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Couples
Surviving an Affair
A partner’s affair can result in a serious
relationship crisis. For many, an affair triggers strong emotions and
intense reactions, such as shock, disbelief, betrayal, anger, guilt,
ambivalence, fear, hurt, loss, confusion or obsessive rumination.
Healing the pain and rebuilding trust when a partner
has been unfaithful is a difficult process that many couples need help
with. Recovery can be quite complicated and may take time. Partners need
to examine if they want to stay in the relationship or leave. They also
need to develop an understanding about why the affair occurred.
Rebuilding the relationship after an affair in
couples therapy involves talking about what happened, making amends,
learning to forgive, learning from the affair and restoring trust.
Couples
with Sexual Difficulties
Couples experience a decline of sexual satisfaction
for many reasons. A sexual relationship may become stale over time and
may need some revitalization and rekindling of intimacy.
Some couples have not been able to blend their
different sexual styles and needs into a fulfilling sex life. Gender
differences in sexual response cycle, sexual desire, sexual scripts or
intimacy needs are very common and have to be reconciled.
Sometimes a generally solid relationship faces sexual
difficulties, and those eventually spill over into other areas of the
partnership and cause damage. Chronic and unresolved conflicts between
partners often interfere with the couple’s sexual relationship.
Couples therapy can help couples in gaining a better
understanding of the nature of their sexual issues and in making desired
changes in their sexual relationship. Most sexual concerns can be
addressed in couples counseling. Occasionally, a referral to a sex
therapy specialist may be indicated.
Couples
with a Traumatized/Abused Partner
The effects of past sexual abuse or other trauma can
undermine a partner’s abilities for creating and maintaining intimate
relationships. Trauma survivors feel vulnerable and may find it
difficult to trust and feel safe. Non-traumatized partners often feel
confused or helpless about trauma-related responses of their mate. While
past trauma typically has a strong impact on the couple relationship, a
loving, caring relationship can also be a very important part in the
healing and recovery of a trauma and abuse survivor.
Couples therapy for couples with a traumatized or abused partner:
Offers both partners support for coping with and overcoming the
negative effects of past trauma or abuse in their relationship.
- Fosters understanding on how current relationship issues may be
linked to the trauma.
- Helps with developing strategies for managing triggers, fear,
anger and other intense emotions.
- Provides the non-traumatized partner with skills for responding to
the trauma survivor in supportive and empathic ways that confirm
personal worth and integrity.
- Helps create a more secure bond and safe forms of intimacy between
partners.
Couples
Facing Serious Health Issues
Partners usually do not expect the challenges of
serious health problems until the later stages of their lives. When a
severe or chronic illness suddenly intrudes into a couple relationship,
the couple often finds itself unprepared or overwhelmed. Couples may
need to care for an ill and aging parent, adjust to a serious,
unexpected illness of a child, or face significant health problems of
one of the partners.
Couples therapy can help the couple facing health
problems:
Cope with serious or chronic illness of a partner or family
member.
Accept illness as a universal experience that impacts all
long-term relationships at some point.
Acknowledge the challenges of significant illness and their
stressful effects on a relationship.
Communicate about fears, doubts and anger in relation to the
illness.
Prepare for and adapt to the changes that result from a close
person’s serious health problems, including changing roles within
the relationship.
Facilitate understanding and acceptance for the partner’s
different styles in dealing with illness.
Approach illness with mutual support and flexibility.
Couples
Impacted by Drug and Alcohol Abuse
Discussing Concerns about Substance Use
When one partner is concerned about the other partner’s use of
substances, couples counseling can be a forum for openly discussing
these concerns in a productive way.
Getting Help for Substance Use
When both partners acknowledge the use of substances as a problem,
the couple’s therapist will assist the couple in developing a joint
plan for addressing the substance abuse concern. The partner with
problematic substance use is typically encouraged to seek substance
abuse counseling and to attend AA. The couple’s therapist will suggest
occasional couple sessions to provide concurrent support to the couple
during the early stages of recovery.
Substance Abuse Recovery and the Couple Relationship
As the person progresses in their recovery, couples therapy
gradually focuses more on relationship issues. Prolonged substance use
tends to create a relationship pattern where the non-using partner
compensates for the problematic effects of their partner’s substance
use. Couples therapy helps the couple shift from this old pattern of
over- and under-functioning to a new, more balanced distribution of
responsibility in their relationship.
Same-Sex
Couples
Same-gender pairing and external homophobia create
unique relationship problems for same-sex couples. When same-sex couples
experience strain in their relationship, they need an unbiased couples
therapist who understands both the special dynamics of same-gender
intimacy and the strong impact of subtle or open discrimination, lack of
legal structures and forced secrecy on a same-sex relationship. Couples
counseling can offer additional support and validation to same-sex
couples, so that they can succeed in their relationship, despite the
frequent lack of social or family acceptance.
Interethnic,
Interracial & Interfaith Relationships
When partners have different social, cultural,
religious, racial or educational backgrounds, they often face additional
challenges for a successful relationship.
Interethnic Relationships
Ethnicity shapes attitudes towards time, family, eating, money and
sex. Cultural norms influence how anger and affection are expressed,
how children are brought up and what role men and women play. Some
couples may overemphasize their cultural differences, while other
couples may overlook or underestimate the impact of their different
ethnic background on their relationship.
