Does Your Relationship Need Couple Therapy?

By Author: Jennifer Baxt
Total Articles: 200
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Our world is ever changing. Fifty years ago, in the 1950's, and for all time before that, divorce was almost unheard of. Couples married, and expected to remain married for life. Because divorce was so taboo at that time, couples managed to work out their problems, and make the best of their situations. They simply had to learn how to live together, because the alternative was literally ‘unthinkable' and not to be considered.

Things have certainly changed! Today, more than half of all marriages end in divorce. We no longer are required to learn how to live with each other, because there is always the option of ‘getting out' without society ‘marking' us for the effort. You've probably heard of ‘starter marriages.' You may have thought it was a joke. It isn't.

The truth is that anyone who is serious about maintaining a relationship will benefit from couple therapy. Even the strongest of relationships can benefit and grow even stronger with the help of a qualified couple's therapist.

Society mistakenly tends to believe that only those individuals in relationships that are rocky need ...
... counseling, but this isn't so. Note the word ‘individual.' We are all very individual, separate people. We all have our own way of thinking, and our own way of getting things done - and when two individuals come together to form a relationship, two worlds literally collide.

When you enter into a relationship, there is somebody else that must be considered in all of your decisions and actions, and this is exceedingly hard for many people to adjust to. This is especially true for adults who have ‘been on their own' for some time.

No matter how well you get along with your significant other - whether you live in the same household or not - you will find that couples therapy will not only give you and your partner a foundation on which you can build, but that you will also gain greater understanding as to how that person thinks and operates. This alone makes it easier to maintain the relationship down the road, when life throws problems your way - as life does indeed tend to do.

Couple therapy can be carried out in a variety of ways, with a variety of counseling methods. Some therapists will work with only one or two methods, while others will work with the method that they and the couple deem best for that particular couple, and their particular problems, if any exist.

Look at it this way - if you do not seek couple therapy when everything is still okay, you can bet that when things go wrong, the therapy will not only take longer, it will probably cost a great deal more. Furthermore, the relationship may have deteriorated to the point where it cannot be salvaged. Avoid this by entering into couple therapy with your partner while things are still going great! The love that you feel today is worth saving for tomorrow.