Marriage Counselling Online at TYHO

Marriage Counselling

How Marriage Counselling Works on TYHO

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What You’ll Get From Marriage Counselling

It is common for couples to face challenges in their marriage. Partners may have contrasting thoughts and beliefs, and as fallouts occur, couples often turn to marriage counselling for support.

How will you benefit from TYHO’s marriage counselling services?

Openness and Responsibility

Learn skills to cultivate a secure and trusting space in the relationship.

Cultural and Multicultural Support

Find Therapists who understand and respect the unique challenges in multicultural relationships.

Intimacy Enhancement Techniques

Explore proven techniques to deepen intimacy and reignite the passion in your relationship.

Personalised Support

Benefit from support and therapy plans tailored to your and your spouse's needs.

Parenting and Co-Parenting Support

Learn practical tools to establish a balanced co-parenting dynamic from our Therapists.

Credible Advice and Guidance

Access engaging webinars, valuable articles, and continuous guidance and support.

Marriage Counselling Process

Understanding
and Assessment

Intervention
and Guidance

Sustaining
Positive Change

Understanding
and Assessment

Understanding and Assessment

Understanding and assessment form the crucial foundation of marriage counselling, providing the therapist with essential insights into the relationship dynamics.

During this phase, the therapist creates a safe and non-judgmental environment where partners can openly express their thoughts, emotions, and concerns.

Through empathetic exploration, the therapist delves into the couple’s unique history, identifying key milestones, challenges, and significant life events that have shaped their relationship.

This comprehensive understanding of the couple’s unique dynamics, history, and conflict areas sets the stage for the subsequent stages of marriage counselling. Key aspects of the understanding and assessment phase:

Creating a safe and non-judgmental space for open expression
Actively listening to understand each partner's perspective
Exploring the couple's unique history, milestones, and challenges
Identifying communication patterns and areas of conflict
Recognising strengths and resources within the relationship

Intervention
and Guidance

Intervention and Guidance

During the intervention and guidance phase of marriage counselling, therapists employ various approaches and techniques to help couples address their specific issues and work towards positive change.

One important aspect of intervention and guidance is effective communication skills training. Therapists help couples improve their ability to communicate openly, honestly, and empathetically.

They teach active listening techniques, encourage validation and understanding, and provide guidance on expressing needs and emotions in a constructive manner. Through role-playing exercises and structured dialogues, couples learn to communicate more effectively and develop healthier patterns of interaction.

Another focus of intervention and guidance is the exploration of emotional intimacy. Therapists assist couples in reconnecting emotionally and building a deeper sense of closeness. They help couples explore and express their feelings, foster empathy and understanding, and encourage vulnerability.

By offering continuous support and guidance, therapists empower couples to make meaningful changes and develop the necessary tools to navigate challenges and build a stronger, more fulfilling relationship.

Sustaining
Positive Change

Sustaining Positive Change

In marriage counselling, sustaining positive change is a crucial phase that focuses on helping couples integrate the progress made during therapy into their everyday lives.

During this phase, couples are encouraged to self-reflect to gain deeper insight into their thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. Therapists guide couples in exploring their personal patterns, triggers, and reactions that may impact their relationship.

Therapists provide continued support to couples as they navigate challenges independently. This support can come in the form of follow-up sessions, check-ins, or access to resources and tools that can aid in maintaining the positive changes achieved during therapy.

Therapists emphasise the importance of consistently investing in the relationship. This involves engaging in activities that nurture the bond between partners, such as date nights, shared hobbies, or regular quality time together.

By implementing these therapeutic strategies, couples can create a solid foundation for lasting happiness and fulfilment in the relationship.

Issues People Seek Marriage Counselling For

Who is marriage counselling for?

How do we know whether to go for marriage counselling?

What can I do if my spouse does not want to go for marriage counselling?

Who is marriage counselling for?

Marriage counselling is most frequently sought by couples facing problems in their marriage.