Culturally sensitive couples counseling helps an interethnic couple
understand their relational difficulties within a broader cultural
perspective, clarifies ethnic values and facilitates successful
negotiation of cultural differences between partners.
Interracial Relationships
Interracial couples not only have to blend the differences of racial
experiences and cultural attitudes within their relationship. They also
have to overcome racism, common prejudice and possible rejection by
their own racial group for living with a racially different partner.
Couples therapy can help the couple work through ambivalence and value
conflicts, clarify racial identity confusion and validate the strengths
of the couple’s relationship.
Interfaith Relationships
Partners from different religious traditions have to reconcile their
religious practices and decide on religious rituals and celebrations.
Couples counseling can facilitate openly communicate about religious
beliefs and spiritual meanings. This dialogue often results in a deeper
level of relational connection and in a more solid foundation for a
shared spiritual journey as a couple.
Couples
in Life Cycle Transitions
Over the years, couples need to adjust to many
changes in their lives. These transitions can be stressful at times,
particularly when they involve children. Couples counseling can help
couples with successful adjustment to life cycle transitions:
Couples with Young Children
Couples with young children face more responsibility and less time
and freedom. Their relationship needs to make room for the child, and
their roles expand from being partners to being parents. During and
after the early years of parenthood, the sexual relationship may
change and need re-tuning.
Couples with Teenage Children
Teenage children bring new challenges that test parents to be both
firm and flexible. Couples need to be a strong parental team and become
comfortable with their adolescent’s growing independence. The couple’s
attention will gradually shift away from raising children towards
refocusing on the couple relationship, as off-spring begin to create
their own life and eventually leave home.
Elderly Couples
Retirement and old age brings both gains and losses for a couple.
Partners have more time available for personal interests as well as for
their relationship. They also have to find ways to cope with the ending
of their work life and professional identity, with a shift in physical
abilities and with increased health problems. A re-strengthened
relational bond will help an aging couple overcome potential boredom and
loneliness, and allows the couple to enjoy the later seasons of their
joint journey in a relationship that fulfills deeper emotional and
spiritual needs.
Remarriage
About 80 % of divorced people remarry, with men
showing a slightly higher percentage of remarriage than woman. Divorce
is more frequent in remarriages than in first marriages, because
remarried couples usually face more challenges than couples marrying for
the first time.
Previous Relationships Affect Remarriage
Either one or both partners have been married previously, and the
ending marriage may have left emotional scars and unresolved issues
that affect the new couple relationship.
Children and Remarriage
Dealing with the children from previous marriage(s) is perhaps the
most difficult task for remarried couples. While step-parent and
step-child need to adjust to living with a relative stranger, the
biological parent has continued contact with the ex-spouse about
parental decisions and responsibilities. Children may be expressing
their sense of loss and their unhappiness about the changes in family
arrangements with uncooperative or acting-out behaviors. The new couple
starts their new married life with an instant family. The spouses have
little time to consolidate their marriage before they need to respond to
the immediate presence of children in their household. It is not
surprising that remarried couples without children report significantly
fewer marital problems than remarried couples with children.
Couples counseling can help remarried couples:
- Build a marriage that overcomes hurts and mistakes from a previous
relationship.
- Develop and nourish a strong couple relationship that serves as a
solid foundation for a step-family.
- Plan for couple "alone time" without children.
- Establish mutually agreed on strategies for relating to
step-children and ex-spouses.
- Support each other in their different parenting roles and in
establishing general household rules as a couple.
Domestic
Violence
Violence in intimate relationships is quite common.
It is estimated, for example, that almost one third of married couples
experience a form of violence at some point in their marriage. Male
inflicted violence is more frequent and has greater potential for
serious harm, since men have greater strength and size to overpower
women. Severity of physical aggression can range from pushing, pinching,
shoving, grabbing, restraining or slapping to severe forms such as
punching, hitting, choking, sexual violation, or use of a weapon.
Violence in intimate relationships may include non-physical violation,
such as verbal and emotional abuse, destruction of property, or damage
to pets.
When Can Domestic Violence Be Addressed in Couples
Therapy?
Couples therapy is not indicated when the violence is current or
more severe. The appropriate approach with on-going relationship
violence is to first to focus on safety options for the victim, and if
possible, involve the perpetrator in a program that helps him/her stop
violent behavior.
Couples therapy for addressing domestic violence
may be possible:
- when both partners want to remain in the relationship
- when there is no current violence or threats of violence and no
danger to the victim;
- when past violence was less severe;
- when the perpetrator is not minimizing his/her violent acts, and
is genuinely committed to take responsibility for his/her actions
and to avoid future physical aggression;
- when the victim is not afraid or intimidated, and therefore can
participate as an equal in conjoint couples therapy.
Initial Evaluation
All couple situations involving violence require a thorough initial
evaluation that includes meeting individually with each partner. It may
take several sessions to accurately assess the extent of violence and to
determine whether or not couples therapy is a safe and appropriate
approach for the particular situation. At the end of the initial
evaluation, the therapist will make treatment recommendations and, when
indicated, make referrals to other programs.
Violence Prevention in Couples Therapy
If couples counseling is a viable approach for addressing domestic
violence, the prevention and elimination of violence will be the central
goal of couples therapy. This involves safety planning, identification
and avoidance of high-risk situations, learning non-violent and
constructive methods of handling relational conflict, anger management,
and mutually supported time-out procedures. Other relationship concerns
can only be worked on in couples therapy after the violence is under
firm control.
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