When Will Marriage Counseling Start Working for My Marriage? // Does Marriage Counseling Work

Reading this you may feel utterly exhausted…at the end of your rope even. You and your spouse have been to marriage counseling and right now things don’t seem to be getting better.  Maybe it even feels worse.  The hope was that once the both of you started marriage therapy that your relationship would heal and you’d be heard, supported and understood by your spouse again…however that doesn’t seem to be happening right now.  You might be wondering, are we ‘fixable?’ Are we a novelty to our counselor? Maybe our counselor even thinks we shouldn’t be together… Is marriage counseling even worth continuing to invest in? 

Let me help normalize some of what you are feeling. I will offer some perspective of what you can expect in the process of marriage counseling based on my experience working with many couples and other professional colleagues specializing in couples work. 

1.  It is normal for sessions to feel really hard: This is because creating a secure bond in a marriage requires that we go to the most painful parts of the relationship to (1) know exactly what it is we are needing to ask our spouse for, we cannot do that accurately without fully understanding the pain points, (2) understand what blocks show up in communication that keep two people from hearing each other when they start to go to those pain points. We cannot understand the pain points if we don’t first understand the blocks that keep us from those places and build trust that things will be okay in the relationship if we go to those pain spots together.  Having a secure connection means two people feel confident they can go to these most painful places together. This is why successful marriage counseling will lead the both of you to talking about the hard things and feeling the hard emotions, which inevitably is not going to look or feel perfect as the both of you begin to learn how to share in these hard places.  Having hard sessions is something I know will happen going into my work with couples, but I love going to these hard places with couples, because this is where the work is at and how we get to those reparative, heartfelt moments in sessions. 

2. It is normal for progress to take time: Progress typically happens in what feels like microsteps-very small movements. I usually will share this metaphor with my clients; Imagine you have a house you have owned for 30 years. Over the 30 years maintenance was minimal with just slapping some duct-tape and gorilla glue to keep things ‘together.’ Now everything is falling apart, the house is suddenly not functional and you can’t stand to live in it anymore.  You decide you are going to give yourself 24 hours to fix the house.  Clearly 24 hours would be an impossible time frame, you would likely overwhelm yourself and at the end of the day assume the house is just forever condemned for the state that it’s in. Couples counseling can sometimes be like this metaphor, because we often want our relationships entirely restored within an impossible amount of time and in the process we minimize the depth of the work that needs to be done for the marriage to be functional again.  It makes sense that we want healing quickly because the relationship matters to you and your spouse! However, sometimes having timeline expectations can pose another obstacle to progress in marriage counseling, because it can add another layer of pressure and inadequacy in the marriage. Don’t be afraid to show yourself some compassion in the process of this, that it is normal for the process to take time. 

3. The time it takes your marriage to heal is normal: It’s such a common thing to do…comparison.  We want to often know if we are okay when we compare ourselves to someone else. Because of this we can compare the progress in our own marriage against someone else’s marriage.  However, what your relationship needs is different from what someone else’s relationship needs.  If one marriage needs 3 years of marriage counseling, while another marriage needs 6 months of counseling, that is perfectly okay. Just like people who go to the gym, for some they may meet their personal goals in 3 months and others it may take years, because it also depends on the kinds of goals, the state the individual is in when they start their work, and their consistency in working out.  The same goes for marriage counseling, how long it takes to reach your relationship goals depends on the goal, on the state the both of you are in at the start of therapy, and your ability to remain consistent with treatment. 

So to answer the question, ‘when will marriage counseling start working for my marriage?’ It depends on each circumstance.  The progress of marriage counseling typically happens as a progression, not necessarily sudden like turning a light switch on or off. This is because there is a lot of trust building that needs to happen in order to even get to a place where two people can feel confidently secure in each other’s accessibility to each other in their most painful places.  What I will leave with you is this, if you and your spouse are actively going to the hard places together during marriage counseling, consider that a huge continued step in progress, it take tremendous courage and in those hard places is where growth will happen.  

If you find yourself in this place today of feeling exhausted in your marriage and need help I would love to help you. You don’t have to walk this out alone. Feel free to contact me by phone (860-791-4688), by email (elizabeth@plumeriacounseling.hush.com), or by booking a FREE 15 minute consultation.