Couples therapy is a type of counseling that focuses on marriages and relationships. It is designed to help couples overcome conflicts, improve communication, and build a stronger bond. Couples therapy can be an important tool for encouraging open communication and maintaining a healthy relationship. Research by the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) shows that 98% of couples who use marriage therapy say that their therapists are “excellent” or “good”.
Communication is the main issue that couples face in counseling. By making the most of these sessions, couples can increase their chances of achieving their goals in therapy. This will lead to a greater degree of happiness and satisfaction with their relationship. Deeper and more lasting love, trust, and commitment require a lot of work to achieve and maintain.
UCLA psychologists Lisa Benson, Meghan McGinn, and Andrew Christensen recently published a major review of more than 40 years of research on couples therapy (Benson et al.). They have summarized this enormous amount of research to demonstrate that, according to the main theoretical guidelines of the field, couples can benefit when they receive treatment that follows five underlying principles. It is understandable to feel anxious when trying couples therapy for the first time. Couples who avoid expressing their private feelings are at greater risk of emotionally distancing and separating.
Effective couples therapists point to the strengths of the relationship and develop resilience, especially as therapy comes to an end. Not all couples will need couples therapy to overcome problems, but if you can't resolve conflicts, seeing a therapist can be a good solution. The therapist may assign exercises to help make changes at home. Suggesting relationship counseling to your spouse can be intimidating, but if you find yourself having the same argument over and over again without any resolution, it might be time to see a couples therapist. It is also possible that, if the risk is not serious enough, the couple may benefit from temporary suspension procedures to stop the escalation of the conflict.
To be successful in couples therapy, you must find balance when working on relationship issues with your partner. Therapists from other orientations that focus more on emotions might help the couple develop a more positive story or narrative about their relationship. Congratulations on your courage to embark on this challenging but highly rewarding journey of interpersonal and intrapersonal discovery (within yourself). Marriage counseling or couples therapy can help you achieve open communication and maintain a healthy relationship. With the right approach and dedication, you can make your special bond even stronger.
