Relationship Counselling
Relationships can be enormously rewarding, but they can also bring out reactions in us that we struggle to understand.
Couples often come to counselling because something has changed in the way they relate to one another. Conversations become arguments. The same issues keep coming up without ever really being resolved. One person wants to talk and the other withdraws. Intimacy changes. Resentment builds. Sometimes both people end up feeling lonely in a relationship that still matters deeply to them.
Relationship counselling gives couples an opportunity to slow this down and understand what is actually happening between them.
Some couples come because the relationship is in crisis. Others notice that they are drifting apart and want to address it before the distance becomes greater. Some are not in difficulty at all, but want to understand one another better and strengthen an already good relationship.
Attachment and Relationship Patterns
Attachment can be a useful way of understanding why people respond so differently when a relationship feels uncertain.
Our earlier experiences of closeness, reassurance, rejection, safety and emotional availability can influence what happens when we feel vulnerable in an adult relationship.
One partner may respond to uncertainty by wanting more contact, reassurance or conversation. The other may cope by becoming quiet, withdrawing or needing space.
Neither response is necessarily wrong. The problem is what can happen when the two responses meet.
The more one person reaches for connection, the more pressured the other may feel. The more that person withdraws, the more rejected the first person feels, which can lead them to pursue even harder.
Before long, the couple is arguing about each other’s behaviour rather than recognising the cycle that has developed between them.
One of the things relationship counselling can do is help the couple see the cycle as the problem instead of automatically seeing each other as the problem.
Different Personalities, Different Ways of Relating
Attachment is only part of the picture.
Two people can love one another and still have very different personalities, communication styles, emotional needs and ways of dealing with conflict.
One person may want to resolve a disagreement immediately, while the other needs time to think. One may communicate very directly while the other is more cautious. One may regard disagreement as completely normal, while the other experiences conflict as threatening.
Our upbringing, culture, family experience, values and previous relationships all contribute to the way we understand what is happening between us.
Often the difficulty is not the difference itself. It is what we believe the difference means.
Silence may mean rejection to one partner and an attempt to calm down to the other. Asking for reassurance may feel like an attempt to connect to one person and criticism to the other. Independence may feel healthy to one person and like emotional distance to their partner.
Understanding these differences can change the conversation considerably.
Communication and Conflict
Relationship counselling is not only about insight. Couples also need practical ways of dealing with difficult moments.
This can include learning how to raise an issue without immediately putting the other person on the defensive, how to listen for what somebody is trying to say rather than preparing a counterargument, how to manage emotion during conflict and how to repair the relationship after an argument.
It can also mean learning to express a need more clearly.
There is an important difference between saying, “You never make time for me,” and being able to say, “I miss spending time with you and I am worried that we are becoming disconnected.”
The underlying concern may be the same, but the conversation it creates can be very different.
Working With Differences and Strengths
Relationship counselling is not about making two people more alike.
Differences can create conflict, but they can also be part of what makes a relationship work.
One person’s caution may balance another person’s tendency to act quickly. A reflective partner may bring something valuable to somebody who makes decisions easily. An extrovert and an introvert do not necessarily need to change one another. They may need to understand what each person needs in order to function well.
The question becomes less about who is right and more about how the couple can make room for both people while each takes responsibility for the impact they have on the relationship.
Pre-Marital Counselling
Pre-marital counselling is not only for couples who are experiencing problems.
It can provide an opportunity to have conversations that are surprisingly easy to postpone while a relationship is going well.
These may include communication and conflict, sex and intimacy, children, parenting, finances, careers, religion and values, household responsibilities, social life, boundaries and expectations around marriage.
Family relationships are also worth talking about.
People often enter marriage with quite different assumptions about parents and in-laws, holidays, family traditions, loyalty, boundaries and how involved extended family should be in decisions.
Money is another area where couples may discover that they are operating from very different beliefs. One person may associate money with security, while another sees it as something to be enjoyed. Views about debt, saving, spending, joint accounts, financial independence and career priorities can create difficulties when those assumptions have never been discussed.
The same is true of roles within the relationship. We often carry ideas about what a husband, wife or partner should do without ever consciously deciding whether those ideas suit the relationship we are actually building.
Pre-marital counselling gives couples somewhere to make those expectations visible and decide together what they want their own relationship to look like.
Relationships Change Over Time
A relationship does not remain the same simply because the two people remain together.
Children arrive. Careers become more demanding. Financial circumstances change. Health changes. Parents age. Roles shift. Sex and intimacy may change. Couples themselves change.
A relationship that worked well at one stage of life may need to be adjusted at another.
One transition I think is particularly important is when children leave home.
After many years of parenting, a couple can suddenly find themselves looking at one another without the routines and shared responsibilities that have occupied much of their lives.
Sometimes this is exciting. Sometimes it exposes a distance that developed gradually and went largely unnoticed.
The question may become:
Who are we now?
Counselling can help couples look at what has changed, what may have been neglected, what still connects them and what each person wants from the next stage of the relationship.
When You Are Unsure About the Relationship
Relationship counselling does not begin with the assumption that every relationship must stay together.
It also does not assume that separation is the answer because things have become difficult.
Sometimes couples need a space in which they can properly understand what has happened before deciding what they want to do.
There may still be a great deal worth repairing. There may also be difficult truths that need to be faced.
My role is not to decide that for the couple.
It is to help both people speak more honestly, listen more carefully and understand the relationship well enough to make their own decisions about its future.
Very often, beneath an argument about something apparently small, there is a much more vulnerable question:
Do I matter to you?
When a couple can begin talking at that level rather than only defending positions, something quite different can happen in the room.
I offer relationship and couples counselling in Hout Bay, Cape Town, as well as online across South Africa.