What can you do if your partner is not ready for couples counselling!
Things could be just starting to get hard, or things may have been cold for many years. Maybe things are escalating to new heights. Regardless, it is looking like the relationship may be in trouble. Often when the topic of going to marriage counselling first comes up one partner is ready to look for help, while the other partner is strongly against it. If this is your struggle, here are four things you can do to help your partner move closer to being ready.
Hear what your partner has to say.
There can be many reasons; “our marriage is private”, or “its no one else business”. They may feel they will be teamed up against, or maybe the counsellor will judge me for my actions. There are hundreds of reasons why someone is against counselling. As the person who is wanting to go to counselling to fix the relationship, it is easy to feel like that our partner is not wanting to try. Whatever reasons they have for not wanting to go to counselling, these are very good reasons to them. In order to convince our partner that counselling is a good idea and it will be helpful, it is important to hear the concerns or fears of our spouse about going to couples counselling. By listening to these worries, we are already doing great work in moving our partner towards finding help!
Learn about ourselves.
In Marriage and Family relationships, our day to day interactions with each other can be confusing. Things our partner does can make us react in emotional ways that doesn’t happen at work or with our friends. We get into predictable patterns with our spouse. We feel very intensely the emotions that are going in our partner. The fiery hot emotions of anger, or the icy cold emotions of distance. This causes us to respond. Are we on fire? are we icy and distant? Thinking about what our emotions are, and what these emotions are communicating to our partner, can already help a hurting relationship. Softening our emotional signal can help reduce stress in a relationship. Right now if our partner is not wanting to go to counselling, it is hard to change those emotions. Working with someone to understand more about our own emotions is one of the best things you can do.
Know what couples counselling is, learning to dance together.
Movies and television rarely (if ever) give the right picture of what counselling and therapy is. There are real concerns that “I will be blamed for everything” or “My partner will just complain about me the whole time”. These are real concerns and I know I wouldn’t want to go someplace where I was going to be blamed, or teamed up against for many hours. A good couples counsellor will not look at who is at fault, but understand that the relationship is a dance. When one person takes a step in one direction, it causes the partner to follow with a predictable step, for better or worse. A good couples therapist will not look at who is dancing wrong. They will look ways to help each partner dance better together!
Start the Work!
Relationship distress is a very real. Divorce is the most significant (common) stressor that an adult will go through. Yet that is not the only stress in life today. Work, kids, or finances can all work towards a slow build of stress that can feel unmanageable. Depression and anxiety are constantly rising. With this stress, marriages where there is no peace, or no connection have very real mental health concerns. Both our relationship challenges, and the other struggles of life compound in a negative way. Finding help for the problems that are secondary (such as mental health concerns) to the relationship problems are important! Learning how to take care of ourselves in hard times will help our mental health, and in turn help our relationship. Finding a counsellor to help with our anxious and sad feeling that come with hurting relationships is worth the investment. Also, finding a couples counsellor to start doing work on the relationship, without our partner, is also a great first step.
Work with me to get an early start to learning about our ourselves and our relationship!
I know making the decision to go to couples counselling is a major life decision. But you deserve a relationship where you feel seen, heard and understood. I would love to connect with you to learn more about your unique relationship. The first session booked is risk free! If the session was not a right fit, or you feel that it won’t be helpful in your relationship then I would be glad to give you a refund. Taking the first step, to reach out for help is the hardest. Follow these links to find out more about the services I provide. Also subscribe to our mailing list to see updates on new content! I look forward to our time together!
