Breaking Up Isn't the Only Way Out

Every relationship goes through moments of conflict and dissatisfaction. Whether it's the giddy honeymoon stage, the mid-point where the passion starts to cool, the moment before marriage when reality sets in, or after the wedding when both partners begin to lose the feelings they once had… relationship problems can surface at any point in a romance. When you turn to friends or look online for advice, the answer is either "for relationship trouble, my advice is always to break up", or it's to be more tolerant, open your heart, and give your partner the benefit of the doubt — yet in practice that can stir up even more resentment and pushback. Early in a relationship you might consider breaking up, telling yourself you fell for the wrong person; after marriage, you might feel you're "stuck" with this person for the rest of your life. But breaking up or staying stuck aren't the only ways forward. If you still want to save the relationship, it may be worth considering couple counselling or marriage counselling (Marriage Counselling) provided by a trained counsellor.

Why go for couple counselling?

Chinese culture has long held that "family matters shouldn't be aired in public", and plenty of people today also feel that a romance or a marriage is strictly a two-person affair. We might feel awkward or resistant about letting an outsider into our relationship, and we might also feel ashamed at not being able to sort out the problem ourselves. It's true that going through couple counselling means revealing a great deal of private or inner feelings, and that isn't something any of us takes to straight away. But when we can't resolve our differences on our own, it's worth considering letting a professional step in. Former US First Lady Michelle Obama went through marriage counselling too, