Well, you might be wondering this because you want your relationship to be long lasting. Right now, you might be wondering how to make sure your relationship has trust, love, and playfulness. In marriage counseling and relationship therapy sessions, you can learn skills and build a toolbox. For instance, if you experience criticism from your partner, you can learn how to communicate better. At Wisdom Within Counseling in Southeastern Connecticut, the team of marriage and family therapists specialize with distant couples who need help building a loving connection. Let’s talk more about what makes long term relationships last.
What makes long term relationships last? Calm, loving communication.
Also, the goal of relationship therapy is not to agree all the time. However, the goal is to learn to communicate in ways that feel loving, kind, and nurturing. As well, the goal of couples therapy is to stop criticism and reduce defensiveness. Often, couples seek therapy because they try to one up or be right over their partner.
Instead, using Gottman couples therapy in Southeastern Connecticut, your therapist will help you describe how you feel so your partner can hear you.
Often, couples try yelling, criticizing, and wonder why their partner is having trouble listening. So, couples don’t actually take ownership for their feelings. Couples stuck in a negative cycle argue, fight, and find things wrong with each other.
These negative communication styles prevent deep closeness and cause hurt feelings.
In a healthy relationship, you get to hang on to independent thinking while also listening and validating your partner. Essentially, couples fight, feel frustration, and feel hopelessness after an argument lack necessary communication skills.
At Wisdom Within Counseling in Southeastern Connecticut, your relationship therapist can help you understand what makes long term relationships last.
Also, your relationship therapist can give you communication tools for building a lasting relationship and marriage.
To start, you can use this format. “I feel (insert emotional word) when.” For instance, “I feel frustration when I see you yell at our children and don’t know why.” Then continue sharing why this is important to you. “This is important to me because …” Now, focus on sharing your experience about your childhood. “This is important to me because I was yelled at as a child and I felt unheard and unwanted. I feel sad when you yell at the kids because it reminds me of my own childhood and my unmet needs.” Essentially, speaking about personal childhood traumas plays a big role in heaping your partner hear your unmet needs in this moment. Lastly, counseling in Southeastern Connecticut helps you build a nurturing, meaningful relationship.
Furthermore, working with a professional relationship therapist can teach you how to express these deep emotions so you can be heard.
Plus, this is not an easy process, so it might feel like learning to ride a new bike. At first, learning to speak gently and with compassion when feeling upset or angry is key to have a lasting romantic relationship. This is an example of taking ownership verses making your spouse the one to blame. So, speaking about what your needs are can be a great way to communicate in a calmer way.
What makes long term relationships last? Improving communication can build a deeply meaningful relationship
At the start, communication like this may feel awkward or new. Your natural way of thinking may be to criticize or complain. But, healthy communication for couples really goes into relearning how to communicate. Communication plays a huge role in how long lasting a relationship is. Often, if communication is critical, too loud, or punitive, it can easily push people apart. So, your couples therapist will identify your negative communication style and help you both work together. Essentially, your relationship therapist can help you build a toolbox of skills to ensure your marriage is long lasting. Overall, relationship counseling in Southeastern Connecticut teaches you how to build emotional intimacy.
What makes long term relationships last? Practice emotional validation
Essentially, emotional validation means putting yourself and your partner’s shoes. For one, emotional validation might seem strange at first. But, for healthy couples, emotional validation is something that is a daily practice. On that note, emotional validation can simply be noticing that your partner is upset without them having to verbalize it to you. As well, emotional validation can simply be turning your eyes and making eye contact with your partner with a gentle voice.
How does relationship counseling in Southeastern Connecticut support emotional validation as a skill?
So, when you emotionally validate your partner, you make their emotions important to you. Maybe, your partner wants to feel included, or feels abandoned. Sometimes, couples lack emotional validation due to their own triggers. To become a healthy couple, your marriage counselor can teach you how to do emotionally connect. There is hope, because working with a marriage therapist can easily support couples in learning emotional skills.
Simply put, like you take math or science, your marriage therapist can support empathy and relationship tools.
Manytimes, couples are missing these essential pieces to build a lasting marriage. Also, when emotionally validating and hearing, you make what your partner is going through such a sadness, loss, or anxiety important. In time, counseling in Southeastern Connecticut teaches you how to slow down intense issues.
What prevents emotional validation in relationship therapy?
