Marriage Counselling

Most standard approaches to marriage counselling require that the couple come together to discuss, in each joint sessions with the practitioner, one or more of the highly emotive and contentious issues which are dividing the couple and disrupting their lives.

This policy alone can account for a large proportion of couples who drop out after the first one or two sessions. The reason for this is very simply that one of the most effective and usual ways of avoiding one’s own guilt is to blame someone else – in this case the other partner. The very last thing the person wants is to feel his or her defence under attack at the first meeting! Also, one risks the couple continuing the discussion on the way home – which can drift into the usual pattern of confrontation and argument with all its attendant upset and distress. This can give a distorted and negative view of the whole process of therapy in general and the therapist in particular.

At Effective Marriage Counselling we seek to begin restoring the quality of the communication before any issues are discussed at all. The rationale here is issues come and go in a relationship, but the quality of the communication defines the relationship and is therefore, in a hierarchy of importance, almost at the very top. In fact, from the practitioner’s point of view and for all practical purposes it is at the very top.

Thus one begins to see that many of the issues complained about at the outset of marriage counselling derive from the poor state of communication and general interaction of the couple. When this is addressed by the practitioner, the benefits are immediate and directly proportional to the degree of adoption by both parties.

This is a relationship of two parties, and the quality of that relationship is created by both parties acting and reacting with and against each other from the beginning. As the quality of the interaction changes so too does the quality of the relationship.

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