The American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists reports an overall success rate of 98%, with couples therapy contributing to reducing the divorce rate in the United States. By working with their emotional cycles, couples can come to understand each other better and create new cycles of interaction. The key to success in marriage counseling is the couple's commitment. Couples who married in the 1970s have a 47 percent divorce rate, but those who married in the 1980s or 1990s actually have a lower divorce rate.
Ideally, the therapist will provide the couple with the skills they need for a handful of sessions and allow them to practice the techniques independently. This reflects the findings of the study, which show that couples who make consistent progress during therapy are the most likely to continue that progress afterwards. A counselor with specific experience with that disorder will be able to help the unaffected spouse to empathize in couples therapy and, at the same time, individually help the affected spouse to find new tools to cope and function. In other cases, communication patterns have become so abusive or negative that the therapist may have difficulty teaching the couple new communication techniques.
Couples therapy is very successful when both partners make an effort and when they find an experienced counselor to guide them. More than 98 percent of respondents reported that they had received good or excellent couples therapy, and more than 97 percent of those surveyed said that they had received the help they needed. If a couple waits until their problems are too advanced, one person may have already given up on the relationship, and saving it at that point can be difficult. As it turns out, there are clear differences between couples who benefit from marriage counseling and those who don't, which is why he created a practice called “discernment counseling”, which basically helps couples decide if the marriage is worth saving.
If you're ready to work on your relationship, get support and guidance from a couples counselor at ReGain.
