Meaningful change can begin with you.
This is a very common problem: seems to be more for women, than men.
I’ve discovered over many years of helping others to have better relationships that you don’t actually need your partner there.
In fact, I have found it easier to help a marriage relationship when only one person of the couple attends sessions. I think there are several parts to explaining why that is a valid discovery.
It is much more difficult to makes changes with a person who doesn’t even want to be there. It’s different when you ‘make’ your child or your teenager attend because you are responsible for both their mental and physical health. But once we are adults, we really don’t want someone else telling us where to go and when, especially when we don’t want to do it at all.
When I see you by yourself, you can be honest and not have to be careful of how you say things—a result of the fear of making things work. That tends to make the changes come faster and easier.
The NOT-SO-BIG Revelation: Men and women are different! Part of this work is understanding those differences and learning what works best when trying to make things better in your relationship. I have learned what works and what does not from these many years of men and women sharing their lives and their perceptions with me.
Women are more likely than men to seek relationship support. In general, women tend to talk about relationships more often and may use more words throughout the day. It is also important to note that men do seek help, and I have learned a great deal from them as well.
Many men worry that marriage or couples therapy will lead to the end of their relationship. They have heard stories about people who agreed to go to therapy and later divorced. Often, this happens because couples wait too long to seek help; by then, they may already be close to divorce or resigned to staying in an unhappy marriage.
Women are more motivated than men to want to have a happy love life. They are more willing to act on that motivation. There is research that shows that women are healthier if they are happy in their marriage. Men are healthier if they are married, whether or not they are happy.
One really important thing for you to know about my work: it is never my intention to ‘change one partner into what the other one wants.’ It’s more about you having ways to have more independence, more confidence and more choices that fit what you want.
And finally, is something we know about how relationship interactions: that change in one person causes changes in the other. You don’t know what that change will be, but it WILL happen. Meanwhile you going about having the life YOU want through choices YOU make.
