Are you afraid your marriage could be coming to an end?

Are you and your partner caught up in the same argument that you just cannot seem to resolve?
Does your partner often remind you of the mistakes you’ve made throughout the relationship causing you to feel as if there is no chance of repairing it?
Have you tried to clearly express your needs in the relationship yet nothing changes?
Do you feel misunderstood and struggle to get your partner to understand your position?

While strong communication in every marriage is key to keeping the relationship running smoothly, you may still find yourself facing difficulties with it as more problems arise between the two of you. Furthermore, no matter how strong your love and emotional connection may be between the two of you, sadly you find that the ongoing miscommunication and unresolved arguments are turning the relationship in a sour direction. You love your mate dearly and feel the love slipping away as a result of misunderstandings, and hurt feelings that you are desperately trying to resolve.

While you feel like the relationship is spiraling downwards it can feel devastating. Yet, it is important to know that if the two of you are truly devoted to making your marriage work, then your relationship can benefit from marriage counseling where learning new skills in expressing your feelings seems more possible, feeling heard by your partner starts to happen, and communicating in a more open and loving dialogue takes place.

Marriages will inevitably face conflict

When we marry, we commit to not only our partner but also to ourselves to honor, love and manage all aspects of ourselves both individually and collectively as a married couple for the rest of our life. This can feel like quite an adventure! Sometimes it is fun and loving – the part that needs no explaining. Yet other times it becomes upsetting, maddening, disappointing and hurtful.

Conflicts begin to set in like a bad storm. You yell at one another, hurt each other’s feelings, get upset with your partner for not performing a certain task in the exact way you want it done, the list goes on! In marriage, we have to expect conflict to occur. It is not realistic to expect that it won’t. Yet, it becomes scary when we find that we do not know how to get out of such a horrific cycle of communication.

Harville Hendrix in his book entitled, “Receiving Love: Transform Your Relationship by Letting Yourself Be Loved” wrote “As adults, our most important opportunity for a nurturing relationship comes through committed partnership. It’s a breakthrough to realize that the purpose of committed relationship is not to be happy but to heal. And then you will be happy.”

So ultimately, we need to heal that pattern of painful communication that we engage in with our partner. We need to work on re-establishing our emotional connection to one another. And, we need to learn how to turn our misunderstandings and disagreements into an opportunity for learning about one another in an even deeper way.

Marriage counseling can help you in this process by giving you proper guidance on how to face such challenges in your relationship. Marriage counseling can help you shift your mode of communication in a new direction. First, you can learn how to listen to your spouse in a new way. Second, you can learn how to express your feelings and experiences to your partner where you begin to feel understood. As a result, the process of gaining deeper understanding and appreciation for one another’s position can actually draw you closer together.

Marital therapy can improve your communication and create more emotional intimacy

Running your communication in the wrong direction is common and getting back in a positive direction can happen! Ultimately, you want to be understood. You want to be listened to. You want to regain the emotional connection you know is possible. And you want to move on. So, as your potential new marriage counselor how do I guide you towards the steps of saving your marriage?

First of all, it is important to flip the negative idea of conflict into a more positive one. For starters, think of conflict as an opportunity for growth rather than a sign of termination. Think of it as a chance to create a deeper connection in your marriage as opposed to the start of an emotional cut off. This can happen when you both learn to listen patiently and understand each other with new ears and eyes. As a result, this type of exchange invites you both to be more emotionally vulnerable. When this happens, love can grow as hurt begins to slowly go away.

When working with couples in my practice, I first consider the unique story you each have to tell about the relationship. Despite the communication problem, I consider how something special about your connection keeps you glued together. At the beginning, I ask questions such as how you first met and the experience you both had on that first encounter. What were your first perceptions of one another and what was the experience like in first connecting? I also ask about what kind of position you both were in in life prior to meeting one another and how different or unique is your relationship from previous romantic ones?

As a depth psychologist, I move into the process of marital counseling explaining how the pattern of miscommunication that developed in our relationship invites us to look deep inside of ourselves. From a depth psychological stance, I believe that the way in which we hear and perceive our mate is directly impacted by the early relationships in our life. I talk about how the primary relationships in our early life laid the foundation that informs us about how we form emotional attachments not only with our mate but also with ourselves.

In the therapy sessions, this looks like us taking time to listen to each of your stories. And during the process, I will guide you both to identify the key ingredients in your backgrounds that shaped how you learned to form close attachments. We consider carefully how the perceptions we develop of our partner affects what you hear, what you misunderstand, and what you may miss in what your partner is trying to explain. This process is hard work but well worth the time spent if you are invested in learning how to draw closer to one another and improve your relationship. Remember being patient with one another and yourself is very important.

What if the issues involved become more complicated or difficult to manage?

Taking the steps to improve your relationship is an investment in time. Making real changes takes effort, and patience. We need to take time to understand ourselves better so that we can begin to open up and begin to hear our partner from a new perspective. As a marriage therapist, I will strive to set a plan with you moving forward that feels manageable.

What if you and your partner continue to argue and simply feel stuck?

Changing an old painful pattern of communication in your marriage to a more loving one is no easy task. If it was easy, you would not be looking for help. It is important to keep in mind that changing your way of communicating with one another is similar to learning any kind of new skill that you want to replace an old one with. So be patient and kind to yourself and your partner. You might fumble at first. You might not understand how to do it and feel awkward or frustrated as you practice with your partner. In time, it can get better as you feel more comfortable and familiar with your new way of communicating with one another.

What if I my partner wants to stop and decides he/she no longer wants to continue marriage counseling?

No one would want to hear that. And that would certainly be quite disappointing and hurtful. When certain issues are getting addressed in marriage counseling that are particularly filled with a lot of deeper painful feelings, it can feel challenging and perhaps even uncomfortable. Therefore, the feeling of wanting to stop can naturally come up when the pain involved can feel overwhelming. If that were to occur, then perhaps it is time to slow down and take time carefully addressing each step along the way so that you and/or your partner feel heard and understood.

So, are you and your partner ready to take on a new adventure in your relationship?

If you are and your partner are ready to shift your relationship into a more sweet, compassionate and loving one, then I invite you to call me at 520-365-0058.