When Should You Seek Marriage Therapy and Couple Counseling

Debbie Plonkey

Debbie Plonkey, Marriage & Family Therapist

Expertise: Marriage & Family Therapist

I have been a Marriage and Family Therapist for 32 years and a Certified Imago Relationship Therapist for 14 years. I work both with couples experiencing conflict and... Read more

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, Marriage & Family Therapist , Marriage & Family Therapist

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Updated: 13 Mar, 2023

Table of Contents

Seek help early before crises deepen hurt and resentment, allowing you to rebuild trust and reconnect with hope.
When conversations stall or arguments become daily, couples therapy can teach you to talk with empathy and listen for understanding, bringing you closer.
If you commit to the process and practice new patterns, therapy can restore connection and joy, helping you build a resilient partnership.

It is not uncommon for couples to put off seeking help until they are in crisis and even contemplating splitting up.

This is not the optimal time to be seeking help or get marriage therapy! At that point, it is most likely that each spouse has either been hurt so much by the other or has built up a great deal of resentment towards their partner.

Such resentments make it difficult for them to trust the process enough to begin letting in new ways of perceiving their relationship difficulties. It also means that one partner may have withdrawn from the relationship in an effort to protect themselves from hurt and pain, and that makes it difficult for them to take down their walls and re-engage in the relationship. And may be, these are few glaring signs you need to visit a marriage counselor.

As mentioned, it is advisable to seek help and undergo marriage therapy earlier, when you realize you are not resolving your differences in an effective way and it is leading to patterns of negative behaviors toward one another.

How to know if you need marriage counseling

It is normal that we will have conflict or differences in our relationships.

We are two separate individuals with different ways of thinking and perceiving, as well as different preferences and ways of doing things. That doesn’t make your partner wrong or bad.

But, there are certain marriage disputes which require expert advice and counseling. Undergoing a marriage therapy can actually help couples outgrow such petty issues, which otherwise, could have ruined their marriage permanently.

Few prominent signs in your marriage will tell you that it’s time you need to go for marriage therapy.

You hardly find time to sit down and have a decent conversation
You end up arguing on trivial matters almost every single day
You have secrets and even your partner hides information from you
You suspect your partner is having an affair outside marriage
You feel attracted towards another individual yourself
Both of you have committed to financial infidelity, and the list goes on

So, when should you go to couples therapy? If your marriage is heading towards a situation like the one mentioned in the above points, then you definitely need a marriage therapy.

What can you expect from marriage therapy

There are questions that might bother you while deciding whether or not to seek marriage therapy. You might end up scanning the World Wide Web for questions like, ‘What should I expect from marriage therapy?’ or, ‘Is marriage counseling worth it?’

The statistics give a positive picture about Marriage therapy. According to the research done by American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, nearly 97% of the surveyed couples agreed that Marriage Therapy provided them all the help they needed.

And, for your information, marriage therapy works faster and consumes less time than individual counseling. But, it entirely depends on how willing you are to meet a therapist together as a couple and how receptive you are to the counselor’s advice.

You can expect a lot of personal questions put across to you by the Therapist which required accurate answers. You will need to reflect, communicate, and take responsibility of completing the assignments together as a couple to expect better results at the end of the allotted sessions.

What is the success rate of marriage therapy

Relationship experts agree that it is not about whether there is conflict in your marriage that predicts a successful marriage, but how you come back together and maintain your connection.

Once you have both agreed that you need outside help in changing the negative behavior patterns, and you are both committed to the process, then it is important for you to be open to receiving new information about the patterns that the therapist is seeing.

What is applicable in so many situations also applies here.

“If you want the same relationship you have now, then keep doing what you are doing. If you want a different relationship, you need to do something different.”

It won’t necessarily be easy to change your entrenched patterns, but to do so could result in a more satisfying and joyful relationship.

And, for your knowledge, the average success rate for Emotionally-focused Therapy stands at 75% as per American Psychological Association.

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Debbie Plonkey Marriage & Family Therapist

I have been a Marriage and Family Therapist for 32 years and a Certified Imago Relationship Therapist for 14 years. I work both with couples experiencing conflict and disillusionment, as well as those couples who simply want to deepen their relationship and increase their connection. My... Read more goal is to help the couple transform their relationship from one of pain, hurt, or apathy, to one where each person can feel loved and validated while achieving personal growth and healing. I help couples learn new ways of expressing frustrations that do not trigger their partner's defensiveness. By helping couples see how their backgrounds contribute to their present conflicts, it can help them have a different perception of their partner's reactions, and thereby stop seeing them as an adversary. It has been my honor to work with many couples as they go through this process. Read less

(Debbie Plonkey is also listed in Best Marriage Therapists in Greenville)