Where do you see our marriage in one/five/ten years?.What can I do to make our marriage better?.What do you expect from our counseling sessions?.Is there anything from our past that still bothers you?.Do you feel you can talk to me about anything?.Are you seeing anyone else? Do you want to?.Are you satisfied with our degree of intimacy?.Is there anything you don’t trust about me?.Do you love me, and if so, in what way?.Do you believe we can save our marriage?.Is this a temporary phase (or is it something more permanent)?.What are the biggest problems in our marriage?.The following questions can be shared during couples therapy, but they should be encouraged to come up with a personalized list in advance of the session: The couple should put together a list of questions they have for each other to make the best use of time in each marriage counseling session. With that in mind, marriage counseling provides a vital opportunity to observe couples’ interactions, assess where conflict arises, and agree on the steps required to meet both partners’ needs. After all, a positive attitude radiates through all areas of the relationship: play, romance, learning, and adventure. And this emotional intelligence can be seen, even in relatively short interactions. In successful marriages, partners are more positive than negative about one another. “ Happily married couples aren’t smarter, richer or more psychologically astute than others,” he says. So, based on decades of research and interviewing thousands of couples, what did he conclude was the secret behind a happy marriage? When researchers tested his predictions, he was 91% accurate. In Gottman and Silver’s excellent book, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (1999), John Gottman describes how, after observing a couple’s interaction for only 15 minutes, he can predict the likelihood that they will remain together.Īnd, surprisingly, he is almost always right. 4 Couples Therapy Worksheets for Your Clients.These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients build healthy, life-enriching relationships.
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Whether facilitated through one-to-one therapy, books, or mobile apps, the marriage counseling tools and approaches discussed in this article can strengthen marriage’s emotional bonds and improve overall relationship satisfaction.īefore you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Positive Relationships Exercises for free. Research has identified that even increasing the number of positive interactions over negative ones can improve marriage stability (Budiharto, Meliana, & Rumondor, 2017). Nevertheless, there are many approaches, often relatively straightforward, that have been shown to improve relationships.
Indeed, according to the American Psychological Association (2020), between 40 and 50 percent of marriages in the United States end in divorce. While research confirms that marriage leads to increased life satisfaction, it is not without its challenges (Boyce, Wood, & Ferguson, 2016).
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