Orange County Couple Counseling. 714.914.5565
Our love relationship with our spouse or life partner is one of the most dynamic and challenging relationships we endeavor to engage in. Committed relationships are a potent tool for personal development, whether we like it or not. When things are working for a couple, when you both feel respected, understood, valued, and loved, life looks good. The sun is shining and you can handle the daily bumps in the road together. But when things are not working out, when the relationship has become hostile and polarized, when pain is overwhelming you, then there are moments when you can feel much lonelier and more isolated in your relationship than you ever imagined possible. At that point, it's high time to get help from a trained neutral third party. The earlier the better.
Creating New Habits In Our Marriages and Relationships.
All couples form habits around the way they interact. Some of these habits are positive and facilitate our day-to-day life and the ease with which we negotiate the routine of creating a household or relationship together. Some habits are toxic, comprised of knee-jerk reactions to something our partner says, does, or doesn't do. Or even something you "think" your partner is thinking or feeling. Your relationship, like all relationships, is comprised of a combination of habits that are working for you or against you. Respectfulness is a habit. Kindness is a habit. In fact, love is comprised of habits such as these. Bickering is a habit. Criticizing is a habit. Forgetting or refusing to acknowledge your partner's contributions is a habit. Marital dissatisfaction, heart-break and grief over lack of intimacy in your relationship are comprised of the destructive habits you have formed together. The great news about habits is that with work and focus they can be changed.
Transforming Hearts.
Couples counseling is a dance between balancing personal responsibility to care for and regulate yourself with the need to interact in a caring and respectful manner with your partner. We come into our relationships with very little training, whatever we learned at home by observation and osmosis, and a pile of unacknowledged and unspoken expectations. In couple counseling we will develop an understanding of the two very different viewpoints and expectations you entered the partnership with, locate and champion the strengths you have in the relationship, identify the changes you want to move towards, and learn the skills that make change possible. The first and most important ingredient you can bring to this experience is a willingness to experiment with change, one small change at a time.
Valuing Our Marriages.
We maintain our cars, we schedule our home maintenance and make sure the air conditioning unit is going to make it through the next heat wave. We cut our hair on a regular basis, get our teeth cleaned routinely, and our homes are kept as orderly as we require. We might even clean the garage out once every few years. But very often, we do almost nothing to maintain our marriages. Our relationships suffer for it. We suffer because of it. And our children suffer most of all. When our marriages break down, everybody gets hurt.
Stop the Pain.
How much longer are you willing to wait for a change in your relationship? If you are wondering if counseling is for you, take the initiative and come in for a maintenance check-up now.
