Marital Counseling – Counseling can help couples work through divorce causing issues

Considering marital counseling? From this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part. These are traditional wedding vows many people commit to without ever thinking they will get to a place in life in which they question if these are promises they can or want to keep. Most people get married to a person they could not imagine living without, a person they get to have that happily ever after with. People think “Those divorce rates will never apply to us. We love each other.” Fast forward 3, 5, 12, 36 years later, and many couples find themselves in a place where divorce sounds like the best solution for the situation.

According to the CDC the current divorce rate in America is 2.9 per 1,000 people. The average length of a marriage in the United States is 8.2 years. Additionally, the national divorce rate for adults between the ages of 25-39 years of age is 24 per 1,000 people.

Considering divorce? How can marital counseling can help

There are many reasons couples find themselves considering divorce. Some of these reasons include: lack of commitment, no longer compatible/have grown apart, issues being able to communicate with each other, affairs, disagreements over finances, substance use/abuse, domestic abuse, and disagreements over family responsibilities/roles.

To explore a few of these reasons further, looking at incompatibility/growing apart, this can happen because:

• the couple has a lack of shared values
• the couple married when they were young and still figuring out who they were as individuals which no longer aligns within the relationship
• sexual difficulties are occurring
• and/or religious differences are present

Signs that point to a couple having financial compatibility issues include:

• one person keeps secrets or lies about purchases
• one person does not discuss large purchases with the other prior to making the purchase
• the couple is not able to talk regularly and calmly about their finances
• the couple can’t or won’t set joint financial goals
• if financial goals are set one person keeps undermining the goals

Finally, different opinions about family responsibilities can include:

• differing views on how to raise children
• child care responsibilities
• other family and/or household obligations

Seeking counseling for marriage?

So how do you determine if it may be time to seek counseling for issues within your marriage? Communication is a very important thing within a marriage. If it seems as though you can no longer talk to your spouse, counseling can help you both learn tools to improve your ability to productively communicate with one another. If one person or both involved in the marriage have engaged in a physical or emotional affair, counseling can be a place to work through broken trust and help to rebuild the relationship. Lastly, if one person is feeling as though they want a divorce and the other is not, counseling can help a couple identify what conflicts have led to a potential divorce and where can compromises as well as changes be made to improve the relationship, possibly resulting in the individual changing their mind about wanting to divorce.

Marriage can be a wonderful life-long journey we get to share with another human being, however, it is also something that takes a lot of hard work and commitment to properly maintain. Sometimes we think the hardest part of getting married is finding the right person when, in fact, the hardest part is continuing to work at the relationship just has hard at year 3, 5, 12, and 36 as you did in the very beginning before you were married.