According to research, “50 percent of all marriages in the United States will end in divorce or separation. Researchers estimate that 41 percent of all marriages end in divorce, 60 percent of second marriage end in divorce and 73 percent of all third marriages end in divorce. The United States has the 6th highest divorce rate in the world.” This causes anxiety as couples want to ensure that they are nurturing and working through issues in their marriage.
Talking about mental health has become less stigmatized in society. However, there are still plenty of negative stereotypes about counseling. If you are feeling disconnected from your partner and/or feel stuck and having the same fights over again in your relationship, online marriage therapy can be the perfect venue for couples to learn, heal, and grow. It’s very convenient and getting on an online platform is also easy to use.
Online marriage counseling is a process where you and your partner can learn how to gain insight into your relationship, resolve conflict, improve communication, and develop physical and emotional intimacy. Throughout this process, you want to move past blaming each other so that you can understand each other’s subjective realities and see the relationship more objectively. The goal is to deepen your connection and build a healthy relationship together.
Research done by the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists found that “couples who have attended couples therapy sessions indicate high levels of patient satisfaction. After working with a marriage therapist, 93 percent of patients said they had more effective tools for dealing with their problems.”
When you and your partner are feeling stuck in negative patterns, the longer the pattern sets in, the harder it is to come out of it, so it’s best to start the process early so resentment doesn’t grow and take on a life of its own.
Are you wondering what you can expect and how you can benefit from online marriage counseling? Keep reading to learn the 7 phases of online marriage counseling:
1. Commitment: The beginning of the marriage counseling process requires you and your partner to feel committed and ready to improve your relationship. Online marriage counseling is hard work, and it is critical that you are both willing to put time and effort into working on the relationship.
2. Listen to Your Partner’s Subjective Experience: You want to learn what your partner is feeling and their subjective experience around the marital issues.You both need to understand your partner’s reality and their perspective in order to start the communication process.
3. Empathy: In this phase you learn and listen to your partners experiences from their subjective lens and work through misunderstandings and conflicts. You need to be honest, open and allow yourselves to be more vulnerable with each other. As you both allow yourselves to be vulnerable, you can feel safe and begin to experience intimacy in the relationship.
4. Respond Rather than React: You and your partner start to respond instead of react to each other. You are learning how you are each contributing to the negative dynamics in the relationship. You are aware of the underlying issues and learning how and why you are feeling disconnected.
5. Connection: You and your partner begin to take more ownership over issues that are agitating the relationship. You are both growing more conscious of yourselves, aware of your partners past and the relationship. As a result, you begin experiencing positive shifts and deepening your connection.
6. Introspection and Insight: During this phase, you start identifying and introspecting on your own deeper issues and why they’re negatively affecting the relationship. You and your partner start to work on a deeper level as you identify your triggers. You begin taking responsibility for your actions and growing more aware of your own individual issues.
7. Deeper Intimacy: In this phase, we begin accepting our partner for who they are. You are developing a deeper friendship with your partner. Physical intimacy has been restored in the relationship. You continue to work on developing emotional intimacy as you continue to grow more conscious together.
This process is all about regressing and learning new levels of comfort together as you evolve together. It’s about one step forward, two steps back, two steps forward, one step back until we learn new healthier ways of being in the relationship.
Online marriage counseling is a good venue to start to see your partner and the relationship more objectively and work through issues so you can build a healthier relationship. Sometimes couples realize through the process that the relationship isn’t right. In such cases, counseling can help these couples separate amicably.
Online couples counseling can sound intimidating if you’ve never been to a session before. These 7 phases can help you understand the step by step approach of what to expect from online marriage counseling.
Are you ready to take the first step toward improving your relationship? We are a group of skilled therapists specializing in couples/marriage counseling and since Covid started we have been working with couples providing Online Marriage Counseling in New York, New York City, Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, Scarsdale, Larchmont, Westchester County, South Hampton, West Hampton, East Hampton, Montauk, Long Island, Buffalo and Albany. Schedule a complimentary consultation by clicking HERE.
