Marriage Counseling
Most enter into marriage expecting a working partnership, lifelong companionship and genuine intimacy in a way that is deeply fulfilling. Yet more than 50% of marriages end in divorce. We have all either seen or known the pain of watching a couple go through this kind of separation, loss, and significant life transition. Many couples reach a point where disappointment, conflict, and anger have become the everyday realities of their marriage. Defensiveness or apathy defines interaction. Deep connection, understanding and even trust seem like distant and haunting memories. And genuine intimacy seems utterly impossible.
In hopelessness, getting out can look like the only option. Yet through years of experience, I have seen communication and reconciliation occur in the most despairing of circumstances. As a marriage counselor, I understand that all marriages will encounter conflicts and experience significant trials. These are not issues that require a quick fix but a complete deep approach to healing, many times addressing deep issues that each partner brought into the marriage with their own hurts and histories. Unless these are addressed, switching partners solves nothing. We are destined to repeat our mistakes and face the choice of going through this devastating process again.
It is my hope that in counseling you and your spouse, we can
- Begin to uncover patterns of communication, belief, and expectation that keep you from connecting as a couple in a meaningful, healthy way
- Delve into individual needs, wounds, and motivations
- Enable you as a couple to begin the hopeful process of serving as agents of healing for one another
- Examine communication and the innate differences and similarities in how you as individuals process the world, enabling you to understand and even relate in what might have felt like a foreign language
- Work through issues of forgiveness and reconciliation
- Dialogue about the kind of marriage you envision and how you as a couple can create and foster a meaningful life and partnership
t is deeply rewarding for me as a therapist to watch as couples learn to see each other in a renewed light and affirm the value in one another and in their relationship.
I encourage you to hold out hope for your marriage—a marriage that can be deepened and strengthened rather than destroyed by periods of trial and challenge.