Couples therapy is a treatment that allows the partners to work through problems bothering their relationship. The treatment enables the couple to talk openly about what they are experiencing with a qualified therapist who leads them through the session. The basis of the treatment is thus aimed at improving understanding, communication, and overall satisfaction in a relationship. Many couples seek treatment when they experience specific problems that become too insurmountable for them to deal with on their own. Here are some of the more common issues resolved during relationship therapist near me sessions and how therapy can help.
Communication Problems
One of the most common problems couples face is poor communication. Misconceptions, not listening, or poor articulation of feeling can emerge into frustration and arguments. With much time lapsing, this inept communication leads to emotional distance between partners.
Through therapy, couples will pick up efficient communication skills. Most therapists usually make use of active listening skills whereby the partners, instead of responding, focus on their partner and understand what they say. They may also teach the couples how to talk about their emotions without attacking or blaming each other. With effective communication, a couple will be able to avoid misunderstanding, which helps them resolve problems before it leads to major conflicts.
Trust Issues
Trust is a base on which any healthy relationship can thrive. When this bond of trust snaps, then it is really very difficult to get it back. It may be the result of affairs, deception, or any other such act of lying or false promise-making. Even small things, like concealing detail or keeping secrets, can chip away at trust over time.
The issues of trust, then, are buried somewhere back in life and thus need to be unraveled and worked upon by both partners in therapy. The therapists take the partners through painful discussions on past betrayals and help the partners make strategies to regain the lost honesty and transparency. Rebuilding broken trust takes time, but at least this is the right place to start the healing process.
Conflict Resolution
Of course, all couples fight now and then, but the way they deal with these fights does vary. Unresolved conflicts-or a noxious arguing style-think yelling, name-calling, or bringing up past hurts-can erode a relationship over time. Other couples avoid conflict altogether, bottling up their feelings until it all blows up.
Therapy can teach the couple how to handle conflicts constructively. The partners learn to address the issue at hand without inflammatory language or emotional manipulation. The therapists guide the couple to find what will work for both parties while guiding them away from the “win-lose” mindset. Effective conflict resolution strengthens relationships and shows how a couple can disagree without damaging their bond.
Emotional Distance or Disconnection
As time goes on, the couples grow emotionally apart from each other. This is very often very gradual as the partners spend less time with each other, are less communicative, or display less physical affection. The emotional distance can leave one or both partners feeling lonely despite being in the relationship.
Relationship therapy may help the couples reconnect emotionally. Therapists commonly recommend that partners spend quality time with each other, pay more attention to shared experiences, and show affection. In some situations, an emotional disconnection may be due to deep-seated issues, including unexpressed bitterness and unresolved hurts. Such issues can be detected and resolved through therapy.
Intimacy Issues
It is an important aspect of any love relationship, and once the spark starts to dim, it eventually reflects in the overall relationship between the two. Intimacy problems may include a lack of physical affection, sexual dissatisfaction, or mismatched desires and expectations. These may emanate from a variety of reasons including stress, health problems, or emotional distance.
In therapy, couples can openly discuss their concerns about intimacy in a non-judgmental setting. Therapists help partners communicate their needs, desires, and boundaries, and work together to find ways to reignite their physical and emotional closeness. Sometimes, addressing underlying issues like stress or body image concerns can significantly improve intimacy.
Infidelity
Infidelity is today’s most challenging issues that couples face. The sense of betrayal, whether it is a physical affair, an emotional affair, or an online relationship, can run deep, leaving long-lasting emotional scarring. Few couples transcend infidelity; some move out of the relationship, while others want to fight to rebuild.
This is a safe place for couples to process the extreme emotions that accompany an affair including anger, guilt and sorrow. Though hard, therapy will help a couple to understand why an affair has occurred and what needs to be changed in the future. The therapists work with both partners in the healing of their relationship and rebuilding of trust if that is the couple’s desire.
Financial Disagreements
Money is perhaps one of the most common stressors in relationships. A lot of couples have different ideas about spending, saving, and budgeting. This can easily lead to tension, especially if one partner perceives the other as irresponsible or too controlling when it comes to money. Other times, financial stress happens around big life transitions, such as buying a house, having children, or retiring.
Through therapy, couples have the opportunity to talk about their money issues in a non-combat zone. The therapists encourage open discussions on money, guiding the couples in finding common ground. They could also encourage setting a mutual financial goal and draw a plan satisfying both. Understanding each other about what money means in the relationship and what it will be spent on can reduce stress and create a healthier approach to money within the relationship.
Parenting Conflicts
Raising the children is rewarding yet challenging; at the same time, it may bring tension into the couple’s relationship. Couples might disagree on parenting styles or discipline, or struggle to balance responsibility in parenting. Such conflicts might leave each partner frustrated or resentful.
However, through therapy, couples can work at aligning their parenting styles to work together as one team. A therapist could facilitate a discussion on their respective parenting philosophies and the ways each can support the other in rearing their children. In these ways, a couple can create one unified approach that can diminish stress and offer stability to their children.
Life Transitions
Major life changes can put stress on a relationship, from moving to changing careers to becoming empty nesters. Even events that seem to be happy life transitions, such as getting married or having a baby, can include stresses since couples must adjust to new life roles and expectations. Sometimes these changes make one partner feel left behind or uncertain about the future.
Relationship therapy can support them through these transitions in life. The therapists give support to the couples as they adjust to the new circumstances and help them learn how to communicate their needs and fears. Indeed, through the addressing of such challenges together, the couple comes out of such transitions more connected and joined for one goal or aspiration.
Emotional or Psychological Trauma
Sometimes, unresolved emotional or psychological traumas of the past can affect relationships. This could be from childhood, past relationships, or even current traumas within the relationship. Trauma can be expressed through behaviors in which withdrawal, anger, or distrust impacts relationships.
It enables couples to see just how trauma is impacting them and starts the process of healing. Sometimes this might involve one partner getting additional individual therapy outside of the couples counseling to more completely deal with their trauma. Through the working together, couples learn to support each other through the healing process and create a more stable, understanding relationship.