"We are all fallen creatures and all very hard to live with."
C.S. Lewis. Letters to an American Lady (8 November, 1962) p.110
You + Me = Us
A friend once commented that the first five years of his now 40 + years of marriage were “strange and wonderful” years. With a smile his wife added “He was strange and I was wonderful”. Couples today feel increasingly isolated and are expected to manage their lives and families without the community supports that in the past were a primary resource in raising children and meeting family needs. Couples in our present culture are less bound by family traditions and are freer than ever before to develop relationships unlike those of the families that they were raised in. Though there is no hard fast rule to say when couples may seek counseling some studies suggest that approximately 5 years seem to be the time when things begin to go stale. Children come along with increased demands on your time. Career development is taking place and requiring more that you thought was imaginable.
Couple’s counseling is based on the premise that individuals and their problems are best handled within the context of the couple’s relationship. Typically, both partners in the relationship attend the counseling session to discuss the couple’s specific issues. The aim of couple’s counseling is to help a couple deal appropriately with their immediate problems and to learn better ways of relating in general.
Couples therapy or couple’s counseling is a useful modality of help for those experiencing difficulties such as repetitive arguments, feelings of distance or emptiness in the relationship, pervasive feelings of anger, resentment and or dissatisfaction or lack of interest in affection or in a physical relationship with one another.