Is marriage counseling your last resort? 3 reasons it should be your first defense

“If this doesn’t work, then our next option is probably divorce.”

I hear this time and time again when new couples come into my office to work on their relationships. While I am trained in Discernment Counseling, I am still surprised at the number of people who use therapy as a last resort.

One of the questions I ask these couples is, “what have you done either individually or as a couple to work on some of the issues so that it didn’t get to this point?”

The answers are typically: more of the same, talk about not fighting, read a book, or made some behavioral changes that lasted a few months before old patterns started to return.

The average couple waits 6 years before starting marriage counseling. That’s 6 years of unhappiness. 6 years!? That’s like earning a Bachelor’s and Master's degree in unhappiness! I just can’t fathom being unhappy for that long and those are not degrees I want to earn.

Waiting that long and doing some of the aforementioned things to try and work on the issues is like receiving a cancer diagnosis, being told by the doctor that the remedy is chemo and/or radiation, but deciding to take vitamins to try and see if that helps for a couples of years before bringing out the big guns and doing the prescribed treatment.

You’d likely resort to chemo much sooner than later and this is how you should also view couples therapy.

COUPLES THERAPY SHOULD BE YOUR FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE BECAUSE:

THE PROBLEMS CAN BE RESOLVED MUCH QUICKER.

When you choose the wait-and-see method and things don’t get resolved, people start to build resentment, and resentment is like poison for a relationship. It festers and causes a deep wedge between partners that takes much longer to resolve when couples wait to start therapy.

COUPLES ARE MORE LIKELY TO EXPERIENCE LASTING CHANGE.

When couples come in sooner they learn to solve their problems, and learn to communicate in ways they haven’t before. When couples enter couples therapy sooner they are able to gain tools that they can pull from their toolbox for years to come which leads to lasting relationship satisfaction.

THE LENGTH OF THERAPY TENDS TO BE SHORTER, AND THUS LESS EXPENSIVE IN THE LONG-RUN.

When couples come to therapy sooner there’s less “undoing” of negative patterns in most cases, and that leads to a shorter course of treatment.

On average I tell couples they should plan to be in therapy for at least 6 months, however, when couples come in for premarital counseling I generally see them for less than 6 months. Learning and implementing new skills takes much less time than undoing the damage that’s been caused by years of negative feelings and arguments in addition to learning new skills.

If you’ve been waiting for the right time to jump into marriage counseling with your partner, the time is now! Feel free to reach out and schedule a free phone consultation and get back on track - the sooner the better.