What to expect in relationship counseling?

Posted by latherapy on October 14th, 2022

A marriage counselor in Silverlake ensures better understanding and relationship in the couple. It is a viable option for those couples who are experiencing strife and feeling disengaged.

Marriage counseling is a therapy for resolving conflicts between couples and improving their relationships. It is a part of marriage counseling to help couples make the right decisions whether they want to rebuild a relationship or go their separate ways.

There are various reasons for couples conflict, some of them could be stressful life events and major life changes. Therapy provided by relationship counselor Silverlake can identify the patterns causing problems and help them to fix them. The counselor expects you to be honest, open, and talkative with your partner. Let's see what happens in marriage counseling.

1: Meet together as a couple

Meeting with your therapist for the first sessions requires you and your spouse to meet the therapist together. Most of the sessions will be together apart from a few individual sessions. A few individual sessions will help therapists to receive some background and history on each of you separately and give the counselor a chance to be more understanding of each of your specific needs.

2: Understanding the history of your past relationships

A therapist will now want to understand, even if it's just a very high level, what kind of difficulties you and your partner have gone through when you were together throughout.  They even want information about the basics of your relationship. How do you meet, how long you have been together, what are the conflicts, is there any trauma experience that has ever happened with them, do couples communicate with each other or not, etc.

3: Setting goals

During the first session, you will also set goals for your time in couples counseling. This goal requires thoughtfulness and honesty. Maybe you want to show more affection and love to your partner while also your partner wants to show you some empathy. Whatever your personal goals are, sharing with your partner and relationship counselor is one of the first steps to achieving them.

4: Learning new skills to improve the relationship

The main purpose of marriage counseling is to learn new skills that will benefit the relationship beyond the counseling sessions. What are those important skills? Trust, honesty, communication, forgiveness for each other, patience to listen to each other, stress management, and others. Both may possess some of them, but have just forgotten how to use them.

Now that you have better understood what to expect in couples therapy, it's time to improve your relationship with your spouse and save your relationship.