Marriage Counseling

Marriage Counseling Alternative

When there is trouble in the marriage, people normally feel desperate about it because any improvement or change in the status of this relationship would need that your spouse too put in equal effort. Marriage counseling often fails because it is too slow bringing about this participation from both the partners.

The Alternatives You Could Use

Marriage counseling and/ or counselors are usually the first action that a married couple tries for ameliorating the relationship. However, this particular step should have been the last after everything else fails.

1. Intervention of a internal mediator - The first thing you should do when you feel that your marriage is not heading where you had wanted it is to enlist the support of any trusted and as much as possible capable of being impartial relative. If this relative would be elder than both the spouses in question, the equation would be even better.

With the help of this particular relative's subtle intervention, the spouse who requires to put in more effort in making their marriage work would be shown where they might be lacking and how such gaps hurts their spouse and hence the marriage. This 'enlightenment' phase needs to be done with extreme finesse and sensitiveness as any slip in the proposed guidance could backfire into a sudden widening of the already existing gap in the relationship.

2. Dialogue - you would observe and agree that among the first signs that your marriage is in trouble is the deterioration of the two-way communication with your spouse. What was once spontaneous sharing of information - and you definitely have some information to share on a daily basis - becomes 'not-so-important-that-I-would-need-to-say-it'. This gradual change would bring the marriage into more trouble since each spouse would after some time expect that the other "know" what ails the other without any direct communication. When the spouse fails to do so - because they have no clue what is expected of them - you feel hurt and as a result you would pull further back away from him/ her.

You need hence, to get yourself talk across a table without any fear that the other would misunderstand or worse "understand" without you expressing yourself. There is no such thing as 'if he/ she loved me, he/ she would know how I feel". You have to communicate openly about your feelings, expectation, disappointments and requirements. You have to focus on the behavior of your spouse and your needs rather than being busy building a "character sketch" of your spouse. If need be send the children to their grandparents and fully concentrate on restoring the communication channels among yourselves. Very often, that is all that was needed for putting your marriage back n track.

3. Restore physical intimacy - Another alternative would be to enforce some time together to facilitate physical intimacy. Lack of sex as lack of communication is a sign that all is not what it should be. You could go for a second honeymoon (without the children) and try to put back the sexual spark that once existed between you. Sexual intimacy often clears the air and facilitates communication resulting is positive direction of the marriage.

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