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Relationships can be very difficult sometimes. Maybe you have difficulty communicating with your partner. Maybe you find yourself getting angry with your partner all the time. Maybe you just feel like you and your partner aren’t on the same page. This might be a good time to consider couples therapy. Many people think couples therapy is only for couples that are going to break up, but if that were true, no one would ever go to couples therapy. Couples therapy is actually helpful towards improving the communication in a relationship as well as identifying patterns that you may not be aware of yourself that you’re participating in. Oftentimes, couples therapy will lead to more successful and strong relationships, whereas people that don’t go to couples therapy, will typically end up breaking up. If you are thinking couples therapy might be good for your relationship, but you’re not sure how to approach the subject with your partner, you may consider talking about how you feel in the relationship and sharing your perspective on it and including your contribution to what’s going on. People are often more likely to listen when they’re not being told what’s wrong with them. If you’re able to approach the topic of couples therapy with your partner, you’ll be able to find a couples therapist in many different places. Ask your doctor or therapist for referral. One of the most difficult things in a relationship is where one partner feels, I think we should see a couples therapist and has to find a way to convey that to their partner. The best way to do that is to communicate your feelings and how you feel you contribute to the issues in their relationship and that you want to work on that with a couples therapist. Oftentimes other people are more or less more willing to listen if you’re talking about yourself as opposed to telling them what’s wrong with them. In relationships, people can get very defensive, so if you tell your partner we need to go to couples therapy, your partner may feel they must think something’s wrong with me. So be sensitive to that and try to communicate why you feel it would help you in the relationship. When looking for a couples therapist, it’s important to find someone who is not biased, so not one of the two of your therapists. Additionally, it’s going to be really important that there’s a good fit between the therapist and both you and your partner. It may be good to talk to your partner after the first therapy session about how he or she felt that that therapy session went. There’s often a stigma with couples therapy where people may think, if we go to couples therapy, we’re going to break up. In fact, it’s the opposite. In couples therapy, you can learn skills that can be really helpful in creating a stronger bond in your relationship, as well as learning patterns of behavior that may contribute to many different arguments or fights that you’re already having. Oftentimes, people who come out of couples therapy come out with a stronger bond and feel even closer to their partners.
