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Marital and family stress affects everyone!
No
one is immune to family and marital stress. Even the "best of
relationships" will have its ups and downs. The stress may
originate within the relationships or from the outside, but it is the
relationships which becomes endangered. The damage comes from not
communicating the underlying issues; by making assumptions and drawing
false conclusions. The unresolved issues fester and get added
onto. Control is lost with usually very workable issues.
What is marital/Couples and Family Counseling?
It
takes healthy persons to admit that the couple or the family needs help
with their conflicts. They are having conflict in their
life-situational-complex in which they do not know what to do.
Counseling is a process which does not tell one what to do, but offers
a framework in which the couple or family member(s) can talk.
They talk about their emotional pain; thereby, diffusing the pain in
readying themselves to focus on the tasks needed to resolve the
conflicts. The process's primary goal is not to judge who is right or
wrong, not to take sides, but to aid the couple/family members to come
to workability in their relationships; to renew and develop their
own resources, and to discover resources in the community. Why save your marriage?
I am a
firm believer that most people marry each other for the right reasons. They love and enjoy each other, and have a
lot in common. Unfortunately, half of
these marriages end in divorce.
The
answer is not that you married the wrong person, but that you did not figure
out how to live with each other. The
easy and fun part of the relationship is the falling in love part. The hard part is creating the balance needed
to live together.
Why is
this so difficult? Because you each bring to the “marital table” what you think
is right and good, and your partner challenges those values telling or
inferring they are not right and may even be bad. You become angered and hurt by this
challenged.
This is
the beginning of the power struggle that is inherent in any relationship. The
main living issues are money, extended family, time together, time apart, home
maintenance, parenting, sex, and spirituality.
The keys
to any relationship to attain the goal of “living together happily ever after”
is foremost “the energy of the heart, the gasoline”, then good listening and
communication skills, and flexibility and willingness to negotiate the issues
to mutually benefit both partners.
Generally,
the woman is the first to note we need help in our relationship. Both partners
are still very much in love with each other.
The man generally resists because he firmly feels we can fix the
relationship ourselves. Marriages fail
not because the issues are not workable but because the couple allowed the
stress in the marriage to go on too long before seeking help; consequently, “the
gasoline of the heart” is gone. Frequently men call when the relationship has
had a “heart attack” which is usually too late.
The relationship is dying if not already dead. With out the desire, (the gasoline), very
workable relationship issues can not be resolved no matter how excellent the
therapist might be.
Through
couples work, I can help you identify the patterns that are slowly chipping
away at a relationship that held such promise for a wonderful life together. The
counseling process is to educate and coach you in practicing patterns that do
work. Provide you with tools necessary
to improve your communication and learn how to mediate your issues to a
mutually beneficial end.
Now, is your marriage worth saving? Is your
marriage worth saving?
Frankly,
at this time, I don’t know. However, one of the greatest misconceptions about
divorce is the seemingly universal concept that all will be over quickly and
the two parties can get on with their lives as if it never happened. Unfortunately divorce can take longer and
cost more money than ever previously imagined.
I can
give you an idea of what the divorce will cost but only in dollars and cents,
not the cost of the time spent, emotional pain and suffering. And this does not include the cost of the
impact on any kids involved.
When it
comes to divorce, people tend to fight about two things, money, the kids, or
“pet” kids. Divorce is not cheap. A divorce lawyer charges anywhere from
$100.00 to $500.00 per hour. They can
require a retainer between $500.00 to $10,000.
(A retainer is the initial fee you pay the lawyer for his or her
services. The attorney’s hourly rate is
then deducted from the retainer. Once
the money is gone; you pay additional money to keep the attorney on your
case). The average cost of a divorce in
the USA
for the non-famous couples is up to $50,000.
In Henderson
County the average cost is between $20,000 to $25,000. Frequently, this costly divorce is even generated
by lawyers for couples with little to no financial assets.
Now is
this marriage worth saving?
When to seek counseling.
Counseling
can be sought when the couple/family feel their conflict is not the
norm for them and are at odds at what to do. Ideally, if this is
done when the warning signs are first noted, the counseling experience
can be one of personal and family growth and not one of crisis
intervention.
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