Are you considering marriage counseling? Are you wondering whether or not it is going to work for you? Worrying that it may be a waste of time may be holding you back from getting the marriage counseling that you need to save your marriage from pain or divorce.
The truth is, there is no definite answer as to whether marriage counseling will work for you BUT there are ways to increase the chances of it being successful. There are many couples who will tell you that marriage counseling saved their relationship, as well as some who will tell you otherwise. The success of counseling working depends on how much effort you put towards a successful outcome.
How To Increase Your Chances of Success
There are certain things you can do to help your marriage counseling produce a positive result. Here are a few of them.
Stay Committed
If you are not completely committed to the marriage counseling and improving the relationship then you may find yourself failing very quickly. This is especially true if one person is more resistant to the counseling than the other. It shows a lack of respect and willingness to save the marriage and can be the final straw for their spouse.
But even if both of you are willing to save your marriage and try counseling out, it has to become a top priority in your life. It's very easy to let once important commitments slip down your priority list. If you make an excuse to miss one session it will be much easier to make an excuse to miss the next session. So don't let excuses get in the way!
Make sure that you are both ready and willing to work on the relationship. Get pumped for a positive outcome and do what you have to do to achieve that outcome! If you do that, and allow the therapist to do their job, then you may find great success with your marriage counseling.
Make Sure Your Are Comfortable
One goal before you go to marriage counseling should be to find a therapist that you are both comfortable with. Just because one of you likes someone doesn't mean the other person will, and it's important to be comfortable with someone when you are opening up and talking about difficult feelings. Otherwise you may not share the feelings you really NEED to share and it can cause problems in the counseling as well as in the relationship.
Even if you find someone you think you both like and you attend a session and realize that the therapist is not a good fit for one of you, move on. Find someone who fits both of you and allows you to be at ease. The success of your marriage may depend on it.
Take Action!
You may be committed to saving the marriage. You may even attend every session and lay all of your feelings out on the table. But if you are not taking action towards fixing your marriage then you may as well be flushing money down the toilet.
Sharing, talking, and learning will help you in your marriage to some degree, but if you don't make changes in your marriage that reflect your new-found information then your marriage itself won't change.
A lot of therapists will give you at home exercises to do. These exercises are important to help you really implement what you have learned in your marriage counseling. Understanding something and doing something are two different things. For example, just because you understand that communication is important doesn't mean you don't have to communicate. You have to start communicating in order to really start solving issues. Don't slack off with at-home exercises even if you feel that you 'got it down'. The more you take action towards fixing your marriage the better your chances will be of being successful.
Keep on Pushing
You may find that the first few sessions of marriage counseling do not produce the results you want. This can cause you to get upset with the process or give up altogether, but in order to be successful you have to keep on pushing towards success.
Don't give up on your marriage because of a few sessions that don't seem to be working, and understand that your marriage may even get worse before it gets better. You may find you and your partner bring up things that you would never talk about by yourselves. This can be painful and cause anger and sadness, but working through those hurtful emotions can be therapeutic. They can allow you to see where the relationship has really gone wrong and what needs to change to make it better. As long as you keep the end result, a happy and healthy marriage, in sight then you will find the strength to push through the hard times.
Marriage counseling can work if you stick to it and put in the effort required. Allow the process to take you a journey of healing instead of resisting it and you may find that marriage counseling can work for you.
Bellaisa writes for the Relationship Circle, a website with Relationship advice for women and men on everything from having a successful marriage to how to attract men.