Why Couples Therapy?

How Couple’s Therapy Can Improve Your Relationship

Do you want to deepen the connection with your partner? Do you want to know how to clean the polluted space in your relationship?  Do you want to learn how to communicate effectively with optimum outcomes? Do you want to restore the joy and happiness you once felt when you said your vows?  How about learning the languages of love in your relationship or learning how to create and maintain intimacy?  Do you want to understand and resolve the chronic arguments and disconnection?  Oh!  How about wanting better sex  – feeling that you matter and sustaining a secure attachment?  If you answered YES to any of these questions, read on!

To Fix Your Relationship You Need a Professional Therapist

Just like you can’t fix your own broken arm or leg or operate on your gall bladder, you are just as incapable of repairing your broken relationship.  There is a value in reaching out for help when your relationship feels like a sinking ship or a turbulent flight.  Making an appointment to resolve these issues is no different than making an appointment with your gynecologist or proctologist, urologist, and so on when something breaks down in your physical system.  Marital conflict and discord need outside help to alleviate the problems and provide solutions to keep the space clean and sacred that you and perhaps your children live in.  This cannot be done without the help of a qualified couple’s counselor/therapist or relationship coach. With more than 50% of marriages ending in divorce and higher percentages in broken relationships, it may be time to seek professional help.

It’s hard to guess how many breakups happen in any given year, in the world, but if roughly 40-50 percent of American marriages end in divorce (per 2017 CDC data) and most of us date at least five people before getting married in the first place (a conservative guess), then that’s basically infinite breakups. Infinite!

This tiny mean thought — no one is forever as happy as they seem in any given moment — felt harmless and buoyant. Heartbreak is widespread

 – The Cut by Edith Zimmerman

Martin Buber’s I THOU Theory

We know from Martin Buber, the philosopher that relationships do not live in the couple.  His “I thou theory teaches us that the relationship lives in the space between.  According to Buber, human beings may adopt two attitudes toward the world: I-Thou or I-It. I-Thou is a relation of subject-to-subject, while I-It is a relation of subject-to-object. I-Thou is a relationship of mutuality and reciprocity, while I-It is a relationship of separateness and detachment.

Over time due to different family systems that each partner brought into the relationship unconsciously, as well as their unresolved childhood wounds, the relational space becomes polluted. When the space becomes polluted, it feels uncomfortable.  If the space is not cleansed it becomes dangerous.  The couple then reacts to the danger in the space they co-created. (Hedy Schleifer). It can be a look, a word, a judgment, a criticism, a defense mechanism, gas lighting, stone walling and of course, emotional and physical abuse. Depending on each partner’s tolerance in the polluted space, will determine how long they can live in it.

The Process: Working with a Couple’s Therapist

On my website you can find countless blogs related to relationships, break-ups and answers.  In my book, I HATE THE MAN I LOVE: A Conscious Relationship is Your Key to Success, I explicitly describe the process I take couples through to resolve what seemed unresolvable, transforming their relationship to a level they never thought possible.  Love/hate is part of the human experience.  We can have oppositional feelings co-existing simultaneously.  You can feel love for your mother, and at the same time, hate some of her behavior.  You can love your children and at the same time feel hostile for their defiance, rebelliousness and seditiousness. This is true for all relationships, not just married couples or partners. It’s all a part of being human.

Hope and Courage

The good news is you can turn a sinking ship and a turbulent flight into a safe debarkation and landing by learning how to have relational maturity and conflict resolution. It takes a professional to help you heal your relationship and restore what you once had and have since lost. It’s impossible to do it alone because you need to step out of the mountain to see the mountain, and a guide is essential! Objectivity exceeds subjectivity! There is of course the option to settle and capitulate into your dysfunctional relationship because accepting is easier than change or perhaps nothing might be worse than leaving.  Fear is the root of stagnation. Most people are fearful of the unknown.  Thoreau once said couples often live lives of quiet desperation, and that of course, is a choice. However, if you want to grow closer to each other over the years—if you want to enrich the space you both live in, even after the children are grown and gone, then put on your big girl and boy panties and reach out for help.  It takes courage to heal.  It takes time to heal!  It takes money to heal!  It is perhaps the best investment you will ever make in yourself and your relationship.

 

---

Joan E Childs, LCSW is a renowned psychotherapist, inspirational speaker and author of I Hate The Man I Love: A Conscious Relationship is Your Key to Success. In private practice since 1978, she specializes in individual and couple’s therapy, grief therapy, EMDR, NLP, inner child work and codependency. Learn more about her services at www.joanechilds.com.