Marriage Counselling

Marriage counselling is, in a nutshell, therapy for couples who are in need of support in their relationship.  Marriage counselling is not only for married couples, but for all couples, whether married or not, who care about resolving their problems with the support of a trained professional. 

As with most counselling you attend marriage counselling typically occurs once a week.  You and your significant other may need several weeks, several months, or just a few sessions of counseling to help your relationship.  A marriage counsellor will help you sort out your differences and give you the guidelines for better communication within your relationship. 

Couples find that they appreciate marriage counseling because each comes to the relationship with their own unique personality and differences of opinion.  These normal differences often lead to disagreements or miscommunication when one of the people believes the other is thinking the same thing when they aren’t.

Sometimes differences of opinion can lead to the couple considering aspects of a situation they wouldn’t have otherwise.  It can lead to opening up a new way of seeing a situation.  But at other times these differences cause more problems than they help.

Couples who are having difficulties often feel sadness, worry, anger, frightened or a feeling of being unsettled.  A marriage counsellor can help couples to resolve these issues or sexual differences.  Conflicts can include issues on sex, divorce, money, family, step-family, substance abuse, or infertility to name just a few. 

Many pastors or churches will require that a couple go through pre-marital counselling prior to the marriage ceremony to help them strengthen their marriage and improve the bond between them.  These counselling sessions often help the couple to discover differences between them that they may not have otherwise discovered prior to the marriage.  This gives them the opportunity to work out these differences before the marriage and helps the relationship to start out stronger.

The marriage counsellor will often serve as a mediator and help the couple to learn skills of communication so they will be better able to understand each other and the struggles and challenges they face individually.  This understanding will help them to face their individual struggles as a couple and give each other support as well as be better able to communicate their disagreements, hurt, anger, frustration and love.

Marriage counselling is usually couple counselling but there are times when one piece of the puzzle is unwilling or reluctant to attend.  In these instances it is beneficial even if one of the couple will attend counselling and learn techniques to more fully communicate their needs to their partner.

Marriage counsellors can be pastors, social workers or licensed psychologists.  The real factor is if they come recommended by someone you trust and if they click with your particular situation and individual likes and dislikes.  Marriage counselors are people just like the rest of us.  Some we like and some we don’t.  Because we don’t like them doesn’t mean they aren’t good counsellors but it does mean that we won’t get the most out of the session.  Find someone you both click with and go for it!