Marriage counseling is considered to be a type of therapy that made to both married and unmarried couples alike for the purpose of establishing a relationship that can flourish.
Marriage counseling is often times sought by married couples that are experience problems in their relationship to the extent that the union itself is at risk of being dissolved.
In other cases, marriage counseling is sought by couples that are engaged to be married and seek out such services in order to have a better insight to their current relationship and how to maintain and building on such relationship to make the union a fruitful marriage.
However, marriage counseling will prove to be varied due to the individual and unique case of each couple that seeks this kind of relationship therapy.
Why Choose Marriage Counseling?
Marriage counseling can be sought for a plethora of reasons, all varying in their nature and the intended goals of the couple. However, most often than not, married couples that engage in marriage counseling will do so as result of marital problems that are affecting their relationship to one another, and thus, putting the marriage at risk to end in divorce.
Marriage counseling is often sought in cases of some sort of severe trauma to the relationship, such as in cases of abuse or adultery. Marriage counseling may often times help rebuild the relationship by re-establishing foundations of trust and communication.
Many couples will often times undergo marriage counseling with the overall goal of improving their relationship and marriage, even if no serious problems in the actual relationship exist. Those with such goal in mind may find marriage counseling helpful in providing for ways to strengthen their relationship by engaging in stronger lines of communication between spouses.
Who Can Become a Marriage Counselor?
Most often, a marriage counselor will be an individual that is considered to be in the social worker profession. An example could be a person known as a Master of Social Work, which is a counselor with a specialized professional degree focused on the structures, constructs, and inner-workings of relationships.
Professional degrees in the field include the Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Marriage, Family, and Child Counselor, where such professionals have devoted collegiate learning in the study of relationships.
How Does Marriage Counseling Work?
The methods of counseling will prove to vary quite drastically due to the individual nature of the profession, both regarding the marriage counselor him/herself and his/her own particular and individual approach, as well as the particular situation present in a particular married couple.
Furthermore, the techniques used will also depend on the overall goals of the couple. Regardless of the case, a marriage counselor acts as a neutral third party, providing for expert knowledge in relationships that are to remain as unbiased as possible.
More often than not, marriage counseling will provide for a form of mediation between the couples, where issues are actually discussed and worked out by the couples themselves, with the marriage counselor providing the avenue for facilitating such communication.
Marriage counselor has proven to be helpful in many cases, though qualifying its overall effectiveness as a profession and form of relationship therapy will prove to be nearly impossible. Generally speaking, marriage counseling possesses the capability of improving a marriage quite greatly, yet many couples that undergo marriage counseling will still end up obtaining a divorce.