How to determine if marriage counseling will save your relationship

Many married couples experiencing relationship difficulties consider seeking the professional advice of a marriage counselor, but are still hesitant. From the stories they’ve heard, they wonder if counseling really works. Also, they hate to spend money on this type of resource unless they are sure they will reap rewards for their investment. So the questions remain. What exactly should they expect from the counseling sessions? Can they save their relationship and build a stronger union?

Every marriage has its problems, and it’s unrealistic to expect yours to always go from strength to strength. What couples need to learn are strategies that can help them weather the bad times, open lines of communication, and stay happily married. They need to discover techniques that allow them to deal with the perceived shortcomings they see in their spouses and come to compromises about how they will live together in peace and love. When you visit a marriage counselor, you have the opportunity to open up the honest communication that is key to a stable relationship. You will learn from an impartial third party how you can discuss your problems in a much healthier way.

No two marriages are the same, so obviously marriage counseling will not be as effective for some couples as it is for others. Yes, there is a chance that you may end up deciding to divorce even with the advice; however, it will certainly give you a better chance of reconciling your differences and saving your marriage than doing nothing. At the first signs that your marriage is in trouble, you should seek the guidance of a marriage counselor, because your marriage will be easier to save in the early stages than later. It’s not that you can’t benefit when things have already gone bad between you, but it’s much better to start early.

There are other factors that will help determine how successful the marriage is. It is easier to resuscitate a failed marriage in which the partners are young and still in love than it is to salvage a longer-term marriage in which the couple has moved on from their relationship and is so far away that love is buried much deeper. . . Furthermore, both members of the partnership must be willing to cooperate with the counselor and with each other if real progress is to be made. Other couples who may not be as successful in counseling include people who married very young and before their relationship had a chance to mature, high school dropouts, people whose parents are divorced, those in cross-cultural marriages, those living below the poverty level. , or those who are unemployed.

The bottom line is that marriage counseling is an excellent tool for some couples and not for others. You can study the criteria listed above to see what your chances of participating in successful counseling might be.