What is Marriage Counselling?

Posted February 21, 2022 by Cristina Vrech

Cristina Vrech - Individual and couples therapist

Cristina Vrech

Founder and Director - Individual & Couple Therapist, Corporate Services

Co-founder and director of Leone Centre, Cristina Vrech, has 20+ years of experience in working and supporting people, 14+ years of extensive experience as a therapist and offers valuable knowledge to individuals and couples. Prior to being a therapist, she worked in the financial sector.

Cristina takes a down-to-earth and direct approach across the landscapes of relationships, communication, stress, infidelity, confidence, loneliness, addiction, separation and divorce, IVF, and anxiety.

Offering Online Counselling and in person counselling.

Cristina Vrech can help with...

What is Marriage Counselling?

Every relationship is a process that evolves and changes over time. As such, relationships require an ongoing commitment and effort and love isn’t always enough to keep a relationship on track.

Daily stress, different expectations, and a lack of communication can cause partners to drift apart. People go to marriage counselling for a variety of reasons, including money problems, intimacy problems, and a break in trust. It can also be stressful for a relationship if you struggle with in-law problems, childcare, and a work-life balance. These can strain your marriage.

Marriage counselling can help address issues within your relationship. However, if your marriage is not where you want it to be, don’t delay the decision to start counselling.

According to research, relationship counselling, in particular, seems to be a last-ditch option for many couples who need help.
The majority of couples wait an average of six years before seeking assistance. As a result, many of them have marriage problems that have accumulated to the breaking point by the time they seek marriage counselling.

Marriage counselling can provide a safe space to work out your marriage issues and overcome painful feelings. A skilled and qualified marriage counsellor can guide you through the therapy process, allowing you to reconnect on a deeper level and develop resilience to deal with future challenges.

Marriage counselling

How Much Does Marriage Counselling Cost?

The answer to this question may vary depending on the counsellor’s level of training and experience. Marriage therapists put in a significant amount of time, energy, effort, and money to become accredited professionals in their field. A university post graduate or master degree, specialised training on couples counselling, a lot of clinical supervision, and extra training should ensure that marriage counselling clients get high-quality service.

Relationship counselling can be the best investment in your life and the best gift you can give to one another and your family.

It is important that you take care looking for an experienced therapist who has received specific couples counselling training. It is your relationship, family, and life that is at stake, so finding the right therapist with the right experience is critical.

How Does Marriage Counselling Work?

The structure of couples therapy typically depends on the orientation of your therapist. Emotional Focused Therapy (EFT), solution-focused therapy, the Gottman Method, discernment counselling, and Imago Relationship Therapy are some of the most common types of relationship therapy, but there are many more.

What to Expect from Marriage Counselling?

Marriage counselling is a form of therapy designed for individuals and couples who seek to resolve conflicts, improve communication skills, rekindle closeness, or separate on friendly terms, among other things.

Marriage counselling can be successful when both partners are willing to work on their relationship and have reasonable expectations or therapy goals.

If you meet these conditions, couples counselling can help you:

  • Improve communication
  • Understand one another better
  • Look at your problems from a different perspective
  • Improve your empathy
  • Learn new, constructive ways to resolve conflicts
  • Reestablish trust and rebuild your marriage after infidelity

How Long Will the Therapy Last?

This is one of the first questions you may have at the beginning of your therapy. The length of relationship counselling is determined by how long you have been struggling in your relationship, the severity of the hurt you feel, your attachment style, and other factors.

What to Expect from the First Couples Counselling Session?

Typically, the intake marriage counselling session is pretty structured. From the therapist’s perspective, the first counselling session is about getting to know the couple. The therapist will be able to better understand and assess your marriage problems if they know more about you both individually and together.

So, your first session or assessment will give the couple and therapist the opportunity to understand the presenting issues and individual perspectives. You can also expect to talk about your goals for therapy, as well as sensitive topics like infidelity, possible past traumas, and so on.

Do You Need Marriage Counselling?

Marriage counselling can benefit estranged couples who want to reconnect and rekindle their bonds. Your counsellor can help you delve deeper into the underlying causes of your marital problems and develop skills to improve your relationships and sustain that change.

It doesn’t matter if you’re just starting out in a new relationship or you’ve been married for a long time. You can benefit from marriage counseling at any time.

However, marriage counseling is not a good idea if there is infidelity or abuse going on in a marriage.

LGBT marriage therapy

Is Marriage Counselling Worth It?

The success of marriage therapy depends on several factors, such as both partners having the same therapy goals, the couples’ commitment to treatment, the counsellor’s experience, and whether the counsellor and a couple are a good fit.

However, studies show that new marriage counselling approaches such as EFT can provide long-term benefits.

Couples therapy can be a safe and private place to think about your problems and their causes, be vulnerable with each other, accept responsibility, and solve your personal and interpersonal problems.

Reasons to Seek Marriage Counselling

Relationship problems may arise for several reasons. Some couples seek marriage counselling to strengthen their relationship, improve communication skills, or gain support when making a major life decision such as moving in together or starting a family.

Some of the main reasons to seek marriage counselling include:

Marriage counselling provides a safe platform for distressed couples to understand their challenges, identify unhealthy patterns, and heal together.

To make the most of your marriage therapy, make sure you have the same expectations and that you are both willing to open up, be vulnerable with one another, and work on your relationship.

You can also consider doing individual therapy before or simultaneously with marriage counselling to begin working on your internal conflicts that are possibly causing problems in your relationship.

Finally, you need to be determined to sustain the positive change in your relationship. Long-term benefits of couples therapy can only be achieved if you are willing to put your therapy insights into practice in your daily life.

Marriage Counselling at Leone Centre 

At Leone Centre, we offer a Team of experienced and passionate associates Counsellors and Organisational Consultants

You can book an initial consultation for relationship counselling in London or online. To ensure our availability, we are available seven days a week at a range of centres throughout London in and near the following locations:

Central South West London locations reachable from: Fulham (SW6), Battersea (SW11), Putney (SW15), Chelsea (SW3, SW10), Victoria (SW1)

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Talk with a Leone Centre Professional

If you do feel like you need some help and support, our Leone Centre professionals are available 7 days a week. Call us on 020 3930 1007. We can also provide fast track therapy.

We can offer in-person counselling in London appointments at our head office in Fulham and our offices in Kensington, Wimbledon and Belgravia, We also service Victoria, Putney, Chelsea, Knightsbridge, Mayfair, and City of London.

In addition, we offer Online Therapy appointments wherever in the world you are located, should this better fit around your existing commitments or if you are not able to attend an in-person appointment.