“Counselling for couples”, also called “marriage counselling”, covers the services a counsellor trained in couple relationships offers to help a wife and husband get on better and find more satisfaction in their married life.
The marital relationship is the core of family relationships, and the family is the setting we all need in order to live in peace, grow and flourish.
Marriage counselling is professional help for couples: first to identify their problems and conflicts, then to understand what caused them, next to see why these problems persist, and finally to use effective new approaches they have not tried before to resolve them and improve their relationship.
Many of couples’ problems come from not knowing what the other person needs and wants, and from each partner being unable to express their own wishes clearly and effectively.
With marriage counselling, couples can:
1) Make wise, effective decisions to rebuild a marital relationship that is under threat or damaged.
2) Work to strengthen their relationship, so that each feels they gain more from the other’s presence.
3) Learn how to enrich their spouse’s life by understanding his or her needs and wishes.
4) Recognise their differences, and learn to turn them into common ground, work to reduce them, or live with them.
Studies have shown that many marital problems come from lacking the knowledge or skills to recognise and solve the problems couples meet in their daily life together. In many cases, though, problems are rooted in fears and expectations that people are not clearly aware of — expectations, wishes and fears rooted in difficulties in the childhood of one or both partners. In counselling, each partner needs to work, with the counsellor’s help, to understand their own difficulties, so that they can keep them from damaging the relationship.
What reliable marriage counselling looks like
In the first sessions, marriage counsellors teach their clients that in counselling, rather than trying to persuade and change the other, each of them can work only on their own share of the problem. And they reassure them that any sound change in either partner inevitably encourages the other to change too.
It is important to stress that a counsellor’s job is not to make decisions for others. Their behaviour should never lead clients to believe that they lack the capacity to reach sound decisions or to make the right changes in their lives.
So if you notice your counsellor using methods that seem to aim at deciding or acting for you, you should know it is time to see another counsellor.
Who is qualified to work as a marriage counsellor?
A specialist marriage counsellor holds at least a master’s degree in family counselling, rehabilitation counselling or clinical psychology with a family therapy specialism. They also hold a practising licence from the Psychology and Counselling Organization, and work in a licensed counselling centre or health-network clinic. Under professional ethics and the technical principles of counselling, marriage counsellors must keep their clients’ confidences. They may not share any information with your spouse without your permission, or pass it to anyone else. They may not behave as though they understand your problems better than you do, or know you better than you know yourself. Wherever you see such behaviour, it is probably time to change counsellors.
The main reasons couples come for marriage counselling
Some of the issues couples may bring to a marriage counsellor are:
– Problems communicating and talking with each other.
– Disagreement and conflict about how to raise the children.
– Disagreement about the kind of relationship to have with each partner’s family.
– Problems in the sexual relationship.
– Problems of substance misuse and addiction.
– Problems of bad temper, anger and aggression, and emotional or physical abuse of a spouse.
– Psychological difficulties in either partner that distress the other.
– Problems arising from a spouse’s infidelity.
It is worth stressing that although marriage counselling is classed as a brief psychological intervention, reaching the result you want often takes at least ten sessions (once a week).
It is also worth noting that although it is very desirable for both partners to take part, marriage counselling does not depend on both attending every session together. Where one partner, for whatever reason, refuses to take part, or cannot attend because of work or anything else, the attendance and commitment of one partner alone has had a great many positive effects on the couple’s relationship. Remember that learning to trust a counsellor takes time. If at first you cannot talk easily with them and say what has gone unsaid, that is no surprise. A little patience and a few more meetings will resolve it.
The methods and tools marriage counsellors use
– Specialist interviews.
– Specialist techniques for identifying problems and rebuilding couples’ relationships.
– Questionnaire-based assessment tools, on paper or computer.
– And sometimes direct observation of how the couple interact, at the counselling sessions.
– Referral, where needed, to other health specialists such as gynaecologists, urologists, psychiatrists, neurologists and social workers, drawing on their services or expertise to assess and treat underlying problems in the marital relationship.
Dr Bahman Bahmani, PhD in counselling, associate professor and faculty member, University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences
Couples therapy
Problems in marriage, romantic and marital relationships are among the most common reasons people see a therapist, and therapists who mainly work with such couples are called couples therapists. Couples therapy explores the partners’ experiences, beliefs and behaviour towards each other. There are many forms of couples therapy, but what they share is the aim of easing the behavioural and emotional turmoil between partners, adjusting their maladaptive and unhelpful patterns of behaviour, and ultimately preparing them for personal growth and maturity.
Couples therapists are good allies: troubled couples can bring them their quarrels and problems and receive something they cannot get at home or from others. A therapist in this field assumes that the distress and unhappiness a couple faces is more than their individual problems and symptoms. The therapist helps the couple assess their life together and decide what changes are needed, and tries to clear up the mutual misunderstandings, unreasonable expectations and unspoken assumptions that keep the conflict between them going.
There are many kinds of couples therapy; I will mention four. The first is individual: each partner can see a therapist on their own and, through learning and practising personal and social life skills, learn to live well. The second, conjoint therapy, is where the therapist treats both spouses together in joint sessions. The third is group couples therapy, in which husband and wife, or one of them, sit in sessions with other couples. In these sessions the aim is for four couples (eight people) and two therapists to look at the issues of life together and find solutions. The fourth is combined treatment, bringing all of these forms together; here the therapist decides which methods to use at the same time, depending on the pace they want to set for treatment.
Many problems can be worked through in couples therapy, including: marital conflict, domestic violence, sexual problems and disorders; preventing divorce and divorce counselling; treating infidelity and rebuilding afterwards; enriching the marriage and deepening physical and sexual intimacy; and preparing for custody and adoption.
Prepared by Abbas Mouziri