Couples Marriage Counseling Counselor Santa Monica, Los Angeles, Culver City, CA, California

Your marriage or primary intimate relationship should be a special, sacred place where you feel nurtured and free to let go and be yourself. It should support you to enjoy your life and pursue your career and passions. It shouldn’t preoccupy your thoughts the way codependent relationships do.

What makes marriage work depends largely upon how you treat each other, communicate, and make decisions together. It’s the process of relating that counts, which has little to do with the feeling of love. Confusing the two creates problems. Predictors of long-term relationships are:

Healthy self-esteem and self-acceptance are key. They help you maintain your individuality and take responsibility for yourself. You can establish flexible boundaries between you and your partner that allow for intimacy and togetherness as well as time apart. Good self-esteem encourages mutual respect based upon acceptance of yourself and others. You feel more generous and cooperative and able to clearly communicate your feelings and needs. You also can listen without reacting. When self-esteem is low and boundaries are too rigid or too fuzzy, there’s more conflict and reactivity in the relationship. It’s a sign that codependency may be present.

In relationships, there are neither villains nor victims, only colluders and collaborators. Even when there’s abuse, at an unconscious level, the victim’s self-esteem or past may be preventing him or her from setting boundaries. Often people being criticized or emotionally abused don’t recognize or minimize the problem, but instead withdraw sexually or emotionally. Couples counseling can help restore boundaries and the balance of power in the relationship.

Many couples expect that they shouldn’t have conflict. This is unrealistic. In fact, from time to time in marriages and long-term relationships, you may hate your partner. Constant opportunities for feeling slighted exist when you live with someone day in and out. But if there’s enough good, you manage to climb out of ditches of hate and dry spells of indifference to return to love.

Frequently, the symptom is not the problem and issues that you’re unaware of need to be addressed. In any intimate relationship, there are at least six people involved – the couple and two sets of parents, or perhaps step-parents, too. Sometimes a sibling or grandparent has played an important emotional role.

Your childhood is when you learn lessons about intimate relationships. It’s often at play when you’re very reactive to your partner and have trouble communicating. When couples are enmeshed or entangled emotionally, they need support to separate their thoughts and feelings from one another. Deeper work may be indicated around issues of autonomy, intimacy, and trust, as well as fears of being smothered, controlled, rejected, or abandoned.

Everyone projects the past onto present situations when they’re emotionally triggered. Whether from childhood or past adult trauma, talking about these experiences in a safe counseling environment helps separate out the past from the present and engenders vulnerability and trust between you and your partner. Seeing your each other’s vulnerability makes possible the realization that your partner isn’t against you, lessening defensiveness and increasing empathy. This permits good faith and good will to return.

It's important that couples seek therapy early, while there’s still goodwill between them. The longer wounds fester, the longer is the healing process. When couples seek therapy to "save" their marriage, there's a lot of resentment and "water under the bridge." One spouse may have already left emotionally.

Whether you’re dating, married, or in a committed relationship, couples counseling significantly helps resolve conflict, improve communication, and enhance intimacy. You uncover, decipher, and heal distressing, repetitive interactive cycles that lead to unhappiness and negative feelings. This creates greater mutual understanding, trust, and closeness, and allows for forgiveness.

If divorce is desirable, marriage counseling enables you to manage with greater dignity and ease. Therapy is also ideal if you’re experiencing difficulties parenting, because often the entire family is affected by marital conflict.