“For one human being to love another is perhaps the most difficult task of all, the work for which all other work is but a preparation.- Rainer Rilke”

If you are reading this page, you may be asking yourself some of the following questions about your relationship:

• How can I enliven my marriage?
• What would it take to save my marriage?
• What do I really want from my marriage?
• Why have I become disenchanted with my partner?
• How can we stop struggling with our chronic problems and resolve them?
• How can I learn about my partner’s needs, wants, aspirations, and preferences?
• Why can’t I accept my partners influence?
• Why do I find myself discouraging my partner’s desire to grow?
• How can I stop hanging onto the past and really let go of my resentments?

The key ingredient to marital satisfaction is the cultivation and deepening of the marital friendship. By developing the capacity to see your partner as an equal, not as someone who is above or below you, provides the foundation for encouraging a deeper marital friendship.

From this feeling of equality emerges a sense of togetherness. We may be individuals of equal status, but we come together to create a “we.” This “we” is the shared life that partners create. , Partners can enhance their commitment by identifying with and defining this “we”. It takes both partners encouraging each other to use their unique strengths to maintain a feeling of togetherness in your shared life.

Marital problems can be overcome by making creative choices and goals together and vigorously committing to their fulfillment. This does not mean that a marriage can be problem free. Resilient marriages go through normal cycles of enchantment, disenchantment, and re-enchantment.

Marital renewal is an art that helps couples deepen their feeling of togetherness as they journey through life side by side. Each couple’s artistic work, the creation of a “we” is the result of their unique vision and commitment to a life worth living together. Marriage counseling is one way for couples to learn this art.

My role is to encourage a couple to sustain their efforts in creating the kind of marriage they truly want. Through marriage counseling couples can:

• Learn to understand their expectations
• Learn to understand what brings disappointment
• Reach a mutual balance of needs and preferences.
• Learn to negotiate for specific improvements.
• Improve their acceptance, communication, problem solving and conflict resolution skills,
• Learn to see the world through the eyes of their partner.
• Accept differences in opinion, lifestyle, and aspirations.
• Increase their courage to voice their opinions and wants.
• View mistakes as opportunities to learn.
• Use couple meetings and celebrations to deepen commitments
• Cultivate a feeling of togetherness that evolves from a committed relationship.
• Creatively cope with perpetual problems without blame, hostility, withholding, avoidance, or stonewalling.

Marriage counseling can help couples learn to cooperate and sustain their efforts toward the kind of marriage they dream about. As couples learn to reach their goals the marriage becomes more resilient and more fulfilling. Couples may even become re-enchanted with each other.

I hope that you have found this overview useful. For further information or to schedule an appointment please call 516. 256.1740 or use the contact form.