seek marital advice?
The sad reality is that too many couples are waiting until it is too late to decide to hire a marriage counselor. Some estimates place the wait time at more than five years from the time one or both partners first recognized a problem to the time one or both sought counseling.
Think about your feelings about marriage. Write down how you feel about your spouse. Try to determine if you feel angry, frustrated, desperate or disinterested by your marriage.
Identify any trust issues in your relationship. Trust is essential for a relationship to succeed. If you and your spouse can’t trust you, it’s time for you to get professional help.
Monitor the frequency and satisfaction of your sex life. All couples may experience periods of reduced sexual activity, but these must be temporary. If you or your partner have lost interest in sex for an extended period of time, seek advice from a counselor.
Assess whether your relationship is defined by contempt. Contempt means that one or both partners consider themselves better than the other. Ideally, in a relationship, both partners respect each other and see each other on an equal footing.
Ask yourself if you still love your spouse. If the answer is yes, marriage counseling can help strengthen your relationship, as difficult as it is right now. If you are unsure, marriage counseling can help you understand your feelings.
Look for help if you seem to be fighting all the time. If every conversation seems to end in an argument, your relationship may need help, especially if your arguments become increasingly negative, aggressive or bitter.
It can take five years too long. Resentment, distrust and animosity have had those five years to take root in the relationship. Over longer periods, they can simply become the norm and make marriage irrevocable.
So the sooner you decide to go to couples counseling, the better.
Learn MoreWhat Happens at Couple Therapy Montreal?
Some couples have a horrible relationship that impacts their mental health, are in crisis, and are on the verge of breaking up, but they do not dare to go to couples counseling. Yet, this approach can help to get through crises and save the little flame that tries to survive between the two people.
Conversely, couple counselling can help spouses open their eyes and accept that they are at the end of their history and then live less painfully with the break-up in progress.
What exactly is couples therapy Involves?
On the same model as individual therapy, but in pairs, couples therapy aims to help individuals break out of their deadlock, their ill-being, their suffering… In this sense, a couple in crisis can ask for the help of a professional to get out of their difficulties and distress.
In addition, the couple therapist is not present to play the referee between the two spouses or the lawyer of one of the two parties. His role is not to make judgments, he is trained to remain neutral and not take sides. During the relationship counselling, her job is to give leads and tools to allow the couple to move forward and feel better.
The Course of a Couple’s Therapy
The tools, techniques and approaches are different and varied depending on the therapists and the situations of each. There are three main streams of analysis used, namely the analytical school, the systemic school, and the behavioral school.
To each professional, his practice to help the couple. Generally, the professional asks both members of the couple to be present at each session. Some can start by seeing the couple together and then perform separate sessions.
For the process to succeed, both protagonists must play the game of expression and listen. If one of the two spouses does not want to save the few relationships that remain, and only one of them is ready to give his story a new chance, couples’ therapy will not be able to help the spouses find themselves.
During the sessions, counsellor montreal offers different exercises such as writing his own definition of the couple, role-playing, and replaying an argument… Its purpose is to confront the different expectations, demands, and resentments to allow the spouses to take a new look at their partner. It helps the couple to relearn to speak to each other, to express desires that have been buried, to hear each other, and to listen to each other.
Some therapists film spouses during sessions to help them become aware of the distortion that can exist between attitudes and words and go beyond appearances.
When and Why Consult?
From the first signs of instabilities in the relationship Issue, it is best to consult. Indeed, it is better to do it before the storm arrives and especially to revitalize the couple as quickly as possible. There are several reasons why individuals may wish to consult a therapist; it is often one of the two members, who, because of her suffering and frustration.
Learn MoreHow a Marriage Counselor Can Help Your Relationship?
Couple therapy, also known as marriage counseling or relationship counseling is a specialized form of counseling for romantic partners or those in a romantic relationship.
Most of the time, couple therapy is a topic that usually comes up when there seems to be trouble in the relationship and both parties agree and acknowledge the need for a professional therapist to help them get back their relationship on track.
However, this doesn’t have to be the case. Ideally, relationship counseling should be one of those things that couples should plan for as an accessory for strengthening their union, and not just wait for trouble to arise to look for a therapist.
Read below to discover some of the ways through which a therapist may add value to your relationship:
Improve Communication
One of the ailments that most relationships suffer from is a lack of proper and clear communication. Sometimes, it becomes a challenge for couples to communicate freely and openly in turn causing relationship issues, often assuming that the other person knows, already knows, or should know what they want.
This is how omissions end up creeping into the relationship and partners start blaming one another even for the tiniest things.
With the help of a marriage counselor, you will learn how to create a safe space to communicate openly so that you never assume the needs of your better half.
The therapy will improve your relationship to help to restore communication and even add a little spark into your bedroom life if that was already getting stifled with the lack of communication.
Therapy will help you Enhance Relations and Strengthen Bonds
Relationships are bound to have conflicts, and these may sometimes lead to very high levels of anxiety. Within typical families, it is possible for jealousy of whatever form, and differences in personal interests and preferences to affect the relationship in many ways.
If these are not noticed in good time and corrected, they are likely to put a strain which might end up hurting both of you in more than one way.
With the services of a couple of therapists, you get a good chance of reconnecting with your partner to iron out all the differences that might be responsible for causing friction in your relationship so that you enhance the union and strengthen the bond between the two of you.
Improve Mental, Physical, and Sexual Health
When you are in good relations, your mental, physical and sexual health should also be at their very best. If you are having issues with any of these forms of health, all the other aspects of your relationship are going to be affected.
In some cases, you may not know the specific reasons for certain behaviors or reactions when in a relationship.
However, by having a session with a marriage counselor, you can pinpoint the root cause of the problem, and know the best way to handle it.
With the help of a therapist, all the issues you could be facing in your mental, physical and sexual health can all be taken care of so that you get to enjoy your relationship just as you had envisioned it when at the beginning.
Contact me if you are seeking individual therapy, premarital counseling or family therapy.
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