Couples Counseling, Marital counselling

Newly married? Just celebrated your 50th? Dating and thinking about long term? You came into the relationship with different backgrounds and some baggage (even if it was just a carry-on). With principles aligned with Gottman and Arbinger, EHCHC helps couples find solutions if they are committed to do the work. 

Learn the ABC's of successful relationships.

Agency / Accountability

Beliefs / Behavior

Commitment / Charity

Marital counselling. Couples counseling

When two people join together as part of an intimate relationship, various issues and struggles may arise as they strive to attain and maintain satisfaction in their relationship.

Couples counseling aims at increasing empathetic understanding, improving effective communication, and providing an opportunity for mutual growth. This type of growth will influence the couple and also each partner, individually.

We help couples navigate the challenges that arise in their relationship. We help you increase empathetic understanding, improve effective communication, providing for the mutual growth in your relationship.

Is there a difference between marriage, couples, and relationship counseling or therapy?

The short answer is: yes. Generally speaking, when two people join together as part of an intimate relationship, whether that is dating, life partnership, or marriage, various issues and struggles may arise as they strive to attain and maintain satisfaction in their relationship. The difference entails the potential level of commitment involved. When a man and woman marry, they made the decision to be together forever. While still dating or courting, this optimal decision has not been made yet. Marriage raises the stakes, so to speak, and rightfully so. Thus, the issues faced by married couples will often be more life altering when not addressed.

Reasons people seek Relationship Counseling

Couples seek counseling for many reasons to improve their relationship. The following presents common scenarios that bring people to our office for couples work:

· We just don’t communicate well anymore

· It feels like we are just occupying the same space

· We are just going through the motions

· The occurrence, possibility, or consideration of an affair

· A declining sex life (or our sex life has changed)

· No longer able to resolve our differences

· A building of resentment that one or both of us cannot move past

· Separating appears to be the only solution

· We don’t see eye to eye (on one or many issues like finances, social engagements, work, raising children, etc.)

· We stay together for the kids

· A desire to strengthen the relationship

· We need to work through something that has happened

· I don’t feel like I know this person anymore

· Everything my partner does seems to annoy me

The Relationship Counseling Process

For the first several sessions of couples therapy, a relationship counselor will assess your relationship. Our counselors are trying to figure out patterns that exist.

Some of the patterns within the relationship that will be assessed include:

· What is the glue keeping you both in the relationship?

· Your relationship’s stresses and conflicts

· Your relationship’s strengths and weaknesses

· Your relationship’s communication patterns

· Each person’s expectations for both the relationship and their individual lives

· Your relationship’s history

The counselor will also assess each of you individually to understand the history and expectations each brings to the relationship.

The couple and the counselor will then set realistic goals for the course of your couples counseling and revisit frequently over time. Occasionally, one person in the relationship chooses not to continue with the counseling. This does not mean the couples counseling has to end. Many times just one partner seeking counseling can experience significant changes that influence the course of the overall relationship. However, ideally both partners will stay committed to working together.

Eagle Heart counselors use a strength-based treatment model to address each person’s set of unique concerns. We pull from cognitive behavioral, interpersonal, systems-focused, and spiritual/religious based approaches to design effective assessment, consultation and treatment strategies. Services provided are flexible and specifically tailored to your situation and needs and desires in order to resolve the issues at hand and often underlying trauma(s) hiding behind the symptoms.  

A couple came to EHCC contemplating divorce, presenting a history of “growing apart,” poor communication, loss of intimacy in the relationship, for starters. With an intensive focus on “fixing things,” they found resolutions by being honestly accountable for personal issues interfering with their ability to connect with one another, and thus increasing their commitment to one another. “We had to come back to step 1,” they shared, “that our relationship as a couple was number one. We were putting the children, our work, and other things before one another, and that too was just a symptom of our own underlying issues.” Through effective counseling with EHC, this couple, like many others, learned principles and skills to practice that helped them reconnect and develop a purposeful and joyful relationship.