Couples therapy utilizes the help of a trained mental health professional to address a wide range of issues within the relationship – making use of a mediator, so to speak.
Some of the most common problems may include issues related to sex, trust withdrawal due to an affair, recurring conflicts without resolution, and feelings of disconnect with your partner.
If you’ve signed up or started your first session in couples therapy, that’s great. You’re on the path to a better partnership and continual growth.
If you haven’t yet gone but you’re considering it, we’ll give you the extra push you need. Check out these benefits below – and remember, counseling can help at any stage of your relationship.
Lead You to a Better Understanding of One Another
You can communicate, over-communicate, and communicate some more, but that doesn’t guarantee you have a full understanding of your partner.
Sometimes, it just doesn’t matter how many times you express your feelings. How many different ways you reiterate your hopes and fears. How many avenues you take to establish your priorities, set your values, and state your beliefs.
There still may be a disconnect. Luckily, therapy with your boo can untangle that necklace trap; if the right amount of effort is put in, the two of you can establish a mutual understanding in no time.
Intervene in Arguments, Creating an Impartial Sounding Board
Oftentimes in a relationship, sides will blame and point the finger at the opposer. That’s why fights and arguments that happen at home escalate, resulting in hurt feelings or someone temporarily walking out the door.
In a therapeutic office, the trained mental health professional can stand tall as the referee. He or she can analyze the situation, taking in every word said aloud. In response, honest, impartial, unbiased feedback can be iterated until understood.
Why does this have a positive effect? Because if your significant other has said it a dozen times with no beneficial change occuring, maybe hearing it from someone else will provide a look through a new lens.
Increase That Deep Emotional Connection
When you first start dating, the emotional connection is immediately strong because you spend so much time getting to know one another. But when life gets in the way, things change. Work becomes more important, kids take priority, and other responsibilities make it hard to stay connected.
The crappy part about this life shift is that it can create genuine loneliness. Thankfully, going to couples counseling can help drive that reconnection, teaching you ways to re-prioritize one another. At the end, you’ll have a more secure attachment style than before.
Improve Communication Skills
Under communicating looks like this: One person in the partnership is too tired at the end of a long workday to say anything. There’s nothing worth talking about for long, so why start chatting when all you want to do is take care of nightly duties and go to bed?
Over communicating looks like this: One person in the partnership discussing every single idea that pops into their head. The need for validation 24/7 without calming down the chatterbox.
Typically, the two work together to form a somewhat unhealthy relationship.
Enter: Trained psychologist that can come up with conducive solutions. If this scenario sounds like you and your partner’s life, you need to seek communication help. If you don’t, the drifting can happen quickly.
Walk You Through Life’s Challenges
Challenges don’t always look negative. Sure, fights and trust issues serve as challenges. But so does the passing of a loved one and a shift in career.
Even the happiest couples will face challenges, and we kind of just have to accept that if we want to be in a dedicated relationship. Including but not limited to infertility, mental health scares, traumatic events, financial issues, etc.
Luckily, it’s easier to get through with a mental health care professional by your side. In just a few sessions, you’ll get helpful insights, tips, and tricks to try. It won’t make the challenges dissipate, but it will feel easier to conquer them together.
Additional couples counseling benefits:
- Development of true honesty
- Resolvement of trust issues from previous relationships
- Improvement in security of relationship
- Increase in positive feelings towards partner
- Decrease in stress related to relationship and contributing factors
- Provided tools to get through future challenges