Couples Counseling: 7 Reasons Early Marriage Counseling Is Smart

So you’ve found that one, special person. The chemistry feels right. And if you’re like most couples, you feel prompted to take the next step in your relationship, marriage.

So you take the big leap.

And now, that you’ve returned to earth, you may be finding that a few key conversations might have made the leap a little less worrisome and your landing a little less bumpy.

Newlyweds often discover that, in an effort to avoid uncomfortable conversations and awkward confrontation, they may have avoided relationship issues, family concerns, or disturbing habits that could be problems down the road.

If you feel this way, now is the time to shore up your relationship.

Early Marriage Counseling is Incredibly Worthwhile

Why is early marriage counseling worth the time?

Experts agree that the effectiveness of marriage counseling is inexorably tied to a couple’s motivation and timing.

Why wait for troubling thoughts to create years of upset, misunderstanding, or resentment? Why not seek to reinforce your bond now rather than repair it later?

Early marriage counseling is both proactive and preventive.  

It helps create an intimate connection while there is still a significant amount of goodwill in your relationship. It also heads off potential marital drift and disconnection later on.

A wealth of research finds that couples who seek to build essential communication skills and construct honest, respectful friendships, sooner rather than later, fare much better.

In his book, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, renowned relationship researcher, therapist, and expert, Dr. John Gottman, noted that “Couples who know each other intimately [and] are well versed in each other’s likes, dislikes, personality quirks, hopes, and dreams are couples who make it.”

To that end, let’s consider the following benefits for this type of counseling:

1. Early Marriage Counseling Gives Voice to Silent Concerns

Before you enter marriage counseling, you may have had concerns that you’ve kept to yourself. Maybe your issues revolve around your partner’s past, or your own. Yet you hesitate to bring the issues up for fear of disrupting your connection.

Marriage counseling helps provide a safe space where a professional can facilitate a positive conversation. However big or small, your concerns are of value. As a couple, you can learn to be safe listeners and respondents. Resolutions don’t come through silence but through open discussion.

Counseling allows you the support of an objective therapist whose goal is to help make honest sharing an integral part of your relationship.

2. Early Marriage Counseling Helps Develop Effective Communication Skills

There is more to effective communion than simply talking and listening. Often, productive communication skills don’t come naturally. They take time and practice. Consider early marriage counseling to be relationship education or coaching.

When applied to your life, communication skills provide solid groundwork for a healthy, open relationship. You will be more able to maintain the connection with your spouse while managing external stresses, internal challenges, and general conflicts well.

Marriage counseling can help you recognize and deal with poor communication patterns and roadblocks early and creatively, with less contention, long before communication is complicated by years of unproductive interaction and unhelpful coping mechanisms.

3. Early Marriage Counseling Facilitates Navigation of Tough Topics

Some subjects, throughout the course of your marriage, will be difficult to approach. It may be a sensitive area or simply a recurring situation that you feel ill- equipped to resolve. Some issues may remain unresolved indefinitely.

Regardless, navigating tough conversations respectfully and productively can prove to be challenging without support. You can learn to prioritize your relationship over the immediate problem and provide perspectives both of you may be too emotional or invested in to ordinarily consider.

Whether you employ marriage counseling locally in Miami or via Skype or FaceTime from anywhere else you can benefit from the professional advice or direction needed to guide your relationship through these issues.

4. Early Marriage Counseling Promotes Compassionate Conflict

Conflict is an intrinsic part of life in general. Experiencing conflict in your relationship is only natural and can be completely healthy. Arguments don’t have to become shouting matches followed by days of bitter silence.

Learning how to argue fairly is necessary for a long-lasting marriage. Conflict resolution is possible without emotional “bloodshed.” Counseling can keep your love and respect at the forefront of your conversations. It teaches you to engage conflict with goals in mind and a compassionate agenda.

I can help you develop the skills you need to disagree within boundaries early on, preventing regrettable interactions that can haunt a relationship for a long time.

5. Early Marriage Counseling Encourages Established Boundaries

Boundaries in any relationship not only protect you but your bond as well. In addition, you often need to set limits for in-laws, step-children, or other extended family members.

Marrying into a family can be both wonderful and challenging all at once. Being prepared for these unique interpersonal connections will help eliminate negative encounters all around. Early marriage counseling can help identify where and how boundaries need to be established to safely insulate your connection from the outside world.

6. Early Marriage Counseling Creates a Team Bond

Being married is a team effort. You and your spouse are on the same team, pursuing common goals. The purpose of your union is to experience life together in mutually beneficial ways.

Marriage counseling can help create a strong team bond, develop clear-cut goals, and design a plan you can pursue together.

7. Early Marriage Counseling Increases Your Chance For Success

Couples who engage marriage counseling early on have a higher success rate than those who don’t. Whether you simply want to explore your relationship or actively build a more solid marital foundation, marriage counseling provides tools that will serve you well.

All in all, deciding to face your issues early is worth the effort and any initial discomfort. You will reap relationship rewards continually as you grow a better, more deeply connected life together.

Don’t wait! If you want to set the stage for a more fulfilling relationship, marriage counseling may be the answer. You can contact me by phone or email for a cost-free consultation.

Services are rendered either at my office located at 2999 NE 191 St. Suite 703, Miami, Florida 33180 or through video conference via Skype  or FaceTime. Serving all of the greater Miami area or, through video conference, anywhere that there is a broadband internet connection.

Other articles of interest:

The Top 10 Reasons to Get Marriage Counseling

Why Your Second Marriage is Shaky and How to Fix It

The Four Stages of a Relationship. What Stage is Your’s In?

About the Author

Dr. Stan Hyman is a licensed psychotherapist and life coach in private practice in Miami, Florida. He works with couples struggling with powerful issues such as infidelity, loss of trust and intimacy.  He often works with couples on the brink of divorce, helping them to gain clarity on what path they will ultimately choose.