What is Couples Therapy?

It’s no secret that intimate relationships and marriage are hard work. Even in the best partnerships, couples have arguments and disagreements and do not always see eye to eye. Relationships change and unexpected events can occur. There is no perfect relationship and there is no perfect partner. Frequent disagreements can lead to a breakdown in connection and communication. However, such breakdowns don’t have to mean the end of the relationship. Believe it or not, disagreeing and arguing can actually promote healthy discussion and, when couples listen to one another a marriage can grow stronger. Yet, there are times when an argument, disagreement, or breach of trust has become so strong that the help of an outside perspective is needed to reopen the lines of communication, and promote positive discussion.

Couples therapy or marriage counseling, deals with re-opening and strengthening the lines of communication between partners. While receiving counseling, couples work together to address disagreements such as, infidelity, substance abuse, or any variety of past occurrences that may be leading to current marital distress. The goal of couples therapy or marriage counseling is to develop healthy communication styles between the partners and build positive interactions while exploring the origin of past unhelpful behaviors. Couples therapy or marriage counselling works to decipher if there are patterns to the behaviors and, if so, what caused the patterns to form? In couples therapy, a psychologist will work with partners together as well as independently, but there are no secrets. Whatever is told to the therapist will be discussed with all parties involved.

There are two main couples therapies as well as two individual therapeutic methods that will help with relationship building and maintenance used by Pine Health Edmonton in couples therapy or marriage counseling.

Couples Therapies:

Individual Therapies that will affect relationships:

Some things we help Couples work through: