Changing how you think, speak, and act in your relationship with your life partner can be crucial in improving your quality of life. Couples therapy can help you gain insight into how to make positive changes in your attitudes, expectations, communication, and behavior patterns in your relationship with your spouse or life partner. Marriage counseling can help you learn to speak to each other in a more respectful, caring, empathetic, assertive manner.
Couples counseling can help you:
Improve the quality of your connection with each other and the quality of the time you spend with each other
Find the balance between “Me” time, “Couples” time, and “Family” time
Be more accepting of each other and develop more realistic expectations of each other
Enhance your expression of affection for each other
Break down barriers impeding openness, honesty, genuineness, and transparency with each other
Express thoughts, feelings, wants, and needs
Improve empathy, understanding, and listening skills
Couples therapy can help you learn to negotiate more productively with each other in coming to a consensus or compromise on issues important in your life, such as:
Goals and purpose
How to spend money and time in healthier, more constructive, and more fulfilling ways
How to establish a more fair division of labor
How to work more effectively as a team in parenting your children
How to define, establish, and enforce boundaries that protect your relationship from intrusions from outside forces. This includes children, members of your family of origin, bosses and coworkers, friends and acquaintances, and others
Couples therapy can be helpful in facilitating the process of recovery from a real or perceived betrayal of trust, whether this comes in the form of infidelity, dishonesty, drug relapse, or other real or perceived violation of the relationship.