We desperately need help, but my partner won’t come for couples counseling.

If your partner truly is resistant to couples counseling, we invite you to come on your own. While therapy for couples is most effective when both partners are present and willing, there is a lot that you alone can do to improve the dynamic of your relationship. In therapy, you can explore the ways in which you handle conflict, as well as your strengths and blind spots. Your therapist can help you gain clarity on your needs, feelings and personal boundaries and help you develop clear, nonthreatening and loving ways to express yourself to your partner.

And, often, when one person starts relationship counseling, it sets the tone for change. By taking the first step, you can create an atmosphere for healthy risk taking and make a positive impression on your partner. It may create the encouragement and safety needed for your partner to also become interested in couples therapy.

I’m Worried Counseling Won’t Help. It takes time and it’s a significant investment.

The only way to find out if couples counseling will work is to try it. Marital/couples counseling is an investment in yourself, your partner and your family. If you have children, you know that whatever is transpiring in your relationship – be it good, bad or ugly – impacts everyone in your home.

Outside of the home, your productivity at work and your engagement with friends and other family members may be negatively affected by the stress of a strained relationship.

By investing in your relationship now, you are not only creating the opportunity for everyone to feel better sooner, but you can also build a solid emotional foundation with your partner that you can draw on the rest of your life.

Couples/marriage counseling may also help you repair your relationship and avoid a costly divorce and/or the individual counseling you and/or your partner may need if your relationship continues to worsen.

I’m afraid that therapy will make everything worse.

It is highly unlikely that couples counseling will make matters worse. What therapy will do is make you and your partner more aware of what is occurring within your relationship and how you can improve it. This awareness can sometimes be painful, but honestly sifting and sorting through issues is necessary to move forward and heal. Until you really know what’s wrong, how can you go about fixing it?

I’m afraid that our therapist will take sides.

A good couples therapist will take a side – the side of the relationship. And, the goal of couples therapy at Orenstein Solutions is to get you, your partner and your relationship all on the same side. It is not your therapist’s job to judge or place blame, but, rather, to work as a team builder, help you build reinforcements and encourage honesty, curiosity and growth.

With over 20 years of experience specializing in couples counseling, we’ve learned that relationships are never black and white and that there are many factors that lead to infidelity. We have refined our therapeutic methods to incorporate the Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy (PACT ®) approach, which finds its basis in scientifically driven ideas, techniques and exercises in marital and couples counseling.

We can help you build a strong foundation that you can draw from long after our therapeutic work is complete.