You have decided to seek couples counseling. You have contacted a licensed marriage and family therapist and made your first appointment. This is a big deal and a positive step in the right direction.
All couples have ups and downs in their relationships. Life happens and throws you obstacles out of your control, obstacles that can put a hardship on your marriage. How you overcome these obstacles is important. Couples counseling will help you build skills that bring you closer, and make you stronger, so you can support each other through the good and the challenging.
Instead of sitting around, wondering what your first couples counseling session will entail, there are things you can do to prepare. Most marriage and family therapists will offer guidance on how to prepare for counseling. Some of their recommendations may look like the ones listed below.
Make Sure You Both Want Couples Counseling
You are much better off postponing couples counseling than attending when one of you does not want help. Unless you are both onboard and ready for change and healing, going to couples counseling could do more damage than good.
If only one of you wants to meet with a therapist, change your appointment from couples therapy to individual therapy. Your relationship can still benefit from individual counseling. After seeing improvements you are making, your spouse may change his or her mind and be ready for counseling together at a later date.
If both of you are ready, then continue preparing using the following ideas.
Create Goals
What do you want to happen while you are in couples counseling? Write down short and long-term goals that you each want while in counseling and after. Share your goals with your therapist during your first session.
To set goals, ask each other questions. How do we fight, and is it working? How do we make decisions for our family? What do we do great? What areas need improvement?
Your therapist will use these questions and many more to help you work through significant issues within your relationship.
Spend Time Reflecting
Who taught you how to be a spouse? There are many books on how to treat a husband or wife, but guidelines in a book do not apply to all couples. Take time to reflect on your upbringing. Talk about the couples, including your parents, who influence how you act in a relationship.
You may not even realize you have picked up the characteristics of a relationship from your past. Sometimes this is a good thing, sometimes challenging. For example, maybe you were raised by parents who did not show affection, and now you show little affection to your spouse. Maybe your spouse was raised by parents who showed a lot of affection, even in public, and wants to continue those behaviors in your relationship.
Introspection and reflection help you know what to change and compromise for the sake of your relationship.
Start Getting Excited About Positive Change
Change must happen to improve your relationship. But couples counseling is not about pointing the finger at each other and deflecting focus from yourself. Both of you can make improvements that benefit your marriage.
You are the only person who can change you. The same is true for your spouse. When you prepare for couples counseling, get excited about the positive changes you can make to help your relationship.
What you will learn is that when you change for the better, it forces others to change. If your usual way of arguing is for your spouse to burst into a screaming match, you likely join the match soon after. You can change this by not engaging in the fight. If your spouse starts screaming, you can refuse to react. This shuts down the argument and gives you both time to calm down, at which time you can restart your disagreement.
Priorities and Compromises
If your family is like many others in America, you are busy with work, school, family, and home responsibilities. For couples counseling to be effective, you must make therapy and your relationship a priority.
Make sure nothing interferes with your first couples counseling session. Make it a priority to show up for counseling, proving you are committed to the process.
You can also start thinking about compromises you are willing to make to improve your relationship. Can you dedicate more time to participating in date nights or family outings, even if that means working less or cutting out your nights with friends?
Compromising shows just how much you want the relationship to thrive.
Come To Terms With Truths About Couples Counseling
Many couples get counseling thinking they will attend a few sessions for one hour a week, and all will be better. That is not true. Here are some truths about couples counseling: Your therapist cannot fix your problems; you must do that with the guidance of a therapist.
One hour of therapy each week is not enough. That is why most therapists assign relationship-building assignments for you and your spouse to complete between sessions. These assignments help you practice what you have learned and report the results in your next counseling session.
Not all relationships in counseling have a happy ending. There are cases in which couples realize they want to separate rather than stay together. That does not mean counseling needs to end, however. Couples counseling is very beneficial in any stage of a relationship.
You may learn things about your spouse you never knew before. Your counselor can help you understand why the information was not shared and how to handle feelings of betrayal if they arise.
Finally, you may learn a lot about yourself that is both pleasant and unpleasant. This is a good thing. The more you understand your past and how it affects your feelings and behaviors today, the more improvements you can make.
Your relationship can and will benefit from couples counseling. Your relationship is worth every effort to make it better.