Marriage Counseling Wheaton, MD

If your relationship is having problems, you may consider attending marriage counseling in Wheaton, MD from Lindsey Hoskins and Associates, as a way of strengthening it. Generally, marriage counseling is for both spouses in the relationship. However, what happens when your spouse doesn’t want to attend?

Find Out Why Your Spouse Is Apprehensive

If you’re going to address the reasons your partner doesn’t want to attend counseling, you have to know the reason. Some people don’t want to talk about their problems with a counselor, especially intimate ones. If your partner doesn’t think MD marriage counseling in Wheaton will help, you may find yourself feeling frustrated. In this case, we suggest contacting us for some advice. Sometimes, pride keeps a person from asking for help.

Encourage Your Spouse

Once you know the reason your spouse doesn’t want to attend, you can find ways to gentle coax them. Don’t give up. Validate your partner’s reason and empathize. Ask if you can hear more about their feelings and why they are against marriage counseling. You might try talking about counseling as “coaching” instead of therapy. Reframing the solution could make your partner less defensive. Assure your partner that you want to attend coaching to learn to be better partners and that you don’t want to blame anyone. You just want to learn to work together more effectively.

Other Options Beyond Therapy

If your spouse is apprehensive, talk about other options. A marriage workshop or weekend could help you take some positive steps in your relationship. You might look at self-help books. You could even ask if your spouse would just talk to the therapist alone before you make an appointment. Talking about your marriage goals and vision
could help bring you closer to opening the door to marriage counseling in Maryland from Lindsey Hoskins and Associates.

Should You Go Alone?

If you can’t convince your spouse to attend counseling, then you have to decide what is best for you. Marriage counseling in Wheaton, Maryland works most effectively when both people are working on the relationship. Still, one person can be a catalyst for change. If you attend counseling with a therapist who helps you make positive changes in the relationship, it can encourage your partner to reconnect with you.

If you’re feeling like your marriage is in trouble, it can intensify your need for counseling. If your spouse refuses to attend counseling, you can feel even more hurt. Approaching counseling in a positive way can lower your partner’s defenses which gets you closer to your goals. For now, receiving marriage counseling in Wheaton, MD from Lindsey Hoskins and Associates can help you until your spouse feels ready.

Most Maryland couples know that expressing love helps you feel happy, reconnect, stay connected, get more love back, and boosts the value of your emotional bank account. We all need to do it more. Whether it’s expressing more appreciation for your spouse, saying “I love you more,” or being grateful for everything your partner does for you, if we think about it, we should speak it.

Maintaining relationships and working on issues in marriages is what marriage counseling in Wheaton MD is about. It may look like it, but it is not about fighting, blaming, and frustration. Even though it may seem to look that way from the outside, Wheaton MD marriage counseling works to resolve conflict and heartache. Lindsey Hoskins & Associates wants you to know that couples counseling is about love, appreciation, affection, finding meaning, and making dreams come true.

Indeed, people love feeling that they are appreciated. The ones that aren’t “touchy-feely” may not like hearing the actual words too often, though. If your partner is one of these, you probably already know it. Still, it is not so much about speaking the words as it is about communicating the feeling of it. You must adapt it to the way you know your spouse likes to receive appreciation and love.

Belonging Is Crucial to Humans

Being accepted and valued and belonging to a group is critically important to human beings. Culture sometimes downplays, denies, or criticizes this need. However, humans are social and thrive in groups. Unfortunately, the modern, digital, global society allows us to forget just how important it is to feel like you belong. For much of human history, not having group support or belonging to a group or meant certain death. We all know this instinctively, on some level. For this reason, solitary confinement is a punishment—humans don’t fare well alone.

When we express love, acceptance, and appreciation to our spouses, we are giving them a foundation of belonging. We fill a fundamental need for them. And we all want to have our basic needs and our deepest longings met and soothed by our intimate partners.

If You Don’t Know What to Say

We grow used to our spouses over time and forget how much their good qualities meant to us when we first met. Maybe you think the “I love yous” you said during your early years together cover you for life. A Wheaton MD marriage counseling therapist knows that one of the biggest complaints couples have is that their partner takes for granted that they know their partner loves and appreciates them, or it starts to feel routine to say it over and over.

It’s probably best not to overthink it. It doesn’t have to be some grandiose expression of appreciation. It can be as simple as sending a text during the day. Or, it could be a kiss when you arrive home. Or a “thank you” for remembering to put the toilet seat down. If you can’t come up with anything, consider the ways being with your spouse makes your life easier and happier. Or, think about how challenging your life would be without them in it. Then, express appreciation for those things.

If you need support sharing your feelings, Lindsey Hoskins & Associates can help. It’s good to know that a little time and effort spent focusing on your relationship can help you form indelible bonds that help to maintain your partnership throughout the years. Call our office today to schedule an appointment with a marriage counseling therapist Wheaton couples recommend.