These problems can be complex and recursive, and marriage counselling serves to help couples recognise the cause(s) of their conflicts and learn how to manage and cope with them.

Nevertheless, one doesn’t need a strained relationship to seek marriage counselling. Marriage counselling can allow couples to identify and resolve any bubbling issues in their relationship that have yet to escalate.

Lastly, marriage counselling can be considered a learning opportunity that gives both partners insights into each other’s opinions, daily routines, preferences, and pet peeves.

How do we know whether to go for marriage counselling?

Marriage counselling is recommended for those who find that they:

Feel uncomfortable communicating with their spouse about problems in the marriage
Realise that arguments about the same few issues resurface repeatedly
Lack of intimacy with their spouse
Don’t feel like they are of equal status in the marriage as their spouse
Feel indifferent to problems in their marriage
No longer enjoy spending quality time with their spouse
Feel lonely even when they are around their spouse
Dread going home to face their spouse
Realise that they or their spouse are keeping secrets from each other
Recognise elements of emotional or physical abuse in their marriage.

What can I do if my spouse does not want to go for marriage counselling?

A marriage counsellor is an active intermediary between partners in the two-way communication process. They are equipped with various skill sets to help couples achieve their desired outcomes from counselling. Some of what they do include:

Maintain a neutral conversational ground

During sessions, marriage counsellors provide a neutral space for couples to engage in an open dialogue, expressing themselves and communicating honestly.

A marriage counsellor would not pick sides to ensure that both partners' concerns are validated and adequately voiced across sessions.

More importantly, a marriage counsellor can help to regulate conversations for couples with an unbalanced dynamic in their relationship.

That is to say, a marriage counsellor ensures that both partners have equal opportunity to talk about their perspectives and feelings and that the flow of discussion is not solely dominated or determined by one party.

Listen

Marriage counsellors utilise active listening to build rapport with their clients.

Besides listening attentively to what both partners say, marriage counsellors also participate in the conversation by asking questions and reiterating the issue to both partners to ensure that they have accurately comprehended the details shared.

This ensures that both partners feel heard and understood and helps the marriage counsellors better grasp the issues.

Sieve out underlying issues

Marriage counsellors are adept at sieving out underlying issues in a marriage that may not be immediately obvious to the couple.

For instance, a couple may go for counselling due to frequent clashes in opinions.

However, as their counsellor analyses the issues raised by the couple, they may identify other underpinning concerns, such as the lack of trust between partners.

In these cases, marriage counsellors can help couples identify and become more aware of these underlying issues plaguing their relationship and offer constructive suggestions to manage them.

The role of marriage counsellors is particularly important here as many couples cannot pinpoint the root of their problem and tend to wind up in the same arguments repeatedly.

Rediscover strengths in the marriage

Interestingly, many couples think that marriage counsellors are only around to help them recognise and resolve the problems in their relationship.

Yet, in reality, marriage counsellors can also help couples see the positive side of their relationship — the strengths that have been overlooked and the things they have done right as a couple.

During sessions, the role of the marriage counsellor includes re-illuminating the strengths of marriage and reminding both partners of the resources they have together.

This can be encouraging for couples who feel at a loss concerning their marriage as it provides them with a boost of confidence to strive towards restoring, rebuilding and improving their relationship.

What Couples Say

I recently had the pleasure of working with Edmund for couples counselling, and I have to say that it was an incredibly positive experience. Edmund was incredibly empathetic and understanding, and he helped my partner and I resolve communication issues that had been causing a lot of tension in our relationship.

Alyssa is very helpful in helping us as a couple to communicate better, which in turn helps us to understand each other better. She provides practical advise and tools for us to practice as well. I’m glad I’m found out about Alyssa through the platform.

Kayden is very approachable and is able to make me feel very comfortable, as if I have known her for a long time. She is able to unpack the issues shared to find the root cause and how we can work on it without any judgement. She has helped me to identify my emotions and reframe my thinking process. After working with her, I learned to handle my past experience more positively, and learned to better communicate with my partner.

