Couples and Marriage Counseling
Often, during the initial couples or marriage counseling sessions (now online) we start by separating fact from fiction to help couples manage their expectations about romantic love versus the reality of what it requires to maintain a healthy, long-term connection.
If you are experiencing disillusionment and resentment in your relationship, couples counseling can help you get to the true root of the problem…which is often not what you might expect.
Formerly practicing in Washington, DC and now based in Sarasota, Florida, I offer marriage and couples counseling to couples in Florida and DC. I have been working with couples for over fifteen years and have come to understand that viewing your relationship from a realistic perspective is crucial. Fantasy and idealizing are wonderful escapes, but can lead to distortions of what love really is. Seeing and understanding your partner in a multi-dimensional way is the real secret to a healthy loving relationship.
As humans, we can be good and evil. We can be sensitive and compassionate and, at other times, cruel and critical. Can we accept these conflicting forces in ourselves? Can we accept them in our partner?
I help couples establish bonds based on a realistic premise: can you both tolerate competing emotions such as irritation and delight, disappointment and appreciation, love and hate? In any relationship, intense feelings will arise. If you are fixed on an ideal, these opposing impulses can be alarming and difficult to reconcile. To the extent that you can learn to tolerate and accept them as part of normal interpersonal dynamics, it will allow you to ride out the turbulence toward calm waters without giving up the ship.
Would you want to be judged solely on your weaknesses and failings or even on just your successes? Doing either is a setup for disappointment. If you allow yourself to face and accept your own internal contradictions as well as those of your partner, you will be setting the groundwork for a solid foundation for your relationship.
In my sessions, I observe the couple’s dynamics as they occur within the counseling session. Rather than focusing on who is right and who is wrong, I focus on where I see the couple disconnect and what causes detachment. From here, the couple can begin to see how each may be contributing to the discord. Then the process of repair can begin.
Anger, resentment, mistrust, and doubt are warning signs. I suggest committing to only an initial couples counseling session. It should take just one session to know if you are a good fit with the therapist and the therapist should be able to give a “prognosis” of what to expect over the course of therapy. Sometimes it takes only one session to get a couple back on track, but it will always depend on many factors to determine how long it will take to reach your goals. The important thing is to not let problems fester. If possible, it’s best to intervene early and not wait until things get to a crisis level.
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Jeffrey Frank, LCSW, Marriage and Couples Therapist, is available for online sessions. For more information, visit his website: jfranktherapy.com or call 202-345-0100.
