Exploring your patterns of relationship through individual or couples counselling can help you to understand why a relationship might be difficult for you and to find more helpful ways to share your life with other people.
Whether problems arise with parents or partners, colleagues or friends; it can feel easier to lay the blame at the other person’s door. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that we are a part of that relationship and that the way we respond to the other person might be part of the problem.
For couples, this can be a valuable opportunity to explore your relationship and any difficulties that have become a barrier to a happier life together. It is also an opportunity to find some peace and acceptance when a relationship is coming to an end.
It’s important to remember that couples counselling is a joint process and that you will both need to be committed and engaged if it’s going to help you to unravel and accept any unhelpful patterns that might be dominating your relationship.
Couples counselling, previously known as marital therapy or marriage guidance, addresses the problems arising from adult sexual or intimate relationships. The relationship, rather than the two individuals, is the ‘client’.
Our very closest relationship: a marriage; co-habitation or civil partnership, is based on intimacy and trust. When it stops working we are affected deeply and our health and happiness suffer. Our sense of identity and self-worth often rests on the strength of our relationships and we can despair when our prime relationship fails.
Pressures of work, family, money and health all take their toll. Suddenly the relationship that once recharged us leaves us drained and disappointed.
Patterns of behaving that we learned as children often re-emerge in our adult relationship. A childhood ‘scapegoat’ may start to feel blamed for everything by the partner who once adored them.