Marriage Therapy: Types and Approaches

Marriage relationships play an important role in our happiness and well-being. But, maintaining them can be difficult. There are steps you can take to keep your relationship strong and functional. Communication problems or a lack of closeness may be the result of an emotional rift between you and your partner. It can cause you to look for emotional connections elsewhere, which might end up ruining your marriage.

Every relationship experiences highs and lows. The American Psychiatric Association estimates that one out of every two marriages ends in divorce. Reaching out for marriage therapy could be helpful if you're having issues such as emotional distance, a lack of trust, a lack of intimacy, or communication problems with your partner.

What Should Be Expected During Marriage Therapy?

Your therapy sessions will be unique just like each relationship is unique. Marriage therapy can address communication problems, a loss of emotional intimacy, and other typical and unusual marital problems.

Giving spouses the resources they need to comprehend one another and work out disagreements is the goal of marriage counseling. Relationship counseling is helpful at any stage of a relationship, although couples frequently seek it out when things are difficult.

Types of Marriage Therapy

There are many different methods and approaches used in marriage therapy. Finding the therapy that works best for you and your relationship will be made easier by becoming more knowledgeable about the many types of couples therapy.

Gottman Method

This marriage therapy was created by married psychologists John and Julie Gottman. The Gottman approach concentrates on negative habits that disrupt relationships and lead to marital issues. Defensiveness, criticism, stonewalling, or scorn are a few examples of these actions.

A secure marriage is represented as a house in this method. Seven "floors" are identified under the idea. Creating love maps, expressing affection and adoration, turning toward rather than away from, adopting an optimistic outlook, Managing conflict, fulfilling life goals, and creating shared meaning are those seven floors for a couple to work through in order to strengthen their bond. In addition to that two "weight-bearing walls," are trust and devotion that a couple needs to stay together.

The Gottman Method is distinctive in a way that it emphasizes enduring rather than resolvable disputes. One of the ways that this type of marriage therapy can assist couples in improving their relationship is by helping them see this difference. Couples can change unhealthy conflict behaviors with more constructive ones by adopting new approaches to resolving ongoing arguments.

Imago Relationships Therapy

The goal of Imago relationship therapy is to improve communication between partners. This type of marriage therapy incorporates psychological, behavioral, and spiritual strategies to help couples reveal their hidden aspects. This marriage therapy assists couples in seeing solutions to conflict so they can heal and develop as a pair.

Imago therapy was created especially to help people understand and mend their relationships. The few challenges that Imago therapy can assist with include communication difficulties, recurrent conflicts and controversies, disconnection feelings, and missing closeness.

The focus on using conflict and distress as chances for healing and progress distinguishes Imago therapy from other therapeutic modalities. Imago therapy as an effective marriage therapy motivates couples to lean into those moments of discomfort and utilize them for inquiry, curiosity, and learning rather than merely teaching individuals how to "fight better" or discover strategies to avoid conflict in their relationships.

Solution-Focused Therapy

If you're struggling with a precise issue, feeling burnt out, or attempting to work toward a particular goal, solution-focused marriage therapy may be an option. Its evidence-based, short-term goal-focused therapeutic approach aids you in developing solutions rather than focusing on issues.

Solution-Focused therapy is implemented by therapist with the possibility for greater acceptance and boosted reimbursement capacities. Three different types of questions will probably be utilized by a therapist using a solution-focused approach to empower you and encourage your critical thinking. These include questions about miracles, exceptional circumstances, and scalability.

It is ideal to get help as soon as you start to experience emotional distress—before your worries or problems continue to worsen—because a solution-focused therapist can assist you in swiftly and effectively identifying and addressing your challenges.

Psychodynamic Therapy

In order to improve your understanding of one another, psychodynamic therapy looks into the underlying concerns and aspirations that drive you and your partner. The goal of psychodynamic marriage counseling is to aid you in comprehending how your behaviors are influenced by your thoughts, feelings, and experiences from the past.

By using psychodynamic therapy, you can treat mental or emotional suffering and encourage self-awareness, understanding, and emotional development

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

The goal of cognitive behavioral therapy is to enhance communication while identifying the root cause of relationship problems. The therapeutic process teaches couples how to appreciate one another's viewpoints and values while restructuring harmful interpretations of their partner's behavior.

When partners are actively participating in treatment, cognitive-behavioral couple-based interventions (CBI) seem to be at least as effective as individual CBT across a range of psychological illnesses, and frequently even more so. Couple-based marriage therapy frequently has the special extra advantage of enhancing relationship functioning.

A therapist can use CBT to assist you and your spouse in identifying events that frequently cause one or both of you to feel triggered and investigating reasons. Then, they might be able to assist you in identifying when it is occurring and changing your perspective immediately to produce calmer talks. Your automatic thoughts about each other can be identified and practiced challenging with the aid of a cognitive behavioral therapist.

Emotionally Focused Therapy

A form of marriage therapy called emotionally focused therapy (EFT) is intended to strengthen couple relationships' connection and bonding. This therapy can assist you in developing a more solid emotional bond, which can lead to better relationships and communication.

The EFT change process has been organized into a nine-step, three-stage approach that helps the therapist stay on track and is clearly stated. De-Escalation, restructuring, and Consolidation are the three phases of EFT. These steps teach you how to recognize conflict-provoking patterns of behavior, how to accept and care for one another, and how to see new patterns of behavior that reduce conflict.

The main objective of this marriage therapy is to enlarge and restructure your emotional reactions. EFT aids in your increased awareness of your partner's requirements. Due to this awareness, you are also able to listen and talk about issues from a place of empathy as opposed to one of anger or defensiveness.

Final Thoughts

Like anything else, marriage involves effort and upkeep. Marriage therapy often assists couples in overcoming obstacles and surviving as a pair. You might look for marriage therapy near me at some time if you want to make your relationship work through its difficulties and become healthy. Even though counseling is often difficult, especially at first, your marriage is worth the effort.

Our LifeBulb’s marriage therapist at Cherry Hill, New Jersey, is aware that every couple faces unique issues. We support you in communicating and cooperating to repair the connection with the relationship counseling at Cherry Hill, by facilitating an open, direct discussion about the issues in your relationship while offering insights.