Why Seek Marriage Counselling?

Married couples are often terrorized by the mere mention of marriage counseling. When they are advised to seek a marriage counsellor, they feel it is a last resort for an impending divorce. Married couples should realize that a divorce has diverse and damaging effects to both adults and children thus every effort must be made to save a marriage.

A divorce affects children more than they affect the husband and wife. Although the once married couple will be in the most stressful situation in their life, children are still the most affected. Most children of divorce couples go through a lot of negative feelings and experiences.

Children often feel abandoned after a divorce. Anger is the worst feeling a child can have. They develop anger towards either or both parents. Some children blame themselves for not being able to do anything to keep their parents from divorcing. This guilty feeling often leads them to resort to negative things.

Before you resort to divorce think of your children. Seek a marriage counsellor and try to salvage your marriage. The question however is, when should you seek counseling?

1. When you and your partner are starting to experience negative communication. Communication is extremely important to make a marriage work. Negative communication can range from always having a negative tone to not communicating with each other at all.
2. When either partner is having an extra-marital affair or has just ended one. When your partner was in an affair, it takes a lot of commitment, dedication and willingness to be able to forgive, forget and move on. If both partners want to fully recover, counseling therapies are a big help in bring back the “lost” trust and confidence.
3.  When the romance is gone and the couple regard each one as mere roommates. There are a lot of components to a marriage. A marriage must have communication and intimacy. When these are drifting away or gone, there is no marriage to speak of. Counseling will bring back these marriage elements to the life of the couple.
4. When the couple is not able to resolve issues and differences by themselves. Knowing something is wrong is just half of the problem. Knowing how to fix the problem is the other half. Counselors will guide couples on the right direction to take until they are again able to resolve issues on their own.
5. When the couple stays married for the sake of the children. Couples resort to this option instead of separation or divorce because they feel this is what is best for their children. Staying together when both are hostile to each other is as detrimental to children as a divorce. Children are intelligent. No matter how much a couple fakes their co-existence, children know when not all is well between their parents.

All marriages can be salvaged. Divorce is not the only solution for husbands and wives who cannot live under the same roof. A marriage counselor will help couples get back into each other’s embrace. The couple however must be willing to commit to the process for it to work.