Marriage is a wonderful thing… but it’s NOT always easy. It’s the foundation of a family, a lasting relationship, and a great source of happiness. However, when it comes to being married, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. In fact, it can be downright challenging! As a result, many couples seek out marriage counseling to help them improve their relationship and to make it work better than ever before. In this article, we’re going to explore 10 of the top benefits of marriage counseling.
1. Better Communication and Less Fights.
While couples don’t always see eye-to-eye on everything, if arguments are happening more frequently and causing significant distress in the relationship, it may be time to work with a counselor. Couples counseling can help address underlying issues in a relationship. Your therapist can help you practice new ways of connecting–even and especially when you disagree, leading to less fights and higher relationship satisfaction.
2. Deepen Emotional Connection
When couples are falling in love, they often spend significant time getting to know each other, leading to a strong emotional connection. As life goes on and work, kids and other responsibilities get in the way, couples may have less time to connect with each other. When this happens, people often feel lonely and unsupported in their relationship. Couples counseling can help to reconnect and prioritize each other, leading to better emotional intimacy and secure attachment.
3. Improve Sex Life and Physical Intimacy
If you are dissatisfied with your sex life, you might be feeling frustrated, alone, rejected or unhappy. To complicate matters, many couples feel uncomfortable and nervous broaching this topic. A couples therapist can help partners discuss sexual concerns, desires, expectations and unmet needs in a supportive way to better resolve and heal intimacy issues.
4. Help Talking About a Tough Topic
Sex isn’t the only topic that can be hard to bring up with a partner. If there is something important and yet difficult to discuss it in the relationship, a couples therapist can help to address and work through the issues in a more relaxed and supportive environment.
5. To Rebuild Trust
There are many ways for trust to be lost in a relationship: small lies add up, broken promises hurt, and infidelity can tear relationships apart. It is possible though to rebuild that trust when both partners are committed to the process of improving their relationship. A couples therapist can help rebuild a secure and satisfying relationship.
6. Wanting the Marriage to Last
More and more couples are seeing premarital counseling these days as an important and valuable investment in their future. Today almost 50% of marriages end in divorce. Taking the time before getting marriage to set intentions of committing to a life together can be deeply rewarding.
7. Reduce Stress Associated With Parenthood.
Becoming a parent is significantly exhilarating and incredibly stressful. So stressful, in fact, that research shows that the average relationship takes a big dip in relationship satisfaction from the time the first child is born until the youngest child leaves the home. If you are noticing a strain on your relationship during new parenthood–this is totally normal, but there are ways to improve happiness in the relationship. If you want to reduce the stress and learn better ways to cope and support each other, couples counseling can help.
8. Help Through Grief, Health Problems, or Life Changes.
The loss of a loved one, infertility, a miscarriage, health problems and major life changes can all be incredibly hard to experience. Both individuals in the relationship may be experiencing their own pain, loss, confusion or sadness, leaving it hard to support the other. A couples counselor can help both to move through the difficult times.
9. To be Healthier and Live Longer.
Statistics show that an unhappy marriage can increase the chances of getting sick by about 35% and can even shorten lifespan by about 4 years. Research has also shown that a healthy marriage can actually lower the occurrences of pneumonia, heart attacks and even cancer. Chronic stress associated with unhappy relationships has significant physiological consequences. Improving relationships in couples counseling can greatly improve overall health.
10. To improve other Areas of your Life Such as Work or Leisure Activities.
According to research, a person in a secure relationship experiences benefits in multiple areas of their lives. Benefits of a secure bond with a partner can include an increase in confidence, more assertiveness, improved learning abilities, lower incidences of depression and mental illness, and better overall resiliency. With improvement in relationships, many notice improvements in many other areas of life.
Relationships are stressful. When a relationship is based on trust and good communication, physical and emotional needs are more likely to be met. Marriages are like any other relationship. They require work and effort. You have to put in the time and energy to maintain a healthy relationship. Couples counseling and marriage therapy have incredible benefits.
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At Northshore Family Counseling, we are passionately committed to providing clinically competent counseling to the Northshore community and surrounding areas. Our goal is to guide individuals, families, and couples on a journey of self-exploration and growth, empowering them to live life to its fullest potential. Serving the areas of Slidell, The Northshore, and Greater New Orleans, we extend our support to children, adolescents, adults, couples, families, and churches.
