Marriage and Couples Relationship Counseling

Two people form a relationship because they experience pleasure in each other’s company. As time passes, all intimate relationships experience some degree of conflict. This is unavoidable. How couples deal with conflict leads to either a pleasurable or painful conclusion.

Our natural desire is to find a pleasurable solution, but most couples don’t know how to recover when they experience relationship problems. They keep doing over and over what they know to do, and it doesn’t work. Usually they can’t figure out what to do differently. Most of the time people don’t know how to successfully communicate and productively solve problems together. The result is an epidemic of unhappy relationships.

Your relationship problems may not seem out of control at the moment, but experience shows if you don’t take constructive action early your problems often become much bigger. Now is the time to get help because it is easier to resolve a small problem than to resolve a big one.

Or, you may be facing what seems to be monumental problems and one or both of you are considering ending your relationship. Realistically, uncommitted, non-married couples may wisely choose not to stay together. For you Individual psychotherapy can be the key to identifying and resolving what you learned from your family of origin that interferes with choosing and maintaining healthy relationships.

If you are married, you might be at the point where you are considering the "d word" (divorce). Often the only people who win in divorces are the attorneys involved. They can make substantial fees as a result of a couple not knowing how to resolve their marriage conflicts and restore intimacy. Everyone else looses: family, friends, your children if you have them, and, of course, yourselves.

What does a married or a committed, unmarried couple do? Is there a better alternative to ending your relationship? Even though you may not be able to imagine how to transform the pain in your relationship back into pleasure, and even if you have unsuccessfully tried everything you can think of to “fix” your problems including previous couples or marriage counseling, you probably, deep down, want to heal your relationship rather than have the additional pain and hardship of calling it quits. But what works?

Jenny Olin, LCSW specializes in relationship issues. Her experience has shown a three-fold process works. First, discover the early experiences you and your partner bring to your relationship that prevent conflicts from being resolved. Second, learn relationship tools proven successful for how to:

communicate and confide effectively,

resolve misunderstanding and conflict productively,

heal old relationship wounds adequately, and

increase intimacy successfully.

In couples counseling the focus is on your relationship rather than the individual. When you resolve the problems in your relationship, that is, when your relationship wins, you both win. An unknown source has said: "The grass isn't greener on the other side of the fence; it's greener where it's watered."

Lighted Pathways offers relationship education programs as an outstanding addition or alternative to marriage or couples counseling and pre-marital counseling. You may participate in one or more education groups and workshops to gain additional skill to resolve your problems. To read more about the next programs to be offered, go to: Passage to Intimacy and Boundaries Groups.

While no therapist can guarantee treatment outcomes, couples who make a commitment to staying together, even those with serious problems, are most likely to achieve success from seeing a counselor who specializes in healing relationships.

Lighted Pathways serves the communities in the greater Capital District area including: Saratoga Springs, Ballston Spa, Wilton, Gansevoort, Middle Grove, Greenfield Center, Galway, Porter Corners, Corinth, Schuylerville, Stillwater, Malta, Round Lake, Clifton Park, Mechanicville, Cohoes, Albany, Colonie, Schenectady, Troy, Scotia, Glenville, Burnt Hills, Ballston Lake, Glens Falls, South Glens Falls, Queensbury, Hudson Falls, and Fort Edward.