Couples Therapy
Has Your Relationship Hit A Wall?
Do you feel like you’re not truly valued or cared for in your relationship? Are you and your significant other arguing in circles and dealing with hostile communication such as putting each other down? Deep down, do you wonder how did we get here?
Maybe you find yourself grieving the loss of what you once had as you find yourselves feeling like just roommates. Your romance used to feel magical and effortless, but now you’ve hit a wall. Perhaps you can’t seem to get through to your spouse and they misunderstand everything you say. For others, the trauma of infidelity has entered your relationship in the form of a physical affair, pornography use, or emotional attachments to friends and coworkers. As a result, there's struggle to regain trust as you wonder around in a life that you now feel is a lie.
It's common to feel hopeless about the future when you and your partner are at odds. Conflict within a relationship often can lead to debilitating struggles with low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, and negative self-talk. Are you wishing you had the energy to improve and move forward in life, but you feel too lethargic and unmotivated due to your continual relationship problems. Our therapists want to help you!
Issues Our Therapists Help Couples With:
- Infidelity
- Communication Issues
- Pornography
- Intimacy/Sexual Problems
- Anxiety, Depression, Grief
- Past Divorce
- Blended Family/ Opposing Parenting Styles
- Substance Use
- Work/Life Balance
- Emotional and/or Physical Abuse
- Different Goals
- Financial difficulties
- Partner Roles Expectations
If any of these are your experience and you want to heal, regain your lost connection, and fall back in love, we encourage you to pursue marriage and couples therapy with us. Here at Archer Counseling Group, our goal is to help you and your significant other feel safe, secure and at peace in your relationship.
Many Couples Become Disconnected Because They Don’t Establish Goals And Values
All couples go through seasons of disconnection. Sometimes the issues that cause conflict are obvious, like financial stress, differing life goals, and problems with sexual intimacy. Other times the issues are subtler—two people might have radically different love languages or ways of solving conflict.
All too often, couples fail to have important conversations before they commit to each other. The honeymoon phase of a relationship can feel so magical that it’s easy to put questions about kids, money, and life goals on the backburner. This is why it’s important to establish values and goals early on. Once the honeymoon phase ends, couples need a strong foundation to keep their relationship healthy.
Counseling is a chance for couples to build this foundation by improving communication and navigating the hard conversations. Adding a third party can help them feel affirmed in their experience and increase their empathy and understanding.
Therapy Can Help Couples Feel Heard, Valued, And Understood
Part of you might think you and your partner can just work through your problems alone. But by yourselves, you’re limited to the same perspectives and the same conflict resolution strategies. Therapy with Archer Counseling Group gives both of you a neutral space to see your relationship with fresh eyes and develop new ways of working through conflict.
What’s more, couples therapy takes you out of your home atmosphere so that it’s easier to have conversations without a strong emotional charge. Our approach seeks to be as unbiased and objective as possible, ensuring that both of you feel equally heard and understood.
What To Expect In Sessions
In the beginning, your couples therapist will meet with the two of you together for the intake session. After that, you’ll each do individual breakout sessions and then resume meeting together for the rest of counseling.
Our therapists use an approach that looks into early attachments and how they affect your relationships today.
We’ll explore the blueprints you inherited from parents and past romantic relationships to discern what makes you feel loved and how you know you’re safe. This can be incredibly helpful in identifying negative ways of coping. For instance, maybe you get angry or become anxious whenever someone makes you feel unimportant. Therapy can help you challenge your automatic reactions and respond differently when you’re stressed.
Tailoring Your Couples Therapy Plan
Our practice draws from a wide range of healing methods. We use a lot of mindfulness skills to help couples regulate their emotions and bring back the rational part of the brain when conflict arises. We also draw from the Gottman approach to counseling, which analyzes a couple’s strengths and weaknesses and seeks to increase closeness and intimacy. For couples who struggle to see the big picture of their relationship, we often take a narrative approach. Narrative therapy can help you reframe the story you tell yourself about your relationship so that the negatives don’t cloud your perspective.
Ultimately, we want to help you feel respected, loved, and cherished in your relationship. As long as you are both committed to working together, we are confident that you can deepen your love for each other and communicate in ways that help you feel heard and valued.
You May Have Some Questions About Couples Counseling…
Will my therapist take sides and make me feel like the bad person?
Our goal is to help you improve your relationship. We can’t achieve that if there is favoritism. Our therapists are trained to be neutral and unbiased so that both parties have an equal chance to be heard. Sometimes we might explore sensitive areas where you or your partner have contributed negatively, but we’ll never go down a path of judgment.
Will my therapist tell us we’re not good for each other?
We’re not here to make life choices for you. Whether you stay together is your decision. As counselors, our goal is to help you discern what’s best for you as a couple and then support whatever decision you make.
What if therapy costs too much time and money?
Couples therapy is an investment that can save you time and money in the long run when in comparison to divorce. It can help you build a strong foundation for years to come, ensuring that you don’t have to keep spending time and money on your relationship.