Relationship Therapy in Houston: How to Fight Fair

When people come to relationship therapy in Houston, it’s not uncommon for fighting to be one of the main reasons. Every couple fights, but it becomes a problem when it starts to feel like your de facto way of communicating with the person you supposedly love.

The problem is that we both know each other too well and don’t know each other enough. What does that mean? That it’s way too easy to press someone’s buttons when you’re close to them.

Despite our best intentions, we often become very good at saying the perfect (wrong) thing at the perfect (wrong) time. Or we care more about being heard and being right than in actually resolving the conflict. Or we try like crazy to avoid talking about the things that bother us, which inevitably leads to a blow up that’s even worse.

Sound like you? You need marriage help!

Relationship Therapy in Houston: Common Conflict Mistakes

What it boils down to is that most of us just aren’t that good at resolving conflicts, especially with someone to whom we have a real emotional attachment. When you care deeply, it’s a lot easier to hurt each other and react emotionally instead of rationally. Here are just a few examples.

Ignore it. You know what happens when you ignore a problem? Well, it doesn’t get better, that’s for sure. Chances are that you’ll take it out on your spouse in some other way by engaging in behavior that’s passive aggressive and making them angry. Then, when you’re both good and mad, you have an argument that’s far worse.

“Calm down, you don’t understand.” Actually, those are two separate thoughts. More importantly, though, they are two things no one wants to here in the middle of a fight. It’s an argument – what better time to not be calm! And you’re telling me I don’t understand? You don’t understand!

Try to win. What do you really care about, the argument or the relationship? If you want to successfully resolve a conflict with your partner, stop worrying about convincing them or getting the last word in and think about what really matters. You probably won’t remember this argument in a week, but chances are that you’ll still want to be together.

Relationship Therapy in Houston: Get the Help You Need

It’s not easy to take a step back and think when you’re in the middle of a fight, but that’s precisely what you need to do – both of you. Work together to find a resolution. Set ground rules. And if you can’t, get marriage help by looking into relationship therapy in Houston.

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What If Your Spouse Won’t See a Houston Relationship Counselor?

One of the most common questions I get in regular life when people find out that I’m a Houston relationship counselor is how you can convince your spouse to go to therapy for your relationship.

I have a very simple answer, but it’s probably not the one you want to hear: you can’t.

If you’ve spoken with your spouse about your desire to seek marriage help from a counselor and he or she doesn’t want to have anything to do with it, there’s nothing you can do to make them go. Some people think that causing a fight or giving an ultimatum will give them what they want, but this is absolutely the wrong way to go. Someone who is only going to therapy because they “have” to go is far less likely to get anything useful out of it, and it will probably make your time there less comfortable as well.

What can you do? Go by yourself.

Houston Relationship Counselor: Marriage Therapy for One

Ideally, both partners should attend marriage counseling so that they can both receive the benefits of the sessions. However, there are plenty of personal and relationship benefits that you can get from one-on-one sessions with a marriage counselor, too.

How so? Well, one of the most important things to learn about relationships is that what one person does will affect that other one. Even if you seek marriage help alone, you’ll be gaining insights into your own behavior and learning useful techniques that will allow you to diffuse situations with your partner much easier.

When You Change, Your Partner Changes, Says Houston Relationship Counselor

Some people hate this idea because they see it as them being forced to change while their partner “gets away with it” – whatever it is – but nothing could be farther from the truth. Because so much of the way we act in relationships involves interdependence, when one person starts acting differently, it will eventually bring about change in the other person as well.

In layman’s terms, if you learn how to control your emotions and treat your partner more positively, they will react to that positivity and return it. No one is saying that this will happen overnight or that your relationship will magically become perfect, but it should improve. At the very least you’ll feel better about yourself. If you’d like to learn more about one-on-one marriage therapy, call the Houston relationship counselor today!

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Relationship Therapy in Houston: Prevent Divorce

A lot of people who seek out relationship therapy in Houston are trying to prevent a divorce. Does that sound like bad news to you? It’s not.

