Ever Wonder What Happened To Your Relationship?
- Does it seem like you're living with a roommate instead of a romantic partner?
- When you're together, do you spend more time bickering than enjoying each other's company?
- Do you wish you could get back to the way things used to be?
Like many other couples in long-term relationships, you might be struggling to connect with your partner. Perhaps you ask yourself, “Where did all the passion go?” Rather than looking forward to time together, you may avoid it because you either end up fighting or find you have nothing to say. If one or both of you have become emotionally closed off, you probably feel dissatisfied and lonely.
A Lack Of Communication Can Lead To Other Problems
When communication falters, so does the relationship. There can be legitimate reasons for this, such as hectic schedules that pull you in opposing directions and make it difficult to sit down and talk face-to-face. Or maybe the kids or individual interests take up much of your focus, leaving little time or energy for one another.
In the absence of intimacy, you may have grown emotionally distant and find that feelings of warmth have been replaced by contempt or resentment. Taking an objective look at the status of your relationship, you realize you're leading separate lives. To avoid an eventual divorce or breakup, things need to change.
Even though you've hit a rough patch in your relationship, this chapter doesn't reflect your whole story. Couples therapy can help you return to the time when you couldn't wait to spend time together and your loving bond was strong.
Relationships Require Routine Maintenance
It's not uncommon for couples to run aground after many years together. Just like anything else that's worthwhile in life, committed relationships take work to maintain. But because we love and trust each other, we often become complacent. Over time, taking each other for granted in this way causes us to lose our spark and grow disconnected.
And let's face it—there are so many distractions in life preventing us from prioritizing our relationship. Most of us have busy work schedules that lead to burnout. If we have kids, we're expected to make them our primary focus, often to the detriment of our partners. What's more, technology has become its own form of distraction. Even when we're across the table from one another on a “date,” scrolling through our respective phones often causes distance and isolation.
Few Of Us Are Taught How To Be Good Partners
Although we're taught lots of things throughout school, how to be a good partner in a romantic relationship isn't one of them. Because we learn through example, we often model our communication style on the dynamic of our caregivers, for better or for worse.
If we recognize that we might not have had the best role models, we may look to pop culture as our reference point. Unfortunately, the unrealistic versions of relationships depicted in TV, books, and movies aren't much help to us, either. Without a good template to model after, we struggle.
If you have let things slip in your relationship, it's not too late to get back on track. Couples counseling can help you restore intimacy, improve communication, and rediscover the spark you may have lost.
Couples Therapy Helps Reprioritize Your Relationship
As a therapist who specializes in working with couples, I often ask my clients if I could wave a magic wand over their relationship, what would they wish for? The usual response I get is that they wish they could improve their communication and restore the spark they had when they were first dating.
Even though I don't have a magic wand, the good news is that with a commitment to making the marriage work, counseling can help you become friends and lovers again. In couples therapy, you can learn how to communicate to create intimacy, how to truly compromise without giving up on your core beliefs, and—by learning how to listen instead of just talk—deepen your bond.
What To Expect In Sessions
I understand what a valuable investment marriage therapy is and aim to honor your time. As such, I will focus on helping you quickly and effectively. In our initial session, we will seek to understand what the core issues are and clarify what your goals for therapy will be. After the first session, I will meet with each of you once individually—thereafter we will resume group sessions.
If there is any disagreement on what we are setting out to accomplish—such as one of you wants to work on the relationship while the other is talking about separation or divorce—then we will have those conversations upfront. As an unbiased third party, I have no agenda for the outcome.
If one or both of you has put up emotional walls, we will work on taking those walls down so that you can express how you truly feel without criticism or judgment. Insight into your relationship will be gained by asking you how you met and what the beginning of your relationship was like before problems started. By providing you with the right tools, we will work on getting you back to that place.
The Gottman Method And EFT For Couples Therapy
I utilize effective treatments for couples to improve communication, intimacy, and emotional connection, including the Gottman Method and Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). EFT helps couples tap into their emotions on a deeper level and learn how to express them more effectively. With EFT, we can work through barriers and help rebuild trust in the relationship.
As a Level 3 Gottman-trained therapist, I incorporate active listening techniques and other exercises to avoid conflict, such as the gentle start-up approach. You will also learn how to identify the Four Horseman of conflict—criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling—as well as understand and apply the true meaning of compromise. Through active listening, you will empathize with your partner's point of view without necessarily agreeing with them.
When life gets complicated, relationships often get neglected. But by just showing up to couples counseling together once a week, you can put your marriage first again. Working with a couples counselor, your relationship can be better than ever.
But Maybe You're Not Sure If Couples Therapy Is Right For You...
How can we be sure that couples counseling will repair our marriage?
Like most things, what you get out of couples therapy will depend upon what you put into it. When couples enter therapy committed to making changes and open to reasonable compromises, then working with a counselor will be successful.
We've tried couples therapy before and it didn't help us—why should it work now?
Understandably, if you have entered marital counseling before and didn't achieve the results you were hoping for, you may have concerns about trying again. However, not every therapist is the right fit, or perhaps you weren't in the right frame of mind at that time to benefit from couples therapy. The fact that you are contemplating working with a therapist again means that you are committed to your marriage and still want to try to make things work—that is a great start.
Can we repair what's already happened in the past?
When past hurts haven't been resolved and continue to bring up resentment, it can bleed into your current emotional dynamics. In therapy, I can help you learn how to let go of the past and hit the reset button on your relationship so that you can return to how you felt at the beginning.
Improving Communication Can Help Everything Else Fall Into Place
It's not too late to rewrite your story. If you would like to find out more about couples therapy with me, you can call (954) 840-3249, email me at jennifer@facetofacetherapy.com, or visit my contact page.