Have you ever stayed awake all night long worrying about whether your marriage will last or not? If so, have you thought about marriage and counseling?

Troubled marriage represents different kind of emotions. Hurt feelings are the most common but it can lead to depression, panic, paranoia, and anger. These emotions can be distracting to your goal of creating romantic love and finally bringing it all in ruins. For this part, it can take you to painful experiences you can never accept at all.

This kind of situation can make your mind go nuts thinking how can you possibly save it in due time. A marriage in trouble is very depressing, thinking what went wrong. It makes you realize what is happening, although you are hoping that all is well despite some differences.

Likewise, in marriage you just knew that it’s not going to be a perfect one. You just do what you think is right, but still sometimes that is not quite enough. But then you think it’s not a problem at all, because you expect marriage to be a process of accepting, learning and most of all loving despite of weaknesses.

FINDING A GOOD MARRIAGE COUNSELOR

When dealing with a troubled marriage it is advisable to get a marriage counselor, although you better find a good one. A good marriage counselor helps guide the couple through emotional distresses, motivating the feelings and discussing some sort of tips to excite the couple. Counselors guide couples in understanding the enormous stress in facing one of their greatest crises to date. For instance, when one or both spouses become emotionally upset, a counselor must have the skill in treating emotional reactions effectively.

A good counselor must know how to calm down the couple and assuring them that it’s not a sign of hopeless incompatibility. Counselors sometimes obtain special training for many common marital problems, such as sexual differences in which this is one of the reasons why couples disintegrate- like having an affair. Also, financial conflicts can be a deciding factor in which one of the couple is not financially stable.

By finding your preferred marriage counselor, there are many ways of discovering them. You can ask from your friends but it’s better if some of them have had personal experience with a counselor that has successfully guided them. Also, you can find counselors in your phone directory or yellow pages where some of their offices and contact numbers are stated.

Regardless of your source of referral, you should be certain in choosing someone who can really help you. Always remember that a counselor can help your relationship for you and your partner. If possible, it’s much better if your partner is an active participant in treatment sessions.

If you are using the phone directory or yellow pages as your method of choosing a marriage counselor be sure and ask them the following questions:

• How many years have you been a counselor?
• What are your credentials (e.g. academic and master’s degree)?
• Do you help clients in overcoming and avoiding emotional letdowns?
• Do you help in motivating the clients to finish the program successfully?
• Do you suggest different approach in dealing solutions in any kind of marital situations?
• How much does it cost for every session or for the whole duration of the program?

You can add other relevant questions as long as the marriage counselor knows what type of marital problem you have. Finally, this is the object of marriage and counseling. In choosing your preferred marriage counselor you should let him/her know that you come for help in restoring and saving love to your marriage. Because in marriage, it’s the most beautiful thing ever to happen in your life.

When considering marriage counseling, it’s difficult not to wonder whether seeing a marriage counselor will actually work. This article provides some objective information based on data obtained from a national survey of marriage and family counselors and their clients. Also presented are several interesting opinions provided by individuals who have actually been through marriage counseling and were asked to comment on whether or not seeing a marriage counselor proved effective in helping their relationship.

An honest marriage counselor would agree that the motivation of a couple may be the single most important factor in determining the success of marriage counseling. It’s unlikely that even a brilliant counselor would be able to save a marriage where one spouse has already decided upon a divorce, and a mediocre marriage counselor can probably help a couple who are utterly committed towards making their marriage work. With this in mind, research has been made in an effort to determine, on a more scientific level, the effectiveness of couples counseling.

In an article published by Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, clients of marriage and family counselors from 15 different states reported on their experience with counseling. The findings indicated that marriage and family counselors treated a wide range of issues in relatively short-term fashion, couple and family therapy are briefer than individual therapy, and that client satisfaction and functional improvement are quite high.

[*] Specifically, of clients from 526 marriage and family counselors in 15 different states:

98.1% rated services good or excellent
97.1% got the kind of help they desired
91.2% were satisfied with the amount of help they received
93% said they were helped in dealing more effectively with problems
94.3% would return to the same therapist in the future
96.9% would recommend their therapist to a friend
97.4% were generally satisfied with the service they received
63.4% reported improved physical health
54.8% reported improvement in functioning at work
73.7% indicated improvement in children’s behavior
58.7% showed improvement in children’s school performance
[*] Excerpted from “Clinical Practice Patterns of Marriage and Family Therapists: A National Survey of Therapists and Their Clients”, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy–Volume 22, No. 1

While the above study provides raw data that supports the effectiveness of marriage and counseling, a very interesting discussion on the question “Does Couples Counseling Work” from a public forum devoted to this topic offers a less clinical, but still positive view. Based on what seems to be a very honest and frank discussion among couples “who’ve been there,” the answer to the question of whether or not marriage counseling is effective is a positive one. Read these posts on the Berkley Parents Network.

Regardless of the studies and opinions which seem to support the effectiveness of marriage / couples counseling, there are those who question it’s effectiveness. An article on the about.com portal, had this to say:

The science of marital counseling is being studied in great detail these days. Research is showing that it is not as effective as people think, that women seem to get more from it than men, and that it might not have a lasting effect on the couple’s marriage.

What type of couple gets the most from couple therapy? The answer is young, non-sexist, still in love, open couples.

Which couples receive the least from therapy? Some factors that can make couple therapy unsuccessful include couples who wait too long before seeking help, and often one or the other is set on getting a divorce and is closed to any suggestions that may save the marriage.

Excerpted from the marriage.about.com portal

Unfortunately, the data supporting the above-mentioned research is not specifically cited in the article. The article seems to imply that couples who seek counseling because they want their relationship to work are more likely to succeed with marriage counseling than are those who enter into counseling with the (perhaps hidden) truth that they already want out.

For more marriage and counseling information that couldsave your marriage and get your relationship back on track, click here.