Couples Counseling
Are You Concerned For The Health Of Your Relationship Or Marriage?
Has your marriage or relationship evolved into something more stable and mature, but the passion and excitement are no longer there? Is a lack of emotional connection or sexual intimacy creating a distance between you that you don’t know how to bridge?
Perhaps you feel underappreciated, alone, or even unloved by your partner at times. Or maybe you try to communicate with each other, but criticism and defensiveness turn every discussion into an argument.
Whether you are married or in a committed relationship, couples run into problems all the time. You may be planning to tie the knot, but you’re already seeing challenges that you didn’t expect. Different parenting styles and expectations for what a relationship or marriage entails can create conflict and tension. Alternatively, you may be facing an empty nest for the first time and it’s making you wonder who you are outside of the role of a parent.
Moreover, if you have experienced infidelity or some other betrayal, it has likely fractured your sense of trust in your partner—as well as your faith in your marriage. At this point, you may be wondering if there is any hope for your relationship at all.
At Insideout Living, our couples therapists and marriage counselors understand exactly what you are going through. And with our help, you can heal the wounds of your collective past, repair your relationship, and deepen the connection you have with your partner.
All Couples And Marriages Eventually Run Into Conflict
Whenever you bring two individuals together with two unique life histories, you’re eventually going to run into some conflict—it’s just human nature. Despite that fact, we still haven’t exactly become adept at resolving our differences. Communication problems, intimacy issues, and difficulty defining boundaries are still huge obstacles for many of us.
On top of that, many couples are faced with navigating different cultural landscapes, religious beliefs, and personal values that can quickly create discord. The responsibility of raising kids, pursuing a career, and managing finances all while being there as a partner can quickly grow overwhelming. And because social media can make it seem like everyone else has the perfect marriage and family life, it’s easy to feel ashamed—especially when infidelity is involved.
Yet, all couples have their ups and downs, and conflict itself can be a good thing if managed in a healthy, productive way. It can help establish boundaries, cultivate self-advocacy, and even spur personal growth.
Unfortunately, most individuals were never taught how to maintain a relationship—how to communicate effectively and resolve conflict peacefully. As a result, many people simply mirror the flawed behaviors and attitudes that they were exposed to in early relationships.
Counseling at Insideout Living, however, can offer you and your partner valuable relationship skills and a chance to tackle the underlying problems at the core of your marriage. With our help, you can learn how to turn to your partner and trust them, knowing that they understand you, value you, and will have your back in the future.
Couples Counseling Is An Opportunity To Reconnect And Heal Together
Oftentimes, couples coming into therapy report that the real issue in their relationship is about communication or their partner. But couples counseling is about getting to the heart of the matter, peeling back the layers, and looking beneath the criticism and hurt to understand what fuels the adversity in your marriage. And rather than fixing one person or the other, therapy focuses on self-discovery, self-compassion, and personal growth that will benefit you as well as your relationship.
During our intake consultation, you and your partner will meet with your couples therapist together to explore what it is that brought you to counseling and what you hope to achieve. It will also give both of you a chance to familiarize yourselves with the process and get comfortable with your therapist.
Afterward, we’ll schedule one individual counseling session so that you each have an opportunity to speak candidly about your feelings, concerns, and challenges that you want to address. Then, in subsequent sessions, we’ll continue to collaborate with you as a team to do the important work of healing and evolving.
Together, we’ll discuss interdependence versus codependence, intention versus impact, and the importance of setting healthy boundaries. We can explore ideas related to attachment, relationship satisfaction, and open/alternative relationships. And if infidelity has threatened your marriage, we can help you learn how to trust and perhaps forgive so that you can begin to move forward.
Throughout the process, your marriage/couples counselor will offer you valuable relationship skills and advice to help you navigate challenges outside of sessions. You’ll learn effective de-escalation techniques, conflict resolution strategies, and communication skills that will help you express your needs and respond to those of your partner.
At Insideout Living, all of our marriage and couples counselors take an interactive and reflective approach to helping relationships heal. You see, most couples don’t realize that a majority of their anger, fear, and tension are really just signs of some unmet need for security and attachment. It’s as if all the arguments and conflict are just the visible part of an iceberg sticking out of the ocean. So we want to get beneath the surface of the symptoms and see what is truly creating conflict.
We’ll do that in part by drawing from Attachment Theory to determine if and how some of your earliest attachments have shaped the way you interact in relationships now. Similarly, Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) helps reduce conflict and improve communication by identifying the unmet needs being expressed behind the criticism and defensiveness. We even have a trauma-informed yoga instructor who can add a somatic element to counseling by helping you release any trauma stored in the body, whether as the result of infidelity or any other relational wounding.
One of the reasons why relationships are so difficult is that—just like people—they’re always in a state of flux and growth. The key is being able to adapt to that change so you can evolve with it. At Insideout Living, we help our clients do just that by teaching couples how to cultivate empathy, trust, and deep compassion for themselves and each other. With our help, you can make lasting changes that will repair your relationship, deepen your connection, and enable you both to grow and evolve.
Perhaps you are considering anxiety treatment but still have some concerns…
Maybe our issues aren’t big enough to justify couples counseling.
Most couples wait until their marriage is in crisis before they seek counseling. By that time, the tension and conflict have grown so great that it can take a bit of work to resolve all those years of pain. In contrast, working with a marriage counselor early allows you to head off problems before they grow out of control. And because you’re not in crisis yet, therapy can focus more on enriching your relationship. In the process, you’ll gain the self-awareness, skills, and knowledge needed to overcome future challenges on your own.
I’m worried that our couples therapist will tell us to break up or get a divorce.
Rest assured that, even if your marriage is in crisis, our goal is to heal your relationship—not break it up. We will never push either of you in any direction; rather, we want to help each of you discover what truly makes you feel happy and secure so that you can respond to those needs effectively. Beneath the pain and conflict are the cries of two people who just want to be loved and appreciated. Our job is to help you hear those voices so you can reply.
Does marriage counseling actually work and can it fix my partner?
Marital counseling is extremely effective because it creates a deep, mutual understanding of each person’s unique dynamics and how they ultimately influence the relationship. Rather than concentrating on one person, couples counseling reveals each partner’s storyline, giving both people a glimpse into their underlying motivations and needs. At the same time, it presents opportunities for growth and change within oneself. In that way, therapy is about healing each individual as much as it about healing the relationship.
It Is Possible To Heal Your Relationship And Grow As A Couple
If you’re ready to repair your relationship and strengthen your emotional connection with your partner, we would love to help. Please call Insideout Living at 847 328 7588 ext 501 for your free 10 to 15-minute phone consultation and to see how our couples counseling services can help you achieve a happier, healthier relationship.
