Divorce and Separation Counseling – A Closer Look
Thinking of divorce or separation counseling in Chicago? Wondering if working with a marriage therapist might help with the decision-making process? Not sure how to proceed? If the answer is yes, you aren’t alone.
Marriage counseling can be a tricky matter on paper. Often times, when one hears about marriage counseling, they get the idea that the counseling failed if it ends in divorce and that it is successful if the couple works things out and stays together.
This isn’t necessarily always the case, because if a couple will lead healthier individual lives outside of the marriage, that would be considered a success for both parties involved.
And if the couple works things out and is able to move forward continuing that relationship, that is equally as successful. Thankfully, there are many qualified marriage counselors throughout the city of Chicago who are able to help couples lead that healthier life, whether “healthier” entails together or apart.
Related: Divorce and Separation Counseling Chicago
If a couple is thinking about getting a divorce, or signs are pointing in that direction, marriage counseling can make the process of healing much easier for both partners. We can break down the process and what it might look like for a couple to get counseling and in the end: stay together or get a divorce.
Staying Together
Ideally, no couple who is about to get married, or is freshly married, is going to be expecting to get a divorce down the road. Even when things get really bad, from my experience, no couples want things to end in a divorce when they come in for marriage counseling. So if the couple has a goal that they want to stay together and work towards that in counseling, the therapist will do everything they can to healthily guide them towards that goal.
Often times, communication styles clashing is a major reason that couples end up in marriage counseling. If the struggles between a couple come down to something “simple” like this, then the therapist can help build that connection in an empathetic way. Because it takes two to Tango in a marriage, all it takes is one partner or the other to kick off an unhealthy style of communication.
For example, if one partner decides to go on the offensive and verbally attack the other with statements like “you do xyz…” “I can’t believe you xyz…”, the defences in the other partner will go up immediately, and they likely will join in on the pattern of attacking each other with statements like that.
This can have a nasty snowball effect on the pattern of communication because it might start to condition one or both partners to learn that every time a difficult situation arises, that it is time to start attacking or blaming the other partner. If this is the case, the therapist can start to help the couple to reframe the statements that they are trying to convey.
So if one partner uses language like “I can’t believe you would…”, the therapist can help reframe this to stay more emotionally-focused and utilize something like “I am shocked that xyz happened” or “I am disappointed that xyz occured.”
This helps maintain individual focus, while expressing to the other partner in an empathetic way that you are feeling a certain way, vs. attacking the other partner and forcing their defences to go up.
Staying on the subject of emotionally-focused conversation: emotions are a universal language that every human can relate to. I say this because you can have different words for emotions across many cultures or languages that may sound different to us, but at the end of the day, the feeling stays the same. For example, “feliz” in Spanish means “happy” in English.
However, the internal feelings we get and the state of being maintain the same between the two people who speak different languages, and this is how we empathize with each other. Applying logic to a situation is great, but limited to the specific situation. If a couple is able to stay emotionally-focused, they can work towards tackling the negative feelings they might be experiencing.
Previous situations where similar feelings arose can help provide evidence for the couple in terms of how they might go about alleviating those feelings. Logic and reasoning can be very situationally-based, but feelings remain the same across the board. For example, I was working with a couple who were staying logic-focused trying to resolve a situation.
Then, one partner used the phrase “I feel stressed when…” and the other one recognized that and acted upon it, stating that they knew what it was like for their partner to experience stress, and wanted to help them work through it. Often times, reframing conversation to stay emotionally-focused can have this effect.
Moving Towards Divorce
I say “often times” in my last statement because there are going to be times where couples do everything they can by working on changing their ways of communicating, and still find themselves struggling down the road. This is where marriage counseling might be helpful to the couple, by healthily guiding them towards a realization that they might not be able to work things out after all. Seeking counseling before deciding on getting a divorce might help the couple confirm these issues they thought they saw in their relationship.
It could also help “soften the blow” for them if divorce is decided upon by the end of the counseling process. The therapist can do a few things from this point forward. They can help the couple process feelings during the actual period of divorce, or even thereafter if the couple decides to stay in counseling to do so.
Or, the therapist can see one partner or the other for continued individual work, while ensuring the couple is aware the therapist cannot see them together again moving forward for ethical reasons. The therapist can also help provide them resources, such as groups to attend, references for divorce lawyers, and even just a safe, neutral space for them to work things out as they finalize the process.
The counseling process, as a whole, will allow the couple to confirm whether or not moving forward with a divorce is the right decision. At the end of the day, in my opinion, it can only help the couple. They might discover that they are able to resolve their issues and move forward in their lives together, or that counseling will help soften the blow for them and allow them to move forward with divorce in the easiest way possible.
Of course, this post is just one perspective of a counselor in the large city of Chicago. Different counselors have different approaches that will click with people on different levels. So when a couple is seeking counseling for a potential divorce, it is important to keep this in mind and try a few different counselors across the city if they feel like they aren’t resonating with one. Because what works for one counselor and their experience might not work for the couple and theirs.
Even beyond that, what works for one individual in the relationship might not work for the other, and it takes guidance to help the individuals in the relationship recognize this difference and work towards common ground to the best of their abilities.
