mdolla: How Couples Counseling Can Help You Get Through Hard Times with Your Loved One

The average couples counseling is 12 sessions, however it can be varying for each couple. Most times after a couple of sessions you should know if the therapy is working.

Couples counseling should help you and your partner communicate better in a more positive and effective manner.

Do couples counseling really work? Is it an effective solution when it comes to saving a relationship? It depends on who are in the relationship. For veterans who have gone through certain difficult periods, handling a relationship could be tough. However veterans can find benefits with programs that help them become appreciative of their environment and its loved ones.^[1]

At the end of the day, couples should know that much could be salvaged depending on the multitude of considerations that the two persons in the relationship bring to counseling. Some of the qualities that could make couples counseling is empathy, being commitment-oriented, integrity and honesty, flexibility, humility, basic intelligence, maturity, mental balance and being concerned about the other person as much as you care about yourself. You may not have many of these characteristics but working on these qualities now could help you make the most of couples counseling.

Here are some ways couples counseling can help saving a relationship.

Explore a problem from a new perspective

If couples are motivated enough, they can start looking and exploring the reason for their failures in the relationship with a new perspective. It is indeed a more insightful and expansive process when couples can look at a problem with a fresh viewpoint rather than being rigid about it. Most times enrolling for couples counseling shows a couple is willing to work through their problems. And couples counseling would give them that new angle to find solutions rather than be stuck with problems.

Be able to make hard choices or decisions

During couple counseling, couples can make those hard choices of wanting to make the relationship work or not.^[2] Certainly there is a renewed commitment or clarification of why a couple would want to make the relationship work again. Most times couples would want to go forward and save what relationship they have.

Improve communication between partners

Interactions could become poor in a relationship. Quality communication between partners is eroded when disputes occur. Such times could cause couples to reach a stalemate and distort their opinion of each other. Most times they lose the ability to be more trusting of each other and their weaknesses become exposed. However couples counseling could better their communication with each other and let them express their feelings more openly. They have an avenue to express how they truly feel.

Resolve conflicts in new ways

Couple counseling makes couples discover and find new ways to resolve conflicts. It can be hard to recognize conflicts or its causes and how to go about them. But a therapist will certainly provide tools necessary in dealing with difficult issues. You learn something you may never have known previously in handling critical situations.

Find a ground to expunge your disappointment or frustration

Of course we may be carrying “baggage” in a relationship, this we may not even be aware of. And such baggage would cause further harm in subsequent disputes. Couples counseling will always provide a “neutral territory” for couples to discuss and work through difficult issues. Such “baggage” could be what stops you from moving on in a relationship, but this is discussed and worked out.

You should understand that couples counseling takes hard work, determination, and a desire to take one for the team. It is not for the immature or unprepared. It comes down to the willingness and the desire to do anything to save your relationship and be progressive about it.