There are many choices for marriage counseling available, and they include individual, group or couples counseling. Increasingly, a person seeks out individual counseling without his spouse. It may not be the most desirable or ideal choice in all cases. Yet it is proving to be extremely beneficial. As marriage expert Mort Fertel clarifies, one person alone can transform or even save a marriage.
Definition
Marriage counseling helps a couple identify and resolve conflicts and is a means to improving a relationship. Individual marriage counseling occurs when a person seeks out the tools for establishing a healthy and successful marriage one-on-one with a therapist or counselor without the attendance of her partner. While this template of counseling may be sought by a married person, the counseling website Spiral2grow notes that it also can take the form of premarital counseling during which a person seeks skill-based education before marriage.
Benefits
Sometimes a partner is unwilling to accompany his spouse to counseling for a number of reasons, including not believing counseling will help or no longer being interested in the marriage. The other partner alone seeks out the tools to resolve the conflicts or failing marriage. Sometimes, it is based on a desire to discuss issues with a therapist alone, even at least initially. A person who has certain psychological disorders affecting his marriage may need to focus on these through individual marriage counseling before focusing on other dynamics of the marriage, notes Psychology Information Online.
Types
There are various approaches to individual counseling with marriage as its focus. Psychotherapy or behavioral therapy may help those individuals who wish to sort out sources of marital conflict that may be part of that person's behavioral patterns.
Related Therapy
Counseling for individual problems can also be related to helping a marriage. For example, when conflicts derive from an individual's deep-seated anger, that person may seek out one-on-one therapy with an anger management therapist, notes Psychology Information Online. Online individual counseling is especially beneficial to those who might be constrained by costs or access to a local therapist.
Expert Insight
Individual counseling for marital problems may be highly successful for some due to the focus many practitioners take on identifying personality traits or childhood traumas that affect the marriage. Authors of "Love in the Present Tense" warn that problems are not in the relationship but in the individual who is part of the relationship, and they argue that conventional therapies focusing on relationships simply do not work.
References
- Psychology Information Online: Couples Therapy
- Spiral2Grow: Premarital Counseling
- "Marriage Fitness;" Mort Fertel; Baltimore: MarriageMax 2007
- "Love in the Present Tense;" Morrie and Arleah Schechtman; Boulder: Bull Publishing 2004
