There are many reasons why couples go to therapy, in most cases it is motivated by frequent discussions, discomfort in life, routine, lack of sex or infidelity. have the same goals. There’s no point in starting the process if you want to get the relationship back and the other wants to end it.
In many cases the problem is that couples wait an average of five to six years to resolve their conflicts, when the relationship is already more than tense, the best time to go to therapy is when we start to feel that it is no longer possible. to get along with the couple, when we’re trying to explain something and we feel like the other person doesn’t know what we mean.
- Therapy will be much more effective if you go there when conflicts have not yet deepened.
- The success rate of couples therapy is around 70%.
- However.
- It is much higher if the partner leaves earlier: no more than two years after the first.
- Problems arise.
Many couples who are in therapy say that after overcoming the crisis, they are better off than before.
The American Association of Marital and Family Therapists reports that three out of four couples who are in therapy admit to improving their relationships; people who undergo couples therapy improve their mood, and two-thirds of them also experience improvements in their health and job performance.
José Bustamante, general secretary of the Spanish Association of Sexology Specialists, says that the first step in these therapies is to find the real problem. Most couples come to the consultation because they argue a lot, but “behind the fights, there are unresolved conflicts. “So the first thing to put on the table is the real problem for which the relationship doesn’t work.
You have to work through dialogues instead of monologues, that is, you have to empathize with the other, listen, know what is really going on and try to understand the other, that is why the essence of therapy is to teach: know how to listen, putting yourself in the place of the other and communicating what one feels or irritates us without harming the couple.
As for the relationship, both are part of the problem and both are part of the solution, depending on the partner in question and the reason that led them to the consultation, the resources used in the therapy will be chosen. Couples therapy has the same goal: for the couple to learn how to resolve their current and future conflicts.
Couple therapy can perform several functions. This can be used to accept and face the fact that the relationship has ended without internalizing it as a defeat, because the end is sometimes the best solution, it also helps us to know each other individually and, above all, to be better partners in this relationship or in future relationships.
Sometimes couples take a long time to go to therapy because they think time will solve problems, but in most cases, it only increases tension, frustration, and resentment.
Couples therapy is a resource that helps identify problems, allowing the couple to deepen self-knowledge, in their own relationship, and rediscover the value of the other person.
The couple’s psychologist provides the tools that help resolve conflicts, avoid relationship mistakes, learn a new way to communicate, and generally re-see and start a more fulfilling and happy relationship.
Ultimately, couples therapy aims to restore successful interaction and help restore mutual respect associated with married life, as at the beginning of the relationship, but with the strongest and most mature foundations.