To note, emotional validation is an important marriage skill for couples who want a long lasting relationship. If you have resentment, or jealousy, it might be hard to emotionally validate your partner. And, if you don’t have the skill of emotional validation, you may be getting into high conflict fights. Now, what makes long term relationships last is people being able to emotionally validate each other’s experience.
So, if you feel tense, angry, or on attack, your relationship therapist can help guide you in emotional validation skills.
Your relationship therapist will help you sort through your emotions so you partner can hear you while you validate them. So, in couples therapy, after a fight, emotional validation can help to combat attacks. Also, in emotional validation, you are showing you empathize with and understand you partner. Emotional validation promotes the health and longevity of any relationship.
What makes long term relationships last? Feeling safe together
In a long lasting relationship, a feeling of safety is so important. Now, couples that yell each other or use disrespectful language do not feel safe together. As well, a feeling of safety comes from spending time together and complementing each other. As well, your relationship will have ups and downs. However, feeling safe together and having a sense of relationship security can help you get through the rough times. No matter what happens to your family, a job, house, or the town you live in, the security of your romantic relationship carries you through. Furthermore, what makes long term relationships last is having security in each other.
And, closeness, physical intimacy, passion, and trust will be stronger when security in a relationship is there.
As well, when we look at security and safety, having trust in your relationship creates longevity and joy. Many times, unhealthy relationships involve one partner disciplining, criticizing, or ridiculing the other person. Essentially, these negative styles of communication create mistrust and lack of security. Often times, negative communication creates a parent child like relationship in a marriage. And, a parent child relationship creates a recipe for resentment and separation. So, building security means that you and your spouse see each other as equals. Relationship counseling in Southeastern Connecticut helps balance out the relationship. So, you can express fondness and admiration in a more equal way after relationship counseling.
If relationship security and trust is challenging, this is where relationship counseling comes into play at Wisdom Within.
At Wisdom Within Counseling in Southeastern Connecticut, the team specialize with distant couples. As well, a sense of safety and security can grow by believing in spiritual energy, God, or a higher power together. Essentially, having a spiritual essence to your marriage can help build a sense of security and hope in tough times.
What makes long term relationships last? Remind yourself of why you picked that person in the first place
Reminding yourself why you fell in love can help you see the big picture. Right in this moment, you may feel angry, hurt, scared, and upset. In the past, you may have gone to the movies together and had a wonderful time. But, right after getting back from the movies, you feel overwhelmed with the dirty dishes, and get upset with your partner. They began yelling and stormed off in anger. Now, it feels like your relationship is hopeless and you feel angry.
Sometimes, past trauma comes up and gets re-triggered in relationship counseling sessions.
You may feel like a child again, scared and worried about the future. To note, getting triggered in a relationship counseling session is the best place to be triggered. Essentially, your marriage therapist can support self-care and self-soothing. And, in a moment where you feel afraid or mad, you may perceive the entire relationship as negative and hopeless. Often, anger is the easiest emotion to express when triggered by past trauma. So, if you have a history of sexual, physical, and emotional trauma, your therapist can support healing.
Often, past abuse and trauma plays a role in romantic fights.
Focus on being like an eagle seeing the whole relationship from above. Now, when this is challenging, our therapists offer art therapies, yoga, music, and walking therapies. For instance, you can learn to listen to your breathing to feel calmer. And, your marriage therapist in Southeastern Connecticut can support painting, clay, and use of musical instruments in counseling. In addition, you can learn how to use mindfulness meditation in marriage counseling to gain mental clarity.
What makes long term relationships last? Positive memories together
Wisdom Within Counseling offers distant couples holistic options of art, yoga, music, and nature therapies for rebuilding connection and positive memories.
So, from marriage counseling with holistic coping tools, you can look around and remind yourself of the positive memories. Often, due to PTSD flashbacks, remembering safe memories can feel challenge. So, using art, yoga, music, and walking therapies in couples counseling support exchanging feelings of closeness you’ve had together in the past. Also, we find a mix of holistic, creative therapies support couples in having alternative in addition to talking. Sometimes, couples fight about the same issues over and over. For example, looking at your partner’s painting can provide insight in ways talking can not. And, your therapist may guide you in gentle movement together and couples yoga poses. But, talking is always an option too. In PTSD therapy, you can learn to remember that you are an adult with intuition, power, and more coping tools.
