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Couples counseling: If you are over your head in emotional chaos, or if you feel you can no longer connect with your spouse, couples counseling provides a safe environment where you can learn to trust and love each other again.

Therapy helps
Counseling

Therapy can transform the flawed or unhappy person you have been into the good person you want to be.

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Why you need a marriage counselor

Finding a marriage counselor is the first step to saving your troubles marriage.

Your marriage is on the rocks and you want to save it. But how do you do it when you can't talk to your spouse, or she refuses to listen to you? The answer is to find a good marriage counselor.

Perhaps you have been having an affair and your life is a web of lies and betrayal. You want to clean up your act but your spouse is so devastated, she refuses to talk to you. She, or he, might even have kicked you out the house and told you never to show your face again.

Perhaps your love life has become dull and routine. The magic and spark have gone. You want to relight the fire of passion, but all your attempts at dialogue and change result in fights, and it's wearing you down.

Lack of respect

Maybe you feel your husband or wife no longer respects you. You wonder why you're neglected and not appreciated, but everytime you raise the subject, your questions are ignored or shot down. You want to break the destructive cycle, but you feel helpless and hopeless.

Married couple

Marriage counseling can save your crumbling marriage


Marriage guidance

Counselors are professional listeners


Therapist

Counselors provide a safe environment to talk

Perhaps you feel as though you have lost your way as a parent. You might even be feeling that your kids no longer love you. You're always working, your kids are constantly online, and you don't spend time together. You might feel your spouse is constantly on your case about what a lousy parent you are. You want to change that, but it is just so hard making those first positive steps.

You might be worried your spouse is seeing someone else. You've been suspicious for a while, you've even asked and be met with anger. But something is clearly wrong in yor marriage. You no longer have great sex, you don't enjoy each other's company. Some days you might even dread coming home.

End a love affair

You might be putting honest effort into ending an affair, including telling your spouse it is all over, but your lover will not leave you alone. How do you handle the promise not to speak to a mistress or lover, when they are calling and mailing you demanding answers, demanding to be met.

And then there are lapses, where you want to end an affair but you're still emotionally and sexually dependent on your lover. How do you cut that dependency?

Learning to listen

Or, you might be convinced your marriage is over but you want to find a way of talking constructively with your spouse. You want to find ways of communicating with your husband or wife that do not harm your children. If separation or divorce are going to happen, you want it to be as amicable as possible so that your kids, or your spouse, suffer as little as possible.

With the best will in the world, it can be almost impossible to get yourself out of these situations without professional help.

Marriage crises have a way of spiraling out of control. Your best plans and intentions can amount to nothing because you cannot steer another person's emotions and responses to you.

Twisted words

Misunderstandings are rife at times of crisis. You'll feel as though you words are being twisted, taken out of context. You can feel as though you are being silenced and minimized. You're constantly being reminded of what you do and say that is wrong.

You might be so terrified of causing further hurt to a betrayed spouse that you find yourself clamming up, refusing to answer, or you drag yourself deeper into a pit of lies in order, you believe, to protect his or her feelings.

After an Affair

Written by award-winning psychologist Janis Abrahms Spring, After the Affair: Healing the Pain and Rebuilding Trust When a Partner Has Been Unfaithful is the best book about ending an affair.

Recommended by marriage counselors across the country, it takes you from crisis and conflict, to forgiveness and reconciliation.

Out of step

You might be completely out of step with your spouse. If you're a man who's had an affair, you'll want to forget it and move on as quickly as possible, and you can't understand why your wife keeps going over the same old ground: "Where did you meet the woman?"; "Why did you do it?"; "How could you betray me?"

You'll apologize and apologize hundreds of times, but it will never be enough. Whatever you say will not calm or satisfy your wife. You'll feel so frustrated you might even start convincing yourself that there's no way the marriage can be saved.

Counseling steps

A skilled marriage counselor or therapist will guide you through the difficult stages of marriage crisis, from the breakdown and conflict stage, through grief and anger, through disclosure, and, if all goes well, to forgiveness and reconciliation.

And even if divorce is the end result, you and your spouse will have been helped enormously by the experience of talking and listening to each other in a safe, controlled environment, where the both of you are respected, both have a right to a point of view, and where the worst emotional wounds can be treated.

How to end an affair


Photo by Helmut Newton

The best book about love affairs: Best-selling and widely used by marriage counselors, After the Affair: Healing the Pain and Rebuilding Trust When a Partner Has Been Unfaithful will help you understand why affairs happen, how to overcome the pain and betrayal, plus put you on the road to forgiveness and healing.


When is marriage over? What are the signs that marriage is at an end?

A marriage counselor will help clear the obstacles that prevent communication betweeen partners or husband and wife. If you feel you are not being heard, the counselor will encourage you to rephrase your thoughts so that your spouse really understands them.

In a way that does not cause you too much emotional torment, a counselor will help you to access your betrayed spouse's pain so that she or he can see and feel that you understand their pain, that you are remorseful, that you are genuinely regretful.

Health matters

A counselor will be concerned about your health, asking whether you are sleeping well, or suffering from stress, panic or anxiety attacks.

During couples counseling sessions, patterns of behavior might be identified which go all the way back to your childhood and family of origin. You'll be encouraged to seek one-on-one counseling with a different counselor or therapist to work through these issues so that you can better deal with the challenges that facing marriage.

Reasons explained

If you have betrayed your spouse by having an affair, you will be given the opportunity to explain your reasons in a responsible way that does not push blame onto your spouse. You will be encouraged to take responsibility for your destructive and self-destructive behavior.

In the safe environment of counseling, you will talk, explain, and listen much more than you ever felt possible. You will grow to understand your spouse in new and refreshing ways.

Counseling can often strengthen marriages that seemed on the brink of collapse.

With the right professional help, yours can be one of those marriages that is saved and strengthened, where forgiveness is deep and sincere, where trust is rebuilt, and love rekindled.


By Giles Devos

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