Effective Marriage Counseling: Expert Guidance for Strengthening Relationships

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What Is Marriage Counseling?

Marriage Counseling is a type of joint counseling in which a couple seeks help, typically due to relationship issues. It differs from other types of therapy because there are two married individuals involved in each session.

Marriage counseling is considered by many therapists as the most difficult therapy to undertake, according to Block, especially with couples who are angry, hurt and treat the therapy as a medium to prove their partner wrong. “They view the process as a court and the therapist a judge who will hopefully straighten out their partner,” he says, stressing that is not the purpose of marriage therapy.

At its core, marriage counseling is meant to help couples understand and resolve conflicts to improve their relationship. It’s intended to give couples the tools to communicate with more compassion and less fear while learning how to problem-solve and deal with conflict in a healthy manner.

You don’t need to be struggling in your relationship to seek marriage counseling. In fact, you may have a better result if you don’t wait until your marriage is unraveling. “Marriage counseling can benefit couples who just want to strengthen their relationship and feel more connected and bonded with one another,” says Jaime Bronstein, licensed relationship therapist and coach and host of Love Talk Live on LA Talk Radio.

What Types of Marriage Counseling Are Available?

Therapists draw from a variety of different theoretical orientations and methodologies when treating couples. Some of the most frequently used techniques include:

Congnitive behavioral therapy
The Gottman Method
Emotionally focused therapy (EFT)
Positive psychology therapy
Solution focused therapy (SFT)

“Just as is the case with individual therapy, marriage therapists take differing approaches to treating couples,” says Block. Cognitive behavioral-oriented therapists, he adds, focus on troubling thoughts and attitudes and how to manage them—for example, the “shoulds” that create conflict, such as, “he should be a better earner,” or “she should be more sexual,” negative thoughts about themselves and/or their partner, or attempts to mind read their partner’s wants and needs instead of using direct and assertive communication. The goal is to manage thoughts in a more effective way so they don’t lead to feelings that are difficult to cope with or actions that are not productive for the relationship.

Other techniques, such as emotionally focused therapy (EFT) focus heavily on emotion and emotional regulation as a means of developing bonds and trust in a relationship. This therapy works to expand a couple’s understanding of their emotions, enabling them to control their emotional responses and foster deeper connection. Positive psychology therapy focuses on enhancing traits and behaviors such as optimism, happiness, creativity, perseverance and hope in a person’s everyday life, while solution focused therapy (SFT) is goal and solution oriented, as the name might suggest.

“What’s important is not so much which ‘theoretical orientation’ is used, however, but whether the methodology and therapist are right for the couple,” says Beatty Cohan, psychotherapist and author of For Better, For Worse, Forever. “It may take several sessions for a couple to assess whether the counseling is helpful and, if you find that you are not seeing improvement or don’t have a good connection with your therapist, remember there are many other therapists who can help you.”

Who Might Consider Marriage Counseling?

Marriage counseling is for any couple who has tried to resolve their issues on their own without success. Unsure if you and your partner fall into that category? Indicators include the following signs:

You have poor communication and are unable to agree on anything
You’re constantly fighting or bickering
You’re incapable of problem-solving together or experience unequal decision making
You have trust issues
You feel a lack of connection, emotionally and physically
You are experiencing sexual issues, or not having sex at all
You have lifestyle or life-goal disagreements (i.e. money, kids, where to live, etc.)
You are reeling from one partner (or both) engaging in infidelity
You are experiencing more difficult days together than peaceful and joyful days

“The reality is most couples wait until they are emotionally exhausted from the turmoil within their marriage before seeking marriage counseling,” says Bronstein. The good news is, most couples don’t wait so long that the counseling is rendered ineffective.

In fact, the majority of couples enter counseling within two years of the onset of their problems, which gives them a reasonable opportunity to resolve their issues, according to a recent study in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy.

“If you are just surviving and not thriving in your relationship, it’s time to go to marriage counseling,” says Bronstein. “Ideally, a healthy marriage is made up of two people who grow individually and together as a couple.”

What If My Partner Isn’t Open to Marriage Counseling?

While 79% of males think their partner would be open to couples therapy, only 66% of women think their partner would go. However, studies have shown that 52% of people who have never tried marriage counseling say they would consider attending.

If you’re nervous about how to approach the topic with your spouse, Cohan recommends setting up the conversation in a way that isn’t putting anyone on the defensive. Instead, share your desire to learn about tools that could benefit the health of your marriage. To get started, she suggests trying something like: “I know how much we still care about each other, and I think we could benefit from some outside input. After all, professional athletes and businesspeople have teams and resources to help them maximize their potential. We don’t need to navigate life’s problems and stressors on our own.”

What Happens During Marriage Counseling?

If you’re trying marriage counseling for the first time, it can be helpful to know what to expect. It’s not unusual for a therapist to do an initial couples evaluation, or to meet with each partner separately to rule out things like ongoing affairs or individual psychological issues. A therapist might also suggest separate meetings to help each partner with their specific concerns, with the goal of resolving those concerns in the couple’s relationship.

“If one or both partners have extramarital affairs that haven’t ended, or serious psychological or psychiatric problems, it’s virtually impossible to do effective marital therapy,” says Cohan. In that case, individual therapy may be recommended before any couples sessions are booked.

If your therapist deems couples conseling to be beneficial, sessions will likely occur on a weekly or biweekly schedule for about an hour at a time, though length can vary per couple. The duration of your marriage counseling will depend on the issues you’re facing. Some couples may have positive results in as few as four sessions, while others may need many more.

Does Marriage Counseling Work?

Indeed, marriage counseling can be effective when both people are willing to learn, grow and heal individually and as a couple, but results are largely predicated on a couple’s dedication to counseling.

“There are two people who are dancing a dance—both functional and dysfunctional—and two people need to be willing to acknowledge their roles and be committed to making some changes in the dynamic of their relationship,” says Cohan. “So, even though they can’t change their history, today is a new day and today they can decide whether they want to resolve their problems and move forward.”

Bronstein also notes the need for willingness in counseling, rather than want. “Willingness’ authentically breeds change, as it’s two people who have the conviction to make it work, and when two people believe in making it work, it can most definitely work,” she says. “Love is why we live, so if there are problems in your relationship, marriage counseling and can help you do the best you can to resolve them.”

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