Meeting with a marriage counselor, coach or therapist is not an easy decision to take. You might be hesitant about bringing it up to your spouse or might not feel that a professional will help you solve your problems. Here are five reasons to seek marriage help.
Communication Is Key
You cannot have a healthy marriage if you don’t communicate with your spouse. Communicating with your spouse might not be easy for a number of reasons. Talking about your feelings and the problems you have as a couple might, for instance, be difficult because you and your spouse grew up in families that did not communicate. This is something that a counselor can help you work on by sharing some strategies you can use and by guiding a discussion between you and your spouse.
Identifying Your Issues Is Not Easy
Some problems are probably easy to identify, especially if you fight about them all the time. Negative events are also easy to identify. However, some issues are not easy to identify and address because they are not out in the open.
For example, the lack of communication in your marriage could be a result of underlying resentment that is threatening your marriage. It could be a symptom of a lack of closeness between you and your spouse. A counselor will help you figure out the real reasons behind your difficulties.
Learning To Fight Fair
Couples need to know how to fight fair. Fighting fair means being able to talk about your problems and to find solutions without things getting ugly between you. A marriage counselor, coach, or therapist will act as a neutral third party while you and your spouse talk about the things that you always fight about.
They will suggest some solutions to the issues that cause fights and will recommend some strategies you will be able to use in the future to talk about sensitive issues without having a nasty argument.
Your Counselor Will Help You Stay On The Right Track
Working on fixing a marriage is never easy and requires effort and commitment. There will be times where you think about giving up. You will probably feel frustrated and feel that your spouse is not working as hard as you on fixing the marriage. This is why you need to see a counselor.
Meeting with a professional once a week or once every other week will help you keep track of your progress and provide you with an opportunity to think back on what you and your spouse have done for the marriage and on what could have been improved.
Your counselor will help you create an actionable plan you can follow to fix your marriage and will recommend some new strategies you can use if you are not making progress.
You will benefit from marriage counseling, coaching, or therapy if you are unable to address your issues with your spouse. As hard as it is for you, please don’t delay talking about marriage help with your spouse.
Following are tips to help strengthen your marriage. But first, check out my products related to marriage health.
Do Not Lose Hope
If your spouse shows no interest in seeking help together for your marriage, do not allow that to discourage you. It is very common that one spouse is more willing to go for help than the other for various reasons.
When you show your commitment to improving or saving your marriage, you may be very pleasantly surprised to see what you making small changes will make. I have seen it happen over and over again. Because one of you changes the way you interact with the other, the spouse not participating nearly is forced to change their usual response and/or at least become curious!
I work online and phone with couples all over the country. Even after over 25 years, I am still awed by the wonderful miraculous changes I get to see over and over again! It can happen for you too!
Waverly Hanson
Marriage Counselor & Author
In my personal life, I have had a long successful marriage and have remarried following my husband's death. I have had three sons and helped raise a niece for three years and have seven grandchildren. I have loved spending time with them as they were growing up.
I also enjoy getting together with family and friends, ATVing in the mountains, photography, hiking, and traveling. I also enjoy reading, creating art, decorating, and serving others by volunteering.
Assisting couples in rebuilding their marriages has been so rewarding as I've had the privilege of seeing hundreds of couples reunite and get back to being positively connected to one another.
I also work with personal development and those who want to move forward by making positive improvements such as goal setting, self-care, boundaries, behavioral improvements, overcoming procrastination, conflict management, etc.