Is your relationship in need of repair?
- Do you feel lonelier when you’re with your partner than you do when you’re apart?
- Do you feel hopeless and unsure whether your relationship has a future?
- Do you feel so emotionally drained that you don’t know whether you have the energy to fix the relationship?
- Do you find that you and your partner fight about small and silly things now?
- Do you wish you had the courage to talk to your partner about the things that are really important?
- Do you wonder why you ever got together with your partner in the first place?
- Do you feel like you and your partner are more like roommates than like spouses?
- Do you find yourself doing staying at work late in order to avoid being with your partner as much as possible?
Couples Counseling Improves Relationships
Many couples find that their relationships don’t live up to their expectations, yet they find that their efforts to improve their relationships on their own haven’t worked. Oftentimes, when people try to address problems with their partner, they find it just leads to arguments, anger, and defensiveness. Over time, if you find that your attempts to solve problems just lead to counterattacks, then you might stop trying. Not talking about important issues just moves partners further and further apart. Retreating in angry silence may solve the problem of fighting, but it doesn’t help any problem get solved and it doesn’t help you feel closer to your partner.
Failed attempts at repairing relationships, along with accumulating life stressors such as children and financial worry and job demands can leave couples feeling hopeless, dejected, and resigned to having an unfulfilling partnership. Sometimes people hope that their relationship problems will just go away on their own, and of course this rarely happens.
Have you resigned yourself to living in anger or frustration or resentment toward your partner because you can’t imagine what might work to get you back on the right track? You do not have to settle for a unfulfilling and lonely partnership! Couples counseling can help you and your partner learn how to get of this vicious cycle and break through the negative and harmful patterns that have kept you sad and frustrated.
Often times couples feel like they they aren’t sure whether they have the energy to work on their problems in couples counseling. They feel so stuck and hopeless that they just don’t know whether they have any emotional energy left to put back into the relationship. What I can tell you is that it usually doesn’t take very long for the couples in my practice to discover that relatively small changes can be quite effective in renewing their fondness for and connection with each other. As couples make small changes that strengthen their relationship, this in turn motivates them further, and like a snowball that gets bigger as it rolls downhill, the motivation and the energy for working on the relationship improves greatly with time. So I know it’s a common fear, but I would just encourage you to give it a try and see if you won’t be like most of the couples that I meet with — I think it is likely you will discover that things really can get better between the two of you.
