We live in a fast paced, stressful and constantly changing world. Often stressors in our lives negatively impact our relationships. It is well known that over 50% of marriages now end in divorce. Divorce is emotionally traumatic for the entire family. Often people give up on their marriage rather than seek the help they need to fix the problems and restore the positive feelings and values that made them fall in love in the first place.
Signs that indicate deterioration in your marriage and the need for marital therapy include the following:
- Communication problems
- Disrespect
- Frequent disagreements
- Loss or reduction of emotional and/or physical passion
- Finding reasons not to come home or reasons not to spend time with your spouse/significant other
- Leading virtually separate lives in the same home
- Infidelity (emotional and/or physical)
Marital therapy can help you work through your problems, and restore marital health and happiness. Marital/Couples therapy helps you:
- Diagnose underlying marital problems
- Provides techniques to enhance effective communication and compromise
- Restores emotional and physical intimacy
- Helps the couple to rediscover what they love about each other
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An Article that points to warning signs in your marriage can be found online at About.com Top 7 signs your marriage is in trouble https://www.liveabout.com/warning-signs-your-marriage-may-end-in-divorce-1103170.
The goals of Marital/Couples Therapy are to:
- Repair wounds caused by marital dysfunction.
- Improve communication and compromise.
- Enhance/rediscover friendship with each other (which is the bedrock of all relationships).
- Help each spouse to understand and empathetically respond to the thoughts and feelings of the other.
- Learn how to disagree in healthy ways that promote growth and increase understanding.
- Differentiate the symptoms of marital dysfunction from the underlying problems that cause the dysfunction.
- Change negative habits and patterns that maintain marital dysfunction.
- Build or rebuild trust in the relationship.
