Making the decision to attend marriage counseling with your spouse is not always easy. Hopefully, both you and your spouse are on the same page and are eager to attend marital counseling in an effort to work through the differences and problems in your marriage.
It is recommended that you seek marriage counseling when some sort of substantial and concerning trouble exists but may still be manageable, rather than waiting until things are extremely bad in your relationship. Typically, most relationship troubles are hard to overcome simply because of common difficulties such as miscommunication, unwillingness to understand another point of view, an absence of compassion, or other common human traits often inherent in many marriages. Marriage counseling can help eliminate these barriers to resolution.
Consider these tips so that you will be better prepared to work with the counselor and to ease some of the fear and anxiety you and your spouse might be feeling.
1. Be Willing to Hear Things You May Not Want to Hear
You and your spouse will both be spending some time opening up about things. It can be difficult to hear criticisms and negativity, but such emotions need to be released in order for both of you to better understand where marital difficulties arise, and how best to deal with them.
2. Be Patient
Marriage counseling does not repair a marriage overnight. Every relationship is different, as are the individuals and how they handle the problems in the marriage. Some difficulties might be resolved rather quickly in one relationship, while the same problems might take longer for others to resolve. If you are patient, and follow the advice of your counselor, you will soon see results.
3. Be Prepared
You may experience many emotions during your first counseling session. To remain focused and on track, write down in advance everything you would like to discuss. You may not have time to talk about all of the items on your list in your first session, but by keeping notes, you are sure to get to everything in time.
It is also important to understand that marital counseling does not start and stop when you enter and leave the counselor’s office. The work continues at home in between sessions, where you and your spouse must take what you have learned in the sessions and apply it to your daily lives.
By working together, you can begin to renew your marriage and hopefully make it even stronger than it was before. If you are looking for help with your marriage, call 501-222-3463 to schedule a free consultation with a Little Rock couples counseling therapist.
