Many people report that they started out as friends with their spouse prior to getting married. However, over the years this friendship seems to change. Some people think that once you get married you are no longer “friends.” However, it is very healthy to keep up on the friendship aspect of your marriage. When a couple [...]
Determining what role your friends will play in your life after you’re married can be difficult for some people. Perhaps, you always spent Friday night with your pals and you wonder, should this continue? Or maybe you struggle to deal with the amount of time your spouse spends with friends. Learning to set healthy boundaries [...]
Years ago I was part of a couple. We were friends with another couple. We thought of sharing a house. So, we went to some meetings and shared a suite. I put the newspaper I was reading down on my bed. That offended the woman in the other couple. “You just don’t do that!—you put [...]
You go visit your family or friends. You all start talking about the past or the recent present. Someone tells you new information about what happened regarding you. It may be a fact or an insight into who they think you are. All of a sudden you think you have to reevaluate everything. You feel [...]
We all love our pets. We would do anything for them. They are our companions and love objects. We often give them the care we should give ourselves. Yet we might be giving them too much attention and they may be running our lives too much. A few examples should help clarify the situation. The [...]
Spending time away from your spouse and visiting with friends and family can actually improve your relationship. Your spouse is not going to meet all of your needs all the time. It is important to try and get your needs met in other ways instead of depending on your partner, and then feeling disappointed in [...]
In case you’re looking for some free advice, and you haven’t yet made the decision to go forward with real therapy or marriage counseling, I want to introduce you to a website we started 4 years ago. Talk About Marriage (http://talkaboutmarriage.com) was started so the public would have an open, supportive forum where they could [...]
Often, we make some mistakes in normal dealings with older people. These mistakes either make the person feel like a baby or child or else somewhat alone or shunned. There are some actions we can do to make the person feel better—they don’t cost anything and they’re easy to implement. The first mistake is assuming [...]
One of the most important aspects of any relationship, particularly a marriage, is friendship. When you look at your partner, can you say they are your best friend? Can you confide all your fears to them, talk about them, and perhaps work together to resolve them? There are often times when third parties are our [...]
One of the areas that pre-marital counseling focuses on is the maintenance of independence. In the past, one of the leading causes of marriage problems was the lack of, or perceived lack of, freedom. When a couple meet and fall in love, their focus remains on each other, often to the detriment of their friends [...]
If you look around your extended network of friends and family I’m sure you’ll come across a couple that has divorced then, several years later, reunited and remarried. Why do they remarry, and do they work? It’s a good question and there is a lot to be learned from these remarriages. Every relationship is different [...]
Do you know anyone who’s relationship fell apart and then months later came together again? It happens quite frequently and if you were to run a microscope over their relationship, you will most likely find one common thread – friendship. Not common friends, although they can help. We are talking about friendship with each other. [...]
Friendship is like good insurance. You never know just how important it is until you really need it. In fact, the supportive nature of friendship is so subtle and so integral to our everyday quality of life, that we can sometimes take it for granted. For instance, this is a common occurrence with women when [...]
Friendships are a major factor in self-growth and the continuance of a healthy relationship. The importance of outside friendships in a healthy marriage can never be overestimated. If you or your partner surround yourselves only with friends who have a negative opinion on relationships and commitment as a lifestyle, it will eventually begin to degrade [...]
We marry our best friends, someone we’re comfortable with, but we grow and change over time–and at different times from our spouses. How do we handle these “growth spurts?” Sometimes we need someone to talk to, to help us work through the changes that inevitably come with long-term relationships, and that’s where couples therapy can [...]
The television series Sex in the City depicted a group of girlfriends who met often–and their conversations always seemed to gravitate to their relationships. They’d complain, brag, and whine about what was going right–or wrong–in their relationships. And one by one, they headed into or out of marriage 9it’s television, so drama happens). Marriage counseling in [...]
Dahlia and Frank entered couples counseling for an unusual reason. Both wanted to break up but weren’t quite sure how to do it. They had been struggling to make a “final split” as Frank called it, for over 4 years. Both decided their relationship was too inherently flawed and beyond repair. But because of financial [...]
Marriage counseling teaches communication skills, among other things. Many times, improper communications skills can stand in the way of a healthy, thriving marriage. Here’s what one counselor had to say: I think many couples give lip service to the skill of listening. Many don’t realize that they aren’t listening very well, even when they are [...]
Marta was not having an easy time letting go. Her husband Sean had been unfaithful to her during their first year of marriage, over 10 years ago. It had put such a schism in their marriage that by the time they entered marriage counseling, neither were communicating at all. As Sean put it: I made [...]
There are a myriad of ways we communicate with people every day, whether its through our body language or through our words. And it doesn’t stop there. Lack of communication can be a form of a communication. Silence counts. In marriage counseling, couples learn new ways to communicate about their relationships that are generally more [...]
Nothing can more allusive to some than the idea of self-love. What is it? Do I wake up and hug myself? Stare into a mirror and repeatedly say, “I love you, I love you”? These actions can ring false yet it still doesn’t negate the importance to learning to love yourself. Its one of the [...]
Entering into couples counseling isn’t necessarily an easy process. There are usually internal obstacles that most of us encounter before entering into a therapeutic process. Questions like these may arise: “What if the counselor takes his side and not mine?” “What if I’m blamed for all of the problems? I’ll feel worse than I already [...]
It’s often something we don’t give much thought to, but tone of voice matters. We can tell almost instantly how someone feels but the way they speak. A tense, constricted voice may put us on “red alert” while a gentle soothing voice helps us relax and genuinely listen. Couples counselors notice the way you talk [...]
Daryl and Sarah were in unusual situation – one that the experienced couples counselor they had chosen hadn’t witnessed before. Daryl was still married – to another woman. Daryl and his wife had established separate living situations years ago but decided to stay together until the children grew older. Daryl had met Sarah at the [...]
It’s not always easy to tell if your marriage or relationship is in need of couples counseling. All relationships, including friendships, have their own rhythm, with varying ebbs and flows. This is often difficult to accept, especially for newer relationships. The new couple wants to believe that the “enmeshment” phase will last forever. This is [...]
