Relationship and Marriage Counselling

Building Better Relationships

Developing and maintaining relationships is a life-long commitment. Whatever your age or experience your relationships will present you with new and demanding challenges. The difference between relationships which work, and relationships which don’t, is how well couples deal with the challenges and problems they face in their life together.

Willing to work at it…

All couples experience problems in one form or another – it’s part of sharing your life with another human being. The first step towards creating a happy, healthy relationship is your own willingness to work at it. Most couples leave it until their relationship has already started to fall apart before they consider doing anything about the difficulties they have. People in supportive, loving relationships help each other practically as well as emotionally. Supportive partners share the good times and help each other through the tough ones.

The Process

Couple’s counselling is based on the premise that individuals and their problems are best handled within the context of the couple’s relationship. Typically, both partners in the relationship attend the counselling session to discuss the couple’s specific issues. The aim of the couple’s counselling is to help the couple deal appropriately with their immediate problems and to learn better ways of relating in general.

Couple’s therapy or couple’s counselling is a useful modality of hep for couples who are experiencing difficulties such as;

• Repetitive arguments.

• Feeling of distance or emptiness in the relationship.

• Feelings of anger or frustration.

• Pervasive feelings of anger, resentment and dissatisfaction.

• Lack of interest in affection or in a physical relationship with one another.

• Arguments around parenting.

This form of therapy is designed to help couples work out conflicts and other issues in their lives when they are no longer able to communicate effectively on their own. The therapist will help a couple learn to:

Communicate clearly – Each person must be given the chance to fully say what is on his/her mind, while the other partner takes a turn listening and vice versa.

Argue fairly – This means no name calling or dragging up old issues out of the past instead of focusing on the current issue at hand. Instead of using language like “I hate it when you…”; couples learn to substitute less combative language such as “I feel unhappy when…” thus letting their partner know how they feel without automatically putting him/her on the defensive.

Negotiate solutions – Relationships counselling helps couples learn how to reach a compromise they can both live with. When one half of the couple loses, nobody really wins. Decisions need to be made by keeping what’s best for the overall relationship in mind.

Who is this type of Counselling For?

Relationship counselling is for any male/female couple or same sex couple struggling with some aspect of their relationship. Couples do not have to be married or even living together to receive help.

It should also be noted that not every couple who comes for relationship counselling is in deep trouble. Some couples see the therapy as a way to be pro-active about their relationship, helping them to learn better communication skills to keep on the best possible track.

Relationship and mariage counselling can be provided remotely via software such as Zoom.