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Marriage Counseling
“The Top 5 Signs You May Need Marriage Help” by Dr. Beth Erickson You’ve just had a fight with your spouse. Is this a harbinger of a brewing storm, or is it normal? How do you know when you and your spouse need marriage help?
As a practicing couples counselor for over three decades, I have seen marriage from every angle. I’ve worked in premarital couples counseling to help smart couples assess their strengths and identify their weaknesses as a couple. I have done couples counseling with folks who’ve been married for five months and for 50 years. Sometimes, they seek my help for marriage enrichment, and sometimes because their marriage is in trouble. I have done divorce and post-divorce counseling to help couples stop recycling the same problems in their divorce that plagued them in their marriage.. And I have been a divorce mediator for couples who seek a saner way of divorcing and an arbitrator for couples who insist on continuing their marital conflict long after they have divorced.
From all of those experiences, I offer the following 5 major signs that you probably need marriage help.
1.When you and your spouse continually rehash the same argument, you probably need marriage help. Whether you literally have the same argument, or if just the dynamics of the fight are the same, your marriage is in trouble. In healthy marriages, couples know how to identify and address their issues with each other before they become ongoing problems that tear at the fabric of their marriage. So if you find yourselves having an old, familiar argument, you are wise to seek couples counseling before you dig a rut so deep that it is difficult to get out of it.
2.If arguing and fighting are the primary way you and your spouse emotionally connect, your marriage is in danger. In a strange way, fighting is safe because neither of you has to feel vulnerable to the other, and yet it generates an intense connection. However, this mode of emotional connecting will become emotionally – and sometimes physically – dangerous. If this description fits your relationship, you definitely will need marriage help.
3.If you find your self-esteem eroded since marrying your spouse, your marriage is becoming too emotionally costly for anybody’s good. Of course, your marriage isn’t necessarily the only challenge to your self-confidence. But especially if you sense that your spouse is deliberately undermining you, you are in danger of losing yourself in your relationship dysfunction. This benefits nobody, and you likely will need couples counseling to help reverse this negative dynamic. 4.If it seems like everything and everybody is more important to your spouse than you, this makes very lopsided investments in your relationship. Maybe you tend to feel that way anyway, in which case you could need your spouse’s help to heal that old wound. You will need to work on that to be an equal partner in your relationship.. But if you have married a very self-centered spous, you definitely will need marriage help to correct this potentially untenable situation. 5.If you find yourself just not liking your spouse any more, something is going very wrong. I am not talking about the temporary feeling we all occasionally experience when we are convinced that marring your spouse was the dumbest decision you’re ever made! Rather, if this feeling is persistent and gets worse, you definitely will need marriage help before there is nothing left between you.
In conclusion, while there is no one-size-fits-all approach to assessing a marriage, I hope this gives you some guidelines. © Dr. Beth Erickson 6/08 |
Marriage Counseling
Dr. Beth Erickson
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