When to get Help

There is something to admire in couples who are honest enough to admit to themselves that they are having problems in their marriage to the point where they can no longer fix them on their own. They seek the help of a professional marriage and relationship counsellor to resolve their issues and get their marriage to a new place of strength, love and respect.

Marriage counselling, also called relationship counselling/therapy or couples counselling/therapy essentially helps couples to gain a better understanding of their issues, to resolve conflicts, and to learn new skills and knowledge to develop and sustain a strong and loving connected life together.

Marriage counselling is provided by registered Marriage and Relationship Counsellors and/or Family Therapists, with formative training in mental health. They may be Psychologists, Social Workers, Occupational Therapists or Specialist Counsellors.

Marriage counselling is often seen as a short term option of around 4 – 10 sessions, with occasional revisits to add to the couples skill and knowledge base.

Although marriage counselling generally involves the two partners, sometimes one partner will want to see the marriage counsellor alone either because the other partner was unwilling to attend, or they feel that they need to discuss something first with the couples counsellor, before they talk about it in a marriage counselling session.

When couples begin to encounter problems in their relationship that are beginning to causing damage in their marriage, then it’s clearly time to get some professional help.

Rather than divorce, most couples want to salvage their troubled marriage and restore it to the healthy and loving union they once enjoyed.

Good reasons for marriage counselling

Once couples start the negative communication spiral, it is often a challenge to get it back to a positive place. Negative communication can include comments, words or behaviour that leaves the other partner feeling flat, disregarded, disrespected, unloved, insecure, depressed, or general feelings of being hurt.

Negative communication also includes “tone” and how it is used. How people say things maybe more important than what is actually said.

Often for couples the characteristics of the other person that initially attracted them are now leading to conflict as the differences are now becoming a source of discontent. An example of this difference is when an introverted person is attracted to an extraverted person.

Problems develop later in the relationship when the honeymoon period has passed and life has become routine. It begins by the introvert become less willing to get out and participate.

Eventually, the introvert can become more like a ‘handbrake’ than a partner in life to the extrovert. At this point, extroverts begin asking themselves “What happened to the partner I married?” or “Have I married the wrong person?”

This issue, above all others, is one of the more difficult ones for couples to recover from. It takes a lot of commitment and genuine hard work by both partners to rebuild the trust and security of the marriage.

In order for the relationship move to the healing stage, there will need to be a willingness by the betrayed partner to reach some level of acceptance. The Couples Counsellor will skillfully guide this process whilst recognizing that this is extremely difficult for the betrayed partner to achieve.

A good marriage will make life more meaningful as well as teach and support us. When a person is open to the lessons that a relationship has to offer and they apply a genuine effort to learn, then a marriage is simply an awesome experience.

However, when we don’t do this, a relationship can be like a bus ride from hell, with the same issues reoccurring again and again until finally there is such a hard knock, or last straw, that you have no choice but to take a good, hard look at yourself and your marriage.

When the disconnect between a couple is weighing heavier than the good in the relationship, then its time to get some outside professional help.

Marriage teaches us about ourselves

A marriage is like a classroom for personal development. The issues that are holding you back from really embracing life will show-up in a marriage.

These issues do not appear, at least not to any great extent, in any other relationship. Issues about ourselves are often difficult to identify, let alone to truly understand or to take positive action to address them.

“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.” Elizabeth Gilbert

It is at this point that individual counselling can help a person to identify, understand and change behaviours giving their marriage its best chance of success.

Getting “fresh eyes” onto the problems from a qualified and experienced couples counsellor helps people get their relationship to a place where they want it to be.

Getting married is more than an event, its strengthening a commitment that two people are making to each other

We teach couples the skills, tools and techniques for:

• 1. Improving communication,
• 2. Managing difference and conflict respectfully,
• 3. To clarify their individual and shared goals,
• 4. Identifying the strengths that each bring to the relationship

We also highlight some of the traps that couples unwittingly fall into. We discuss the family’s they each grew-up in, some key childhood experiences and how that affects the relationship today.

Research suggests and our experience confirms that couples completing a pre marriage session are better equipped to transition from dating or living together into marriage.

Often couples have not sought the help of a relationship specialist for a range of logistical reasons. Issues like having small children and no support, long distance and rural locations, time, working hours and harder still partners who in different locations.

In these situations, counselling via the Phone or Skype becomes a useful and convenient option. It allows you both to participate in counselling even when one partner is at home while the other is still at work.

Skype Counselling

Anywhere in the world where there is a high speed internet connection, and you have a computer that has a video camera, Skype counselling is available to you and your partner. Skype provides both a free and a paid version of its service.

Another great aspect of Skype counselling is that it adds a degree of comfort because you are both in an environment that you are familiar with.

When couples are in different locations, we arrange conferencing with Skype so that you both can effectively meet with a couples counsellor at the same time. We can manage different locations and different time zones.

The sessions themselves are mostly what one would expect a typical marriage counselling session to be like. Couples will discuss the issues that they are struggling with in their marriage, with the counsellor.

The counsellor will help develop strategies to address the issues and overcome challenges that all lead to an improvement in the relationship.

The Relationship Intensive Sessions are designed for couples whose marriage is characterized by ongoing conflict, major trust issues or for those couples who can literally see that separation is looming on the horizon. This has usually been going on for a while and love seems to have been forgotten.

It’s for couples who see no end in sight to their conflict and are embroiled in their differences. When separating is starting to feel like an option.

Couples in crisis often put greater effort into arguing the rightness of their position rather than seeking an understanding of the others’ view. An outcome is that the couple never resolve anything. A marriage in this type of crisis requires a concentrated effort to prevent its breakdown.

Can the Relationship Intensive help me?

With two Intensives, each person gains greater experience and understanding of the others’ concerns, regardless of whether you agree on the issues, as well as gaining insight into your own position.

The process helps couples to move from a place of conflict to a place of understanding, reconnection and togetherness.

Through talking about past “cold” issues and current “hot” conflicts, each person is given the opportunity to discuss what is important to them. This conversation is not distracted by the intensity of emotions and the provocative language often used by couples engaged in ongoing conflict.

Figuring out all of the elements, factors and negative effects on a marriage characterized by conflict is a daunting task, but the potential pay off for success, as a couple, is significant.

All couples agree that a marriage is an investment, and like all investments it will continue to grow and develop if you both put the time and the right type of effort into it. The old adage applies here, the more you put in, the more return you will get.

We have been counselling and helping families and couples in various ways for nearly 30 years now, and from this we have seen that those couples and families that create the best environment for relationships to flourish are those where couples have demonstrated their commitment and willingness to adapt to the changes and challenges that life brings to them.

Together with a willingness to learn relationships skills such as communication, emotional and self awareness, taking and understanding the value of responsibility, non-blaming conflict resolution strategies and others.

You can Learn

You may be pleased to know that healthy relationship skills can be easily learned. However, let me remind you…. what you put in often equals what you get back.

Learning, developing and maintaining healthy relationships through better skills, knowledge and capabilities is like learning any sport, that is, a lot of repetitive practice is required (and it’s not the balls fault that it didn’t go in the right direction).

Just like breathing or even eating, things we’ve all been doing since the day we were born, we all believe that we’re okay at the doing of it. Well, you’re still alive aren’t you, so you must be reasonable at breathing.

However, when we listen to a person who has learned how to breath effectively, in a manner that helps them to achieve a great goal such as in singing, sport or even meditation, we begin to understand that there is a hell-of-a-lot more to this skill than what you may have always assumed. You may have always thought that it is only smokers or asthmatics that struggle with their breathing.

Not true.

OUR Process