Couples Therapy

Are Your Marriage Or Relationship Issues Hard To Pin Down But Creating Problems Nonetheless?

a couple outdoors on a bench each on their cell phones facing opposite directions

Are you and your spouse having trouble connecting?

Do you feel as though your expectations for your marriage are not being met?

Has miscommunication caused conflict or tension in your relationship?

Your marriage isn’t in crisis, but something feels off. Maybe your conversations tend to dissolve into arguments, or you find it difficult to see eye-to-eye when it comes to making joint decisions. You can’t quite put your finger on when or where things shifted between you two, but you know, on some level, your paths may have veered off into different directions. 

This distance may have created issues in your ability to be intimate with one another. Perhaps you aren’t sharing as much about your life with your partner as you used to, or you’ve noticed changes in your sex life. This has formed a cycle wherein the less affectionate you are with one another, the more emotionally disconnected you feel. 

Yet, you are committed to the relationship, and you want to figure out how to reignite the spark between you two. You both desire a feeling of belonging in the relationship, but you don’t know how to establish that without creating conflict. 

 

Connect With Us
To Choose Connection In Your Relationship

 

Marital Expectations Are Often Just Premeditated Resentments

Marriage is the process of joining lives together, so there are bound to be compromises and bumps in the road. You may have entered this lifelong commitment with high expectations about what your marriage would look like and which of your needs it would fulfill. It’s possible that one or both of you have lost aspects of your identity in this process, or perhaps there was an assumption that you share the same dreams and love languages. Maybe your needs were overlooked at some point, but you decided to grin and bear it in order to make the best of your relationship. 

In couples therapy, you get a chance to explore your individual needs and the mechanics of your relationship so that you both can feel more seen and understood. 

“Couples Can Either Dialogue About Perpetual Issues Or Live In A State Of ‘Gridlock,’
In A State Of Painful Impasse.”
– Drs. John & Julie Gottman

man on the left and woman on the right in dark hallway arguing

One of the major misconceptions about marriage problems is that they can all be solved. Yet just the opposite is true: the relationship experts who developed The Gottman Method for couples counseling, Drs. John and Julie Schwartz Gottman, have found through research that 69 percent of couples’ conflicts are perpetual ¹. In other words, most relationship conflicts have no resolution.

Part of why we argue or disconnect is because we often view emotions as either good or bad—we don’t “like” fear, sadness, shame, and anger. As a result, we don’t always do the best job communicating these feelings. However, when we try to ignore our emotions or convince ourselves that our partner won’t be supportive, we miss out on valuable opportunities to connect and foster mutual understanding.

These issues are part of the human condition, so it’s essential to learn honest, effective communication as a couple. And soon, we can see that emotions are the intuitive elements that lay the foundation for our relationships. 

With a couples therapist, you can learn to navigate complex experiences alongside an objective, empathetic clinician who can offer guidance and perspective. 

You Can Lay A New Foundation And Rebuild Your Marriage In Couples Therapy

couple sitting on the ground in front of a graphic drawn dream wall for their home

No matter how long you have been together, there are conversations you and your partner haven’t had—and there are probably conversations that you haven’t been able to have without things getting heated. Couples therapy gives you an opportunity to practice these conversations and build the skill set you need to have these conversations outside of session. 

By working with a therapist, you and your partner can develop the tools you need to live purposefully—building and repairing your friendship in a way that cultivates shared meaning in your marriage.

The Therapeutic Process For Couples Counseling

At Insights Counseling Center, we specialize in marriage and couples therapy. Using strengths-based and solution-oriented approaches, we provide a safe, neutral atmosphere where you can have thoughtful and productive conversations as a couple. 

You have two options when scheduling couples counseling with our therapists at Insights Counseling Center, depending on whether the two of you are coming to improve connection and communication or navigating infidelity or betrayal.

If the two of you are navigating infidelity or betrayal, your first one to three sessions will be with Teresa and/or Tal to assess the best combination of treatment for the two of you. All of our therapists specialize in sex addiction and/or betrayal trauma and work as a treatment team to provide support and seek healing and growth for each of you and your family when impacted.

If the two of you are wanting to improve communication and your connection, the first session is a joint counseling session, with both you and your partner, followed by two sessions in which both of you will meet individually with your therapist. Using these discussions and an initial couples assessment that you fill out, we will take the remaining time in therapy to work toward goals that honor the strengths of your relationship and address identified challenges. 

Our therapists use a variety of evidence-based counseling methods, including Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) and The Gottman Method, to help couples slow down and have more constructive dialogues. These approaches can help you bolster conflict-management skills, explore shared values, develop physiological soothing techniques, and enhance your friendship as a couple. When this toolbox is strengthened in couples therapy, you’ll have what you need to apply your skills outside of the counseling space. 

We are not in the business of mediating conflict as much as we’re invested in helping you to build your relationship. And many of our couples have reported meaningful, lasting growth and applicable insight into their partnership, allowing them to stay calm during difficult conversations. 

In couples therapy, you can find shared success and see change on a deep level in all of your relationships. We’ve been working with couples since day one of Insights Counseling Center, and we know that anything is possible in your marriage!

Maybe You Aren’t Quite Convinced That You And Your Partner Need Counseling… 

The problems in our marriage aren’t “big” or critical like other couples we know. 

We hear this all the time, and it is such a gift that your marriage isn’t in crisis—many couples wait too long to give their relationship the attention it needs. We find that when couples do regular maintenance on their relationship, they can spare themselves the pain and damage that come with bigger problems and more critical challenges. 

Think of it this way: the earlier you catch signs of and begin to treat an illness, the better the prognosis and the more manageable the treatment. 

We don’t have the time or money for couples therapy. 

If you’re worried about the cost and commitment of therapy, I encourage you to think about the emotional cost of not being connected or intentional in your relationship. The time and financial commitment of counseling is not forever. And it is our job as couples counselors to help you develop the resources you need in the relationship so that you won’t need to see us for the long term. 

I am afraid that marriage counseling won’t work for us. 

Our clinicians understand how painful and hopeless it is when your most important relationship encounters obstacles. But the problem with hopelessness is that it keeps you from wanting to do anything to fix your marriage because it seems, well, hopeless. 

At Insights Counseling Center, our couples therapists are highly trained in the foremost marriage counseling methods—including The Gottman Method and EFT. These models have become the gold standard for treating couples and bringing relationships back from the brink of separation and divorce. 

So, while we understand that you feel hopeless, we also know that one thing is certain: your marriage won’t get better by doing nothing about it.

You Can Develop Mutual Respect And Understanding On A Deep Level

If you and your partner struggle to connect, couples therapy at Insights Counseling Center can help you rebuild the foundation for a strong, healthy relationship. 

To find out more about how we can help or to get started with one of our couples therapists, please email us or reach out here through our contact form.