I had a good live chat conversation with Alyssa. She is a great listener – she made me feel better as I was able to discuss my troubles with her openly. If you are looking for a setting that is relaxing and without judgment, take the first step and try out TYHO.

Jeanette is very friendly, open, and didn’t judge me for the things I said even when my thoughts were messy and all over the place — she lets me talk through the issues I needed to think about and offered kind support. In particular, I appreciate her her candour and openness to discussing issues (even when my thoughts are quite scattered).

What to Expect at Marriage Counselling

Deciding to go for marriage counselling might seem daunting. For most couples, the first few sessions may seem unfamiliar and confusing.

There is also an added pressure arising from the need to find the right therapist, cost considerations, location, and lack of willingness for both partners to attend sessions regularly.

Your marriage counsellor will journey with you as you and your partner undertake the following:

Delve into the history of the relationship

When you and your partner meet a counsellor for the first time, they may ask about how you and your partner met, what brought the both of you together, how the relationship has progressed over time as well as how both partners feel about the relationship at present.

These questions allow them to understand the relationship dynamics better and work with you and your partner on what led the situation to its current state.

Acknowledge stressors in the marriage

Recognising that there are issues in your relationship can be difficult and, at times, dispiriting.

However, this first step of awareness and acknowledgement prompts you and your partner to pursue mutual understanding, acceptance and growth, all of which are helpful in improving your marriage.

During the counselling session, you and your partner can raise the different stressors in the marriage to your counsellor.

They may take the form of recurring arguments, complex situations that have been overlooked or deliberately avoided, anxiety in light of relationship transitions (e.g. marriage, parenthood), or even issues you foresee might become potential points of conflict.

Across these discussions, being open and honest with your counsellor is also important. This ensures that your counsellor can discern the underlying problems in the relationship and provide the right support for both partners in the relationship.

In the initial meetings with your counsellor, you and your partner may find certain topics sensitive and uncomfortable to broach.

Nonetheless, always remember that marriage counselling is an avenue that enables safe and confidential exchanges. Only you and your partner can judge the marriage, not anyone else.

Address any differences

In a marriage, both partners may come from vastly different backgrounds (culture, faith, education) or face different contextual circumstances in everyday life (e.g. support network, profession, workplace environment).

While at first glance, these factors seem extraneous and unrelated to the problems you and your partner are facing in the relationship, they may explain why both partners diverge in opinions and come into conflict.

Navigating through these differences with your counsellor ensures that both partners arrive at a more comprehensive picture of the problem at hand.

Agree on outcomes and achieve balance

What every couple anticipates from counselling will differ vastly, and there is no universal, one-size-fits-all goal for therapy.

Hence, both partners jointly envisaging and agreeing on the outcomes they hope to see in their relationship is a prominent part of marriage counselling.

Having a common outcome or a goal in mind can help both partners work towards building a healthy and positive relationship with a more precise direction. It also serves as a constant reminder of what they are striving towards, especially when the same problems resurface occasionally.

At the beginning of the marriage counselling journey, envisaging goals can be perplexing as both you and your partner may be new to therapy and unsure of what to expect.

Nonetheless, you can approach your counsellor for insights on marriage goal setting and start by agreeing on smaller, more attainable improvements you and your partner would want to see.

Moreover, note that these outcomes are not stagnant and may change with time as the dynamics between the couple changes.

In addition, partners may not immediately see eye to eye with regard to the outcomes of marriage counselling. Finding and maintaining a balance in the relationship is essential when couples have divergent goals.

Each partner's perspectives can be shared with your counsellor, where negotiations on what to focus on first can occur. Remember that marriage counselling involves collaboration and compromise, and your counsellor is here to help.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the cost of marriage counselling?

How long does marriage counselling go for?

How does online marriage counselling work?

What can I do after marriage counseling?

What is the cost of marriage counselling?

The cost of marriage counselling for an hour-long session typically depends on the organisation or platform approached.

