Couples seek the help of marriage counselors for premarital counseling, to deal with short-term and long-term problems and to decide whether they should continue with the relationship or get a divorce. Marriage counselors can have multiple educational backgrounds including marriage and family therapy, psychology and social work. When choosing a marriage and family therapist, you should consider her educational background, therapeutic style or modality and the types of insurances that she accepts.
Basics
Marriage therapists work with couples who seek treatment due to relationship difficulties or preparation such as premarital counseling. They usually meet once or twice a week for forty-five minutes to an hour on a short-term basis. However, each situation is different and therapy could only be needed for a few sessions or for much longer.
Types
Each therapist will have his own modality or therapeutic style. He may follow one theory such as solution based therapy or structural therapy or a combination of a couple theories. When you enter therapy, you should ask the therapist about his therapeutic style to make sure that it's a good fit. Marriage counselors have different roles according to the different types of modalities. For example, someone practicing psychodynamic therapy would help the couple focus on exploring how their pasts and childhoods are affecting their relationship and someone practicing systems theory would help the couple determine holistic actions to take to help the relationship.
Issues
It also depends on the issue that the couple is seeking help for in determining the therapist's role. For example, if a couple seeks help due to infidelity, the therapist would help the couple explore the reasons behind the infidelity, if they want to stay together, how to build the trust back up in the relationship and more. If a couple seeks assistance from a marriage therapist for premarital counseling, the therapist will assist the couple in exploring things such as future goals and finances.
Expectations
Most hold joint sessions with both partners and some also have individual sessions. The therapist will help you to communicate better, because this is one of the main components of most issues in a relationship. For instance, a couple who seeks treatment for financial problems may not be communicating with each other about their finances. If one partner is struggling with a mental illness or substance abuse problem, the therapist will educate the couple about the problem and help them to cope with it in healthy ways.
Evaluation
One of the roles of the couple and the therapist is to evaluate how the therapy is working on a regular basis. This can be done by asking each week if things have gotten better, worse or stayed the same. Also, therapists should ask if the couple feels the therapy is beneficial and modify it if it's not.
