Are you feeling distant from your partner? Have you been arguing more lately?
If your marriage feels tougher than it ever has, it may be time to seek some help.
The benefits of marriage counseling can get your relationship back on track. With the insight and guidance of a trained professional, you can often accomplish more than you could on your own. Here are some of the best reasons to try couples counseling.
1. Explore Both Sides
One of the biggest reasons to seek out marriage counseling is that you may not feel like you’re getting anywhere when you argue. If you’re having the same conversations over and over without any progress, a counselor can help you navigate through it.
When you know there are problems but can’t identify exactly what they are, a counselor can explore that with you. They can ask insightful questions that dig down deep and find the most pressing issues.
Your partner may have trouble communicating what the real issue is at home, but when you talk with a counselor, they can lead you to the truth. You may also have this problem , unsure of how to tell your partner exactly what the trouble is. Marriage counseling can uncover the candor and honesty you can’t find at home.
2. Get to Know Your Partner
If you’re wondering, “What is marriage counseling like?” one of the things you’ll discover is there is still more to learn about the true character of your partner. Whether you’ve been together for years or you just got married, learning more about each other is a great advantage of couples counseling.
The better you know your partner, the more you can relate to them and communicate with them in a healthy way. Understanding each other’s communication styles and preferences can help you navigate difficulties in the future, too.
3. Better Communication
When you attend counseling for couples, you’ll learn more about how to communicate using tested strategies. You’ll learn about how to structure your words so that you can get your point across, and you’ll learn that listening is part of communicating.
Working together to better understand what you’re each trying to say is a big part of couples counseling. You may even learn how to apologize in a healthy way. If you can communicate, you can work together to overcome your struggles.
4. Healing
You may not be aware of your own old wounds that influence your words and your relationship. If you aren’t aware of them, your partner likely isn’t either. Couples therapy can help you bring those to light and understand how to deal with them.
Your partner may have similar hurts to discuss. It can be helpful to do that with a mediator in the room to work through them with you. Healing is a big part of couples counseling, and it’s very beneficial to your relationship.
5. Grow Closer
It may not feel like it now, but you’ll be able to grow closer to your partner as you go through couples counseling together. No matter how far apart you may have grown, attending sessions together can help reunite you.
Working through grievances and hurts feels very vulnerable. As your counselor guides you to open up to each other, you’ll begin repairing your relationship and growing closer together again.
6. Set Goals
One of the best counseling advantages is working through goals together. As you begin to understand each other and heal old wounds, you can work together to envision your future. Talk about what goals you each have individually and what that looks like on a journey together.
At couples counseling you can learn to work toward something as a team. It feels good to reach together for something new, and start on a fresh journey as one unit.
Once you reach those goals together, you get to experience your newfound joy together, too. Celebrating an accomplishment is even better when shared.
7. Developing New Patterns: Benefits of Marriage Counseling
One of the best marriage counseling benefits is that your counselor can help you develop new patterns for your relationship. You’ll examine your current struggles and identify some of the behavioral patterns that might have led to those situations. Then you’ll learn about how to break those harmful patterns.
Forming new patterns is the next step, intentionally blazing a path into new territory so that you can begin again in a healthy way. These require work, because we fall into automatic behaviors without even realizing it sometimes. Yet if you can set that aside and act with purpose, you can form new habits that grow your relationship instead of tearing it apart.
8. Learn About Root Causes
One of the benefits of couples counseling is that your counselor will help you dive into your family histories. Both you and your partner are people who have been formed by your past. By doing some assessments, your counselor can learn about what may have contributed to your beliefs and habits.
Your counselor can help you understand what your needs are and present them to your partner. They can teach you to be assertive and forthcoming without offending your partner or ignoring their needs.
9. Exercises and Practice
With any kind of learning environment, you’ll have homework. Your marriage counselor will probably give you some tasks or strategies to practice at home. Using the methods they give you, you can start to rebuild your relationship, but it only works if you put in the effort.
While exercises and homework assignments may seem juvenile at first, often they are the very thing that helps build healthier habits. If you want it to be easier, then you must practice, and practice requires intentionality. Your counselor will be able to provide support as you learn and grow, so that you can turn what you learn into a lifetime of love.
Beautiful Relationships
Sometimes you can’t seem to understand what your partner is doing, no matter how hard you try. Whether they’re hard to reach or changing in ways you can’t grasp, growing apart is part of life. If you are ready to work on your relationship again, then the benefits of marriage counseling above may help you convince your partner to try it with you.
From learning better communication methods to healing old wounds, getting help from a counselor could be the fresh start you and your partner need. Schedule a call today to learn more about marriage counseling from An Affair of the Heart.