These charges are subject to slight variations as some organisations do offer package rates.

At Talk Your Heart Out, we strive to keep our prices transparent, competitive and affordable while still providing access to quality marriage counselling services.

How long does marriage counselling go for?

There is no prescribed timeline for how long marriage counselling lasts as the dynamics of every relationship and the motivations for seeking therapy can differ from couple to couple.

Several factors that result in the varying length of therapy include:

Nature and Complexity of Issue(s)

As mentioned previously, there are many reasons couples go for therapy together.

On the one hand, some couples only seek support at a particular point in their relationship.

For instance, some couples may require assistance to tide through a difficult conversation.

On the other hand, other couples may be dealing with long-standing communication problems.

Furthermore, there are also others who may be amidst resolving more complex issues such as substance abuse or violence.

In these situations, the length of marriage counselling is typically expected to be longer as couples may require a longer time to open up and rebuild trust in their relationship.

Commitment and Frequency of Sessions

Partners may have divergent or clashing schedules and may be unable to commit to counselling sessions regularly.

The low frequency of sessions can potentially prolong the length of marriage counselling.

Couples who are attending sessions spaced months apart may need to fill the counsellor in on the events that have elapsed in the time as well as the current state of the relationship.

Engagement Across Sessions

The idea of marriage counselling is often foreign to many. As such, the readiness to engage in therapy varies among couples and partners.

Couples who find it hard to open up may need to attend marriage counselling for a longer period of time before the relationship takes a turn for the better.

Conversely, couples who demonstrate positive therapeutic engagement will likely observe positive developments in their relationship more quickly.

How does online marriage counselling work?

At Talk Your Heart Out, we also offer marriage counselling through an online medium.

For many couples, online counselling is preferred as it is more streamlined and accessible than an in-person visit.

Some reasons why couples would opt for online counselling:

Location

When both partners reside in different countries, online counselling may be more applicable as it overcomes the geographical barriers couples may face.

It allows both parties to attend the sessions regardless of distance and time difference.

Uncertainty with Traditional Therapy

Couples may find in-person therapy challenging and uncomfortable.

Hence, access to online counselling services reduces the stigma surrounding therapy and the initial apprehension.

Comfort

Couples who prefer to attend counselling in a more familiar and casual environment may find online counselling to be a perk as it can take place in the comfort of their homes.

A comfortable setting can help partners ease into the therapeutic process more quickly.

Work

Some partners may be in occupational roles where they have to travel frequently.

In these situations, online therapy would, similarly, be more beneficial and convenient as hectic travelling schedules would not compromise the seeking of therapy.

What can I do after marriage counseling?

After attending sessions together, couples often wonder how else they can facilitate their counselling journey. Some suggestions are:

Reflect at your own pace

Take time between sessions to process what has been shared during therapy and ponder over the input from your counsellor.

Reflecting on the conversation between you, your partner, and your counsellor in your own time can help to increase your awareness and understanding of the present issue or situation.

Consistent reflection also allows you to regulate your emotions more and prepare for the next session without feeling overwhelmed.

Exercise patience towards occasional hiccups

Change and adaptation take courage and time.

As you and your spouse attempt to work on the feedback shared during counselling sessions, there may be occasions where both partners revert to old habits and frustrate each other.

Try to be patient with your partner and give in to them rather than criticise their actions in these situations.

Accepting that progress is not linear and being empathetic towards your partner can prevent arguments from escalating out of control.

Check in and consider next steps

After several sessions of marriage counselling, it may be helpful to check how your partner feels about the past few meetings with the counsellor and share your takeaways with them.

Both partners can schedule a recurring time to assess if the objectives and desired outcomes that were agreed upon at the beginning of the counselling journey have been met.

Beyond that, both partners can also start to consider their next step forward regarding their relationship.

For instance, after overcoming the issues that were brought up in the initial counselling sessions, couples can work out other aspects of the marriage they wish to improve on.

Marriage Counselling Global