Couples learn quite quickly that marriage isn’t as easy as they thought. It requires hard work and commitment. After the “honeymoon period”, couples often realize that they are not as compatible as they thought, or they encounter problems which they never thought would be an issue. Or couples are not able to nurture their relationship due to things like careers and children consuming a lot of their time. These difficulties are not unusual and seeking the advice of a marriage counsellor Pretoria may go a long way towards making your relationship stronger or even saving your marriage.
How Does Marriage Counselling Help?
- Marriage Counselling helps couples take time out of their schedules and come together to focus on themselves.
- The counsellor acts as a mediator between the spouses with healthy and effective communication. It is helpful for couples who want to improve their relationship but they are not sure how to do about doing so.
- The counsellor can help analyze the behavioural patterns of the spouses and identify those that lead to conflict. Once a pattern has been identified, the couple, along with the help of the counsellor, can help work on modifying them.
- Effective communication is one of the most important aspects of any marriage, but it is not uncommon for couples to reach an impasse and lose their ability to share their feelings and needs with one another.
- Counselling gives couples the tools to start improving their communication, such as eliminating bad habits such as interrupting the other partner or peaking too much and not giving their partner a chance to respond. In addition, where couples have been reluctant or too busy to face the underlying issues that are causing problems in their relationship, counselling can serve as a platform where these issues can be confronted.
- Marriage Counselling helps to create a more realistic picture of who each partner really is rather than who the other partner wants him or her to be. This goes a long way in settling misunderstandings and avoiding miscommunications.
- Counselling also offers couples a way to stay accountable to each other. Learning new tools will only help if these tools are put into practice and take the place of previous, unhealthy habits. Counsellors will often assign homework to the couple in an effort to create patterns.
When Is Marriage Counselling Effective?
Like any other type of counselling, spouses need to be willing to undergo marriage counselling. Ideally, they must decide for themselves instead of throwing in the towel. Couples need to be willing to work on the marriage and address the problems that have arisen. Spouses must have realistic expectations when it comes to the counselling process. A marriage cannot be saved overnight and it will take a couple of sessions to really get into the couple’s dynamic and initiate the process of change.
Laurian Ward offers Marriage Counselling in Pretoria.
