Couples Counseling

By the time you seek a marriage counselor, you have likely tried your best at making your relationship work. You find yourselves getting stuck in the same patterns. It's getting painful and exhausting. You may even be on the brink of divorce.

Marriage issues can be categorized as difficult, disappointing, and/or destructive.*

Good marriages take a tremendous amount of work to build. Reasons for difficulties include:

• Personality, tidiness/messiness, cultural, and/or role expectation differences
• Financial stressors
• Parenting struggles
• In-law issues
• Communication problems
• Fear/avoidance of conflict
• One spouse has high-functioning autism (formerly called Asperger's Syndrome)
• At least one spouse has a mental health issue 
• At least one spouse has unresolved trauma/PTSD issues
• Attachment issues (how securely we were attached to our primary caregivers) that we replay in our relationships with our spouses
• Extra-marital affairs (while this can be, and often is, destructive, it depends on how the offending spouse handles the repair of the relationship).

“When you first fall in love, you think you love the person, but you don’t really. You can’t know the person right away. That takes years. You actually love the idea of the person – and that is always, at first, one-dimensional and somewhat mistaken.”

- Tim Keller

Tim Keller, in his book, The Meaning of Marriage, goes on to quote Stanley Hauerwas. “We never know whom we marry; we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give it a while and he or she will change...The primary problem is...learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married.” (126).

As we are complex people, we will continue to grow, change, and learn about ourselves and our spouses throughout our lives. And sometimes, as you come to accept the limitations of your spouse, you may feel disappointed. Your disappointment may have roots in legitimate desires. You would like your spouse to be able to empathize with you, care for you, value and respect you. Often, when you are in a difficult or destructive marriage, you will experience disappointment.

At times, however, we find ourselves disappointed because we have simply made too much of marriage. For example, when we enter marriage with Jerry McGuire"s "You complete me" mindset, we will certainly be disappointed. If we are not happy individuals, marriage will not make us happy. This is not what marriage is for. Marriage is, rather, a relationship where we learn to become better versions of ourselves, and love our spouses in self-giving ways.

Difficult or disappointing marriages are sometimes also destructive. A relationship is destructive when there is a pattern of persistent blame-shifting, where one side rarely, if ever, owns responsibility, and characteristically blames one's wrongdoings on the actions of the other. Demeaning, devaluing, dismissing, or indifference toward one's spouse, denying the other's reality (gas-lighting), and regular explosions of anger are also common. Threats of violence and actual physical violence can also be factors. The key dynamic in a destructive and abusive relationship is a systematic pattern of dominance and control.

Emotionally-focused therapy (EFT) helps couples in distress get unstuck from patterns found in difficult and disappointing relationships. This approach works with the attachment patterns of each partner, gets underneath the outward complaints, and helps couples foster a safe and secure emotional bond.

Learning communication skills is typically not going to help a highly distressed couple. Underlying patterns of thinking and beliefs, and previously unrecognized trauma or high-functioning autism can undermine efforts at "communication." In our times together, we will walk through where you as a couple are getting stuck, so that you can get unstuck and live a beautiful, albeit imperfect, life together.

Couples counseling is generally not recommended for destructive relationships. Find out more here.

I will work together with you to help you find personal growth and relational healing.

Call or text me today at 312-313-3236

or email me at eunia [at] chicagolandcounseling.com

*Leslie Vernick categorizes marriage issues as difficult, disappointing, and destructive.