Having your spouse tell you that they want a divorce is probably one of the worst things that anyone can ever experience, but the fact that so many people are seeking out the marriage help you can receive in therapy should tell you that it doesn’t have to be the end. In fact, there are several things that you can do to try to keep the divorce from happening.

Avoid Divorce by Using These Tips from Relationship Therapy in Houston

Your husband or wife has just told you that they want a divorce? What’s your response? You may want to cry, yell, or insult your spouse, but hopefully the rational you knows that those are the wrong ways to react. So, what should you do?

Pay attention. If your spouse is saying they want a divorce, there has to be a reason. Letting your emotions get the better of you will prevent you from listening to them and really hearing what they are saying because you’ll be focused on your own reaction. It may not be easy, but you have to try to avoid getting defensive and closing yourself off or attacking them, or falling apart so that your only reaction is to beg them to stay. All those reactions do is make it about you, but you need them to see that you’re paying attention to their needs.

Look beneath the surface. Most people don’t ask for a divorce lightly, but that doesn’t mean that your spouse will be completely forthcoming either, because they means they have to be vulnerable at a time when they are probably trying to be strong. It’s up to you to look for that vulnerability and be compassionate about it. This, more than anything, can make the difference between a couple that ends up going their separate ways and one that actively tries to stay together.

Stop accepting your flaws. Are you the type of person who “tries” but mostly thinks that this is who you are and your spouse has to accept it? Get over it. If you can’t do it on your own, get marriage help by working on your problems by attending relationship therapy in Houston. We all have the ability to get better, but we have to work hard on changing ourselves every day.

Go to therapy. Marriage counseling has saved thousands of marriages, and it can save yours, too. But it will only be successful if both of you are willing to put in the work at relationship therapy in Houston.

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The Houston Marriage Counselor Dispels Cheating Myths

You don’t have to be the Houston marriage counselor to know that cheating is destructive and will cause a lot of relationship issues between you and your partner. After all, you’re basically telling them that what they’re offering you isn’t enough to keep you happy and satisfied. Moreover, people who cheat are almost always doing it behind their partner’s back, so it can absolutely destroy trust and connectedness.

Still, cheating doesn’t have to be the end, and there are a lot of myths out there about it.

Cheating Myths from the Houston Marriage Counselor

Want to separate fact from fiction? Here are some of the most prevalent cheating myths that are floating around out there:

You can’t fix your marriage after an affair. As someone who does exactly that for a living, I beg to differ. In fact, I’ve actually worked with some couples whose relationship has gotten stronger after one of them cheated and they decided to go to counseling to work on their marriage.

You need to reveal all of the details to your spouse. The problem with this logic is that the need to divulge everything isn’t about giving your spouse what they need to move past the affair, it’s about unburdening yourself of the lies. In short, it’s self-serving. What you do need to do is tell them everything that they want to know without hesitation, no matter how painful it is.

Relationship issues cause cheating. This one is interesting, because it’s sometimes sort of true, and sometimes not true at all. There are people out there who simply have personalities that lead them to cheat, and it doesn’t really matter how well their “real” relationship is going. However, while cheating is never caused by relationship issues, they can lead to cheating. It happens when your issues push you and your spouse further and further apart until you start craving connectedness from someone else.

It’s not cheating if you do it online. An emotional affair that includes online flirting, picture-sharing, and even cybersex may not seem “real,” but it still causes many of the same emotions. And emotional affairs can be just as devastating as physical ones.

The Houston Marriage Counselor Can Help You Heal

I’m not going to lie – if you’ve cheated on your spouse or have been cheated on, you have a rough road ahead. Trust and affection have to be rebuilt, and that’s something that just won’t happen without a lot of time and effort being put in. It’s also incredibly difficult to do on your own, so you would be wise to seek out the help of a Houston marriage counselor as soon as possible to guide you both on this journey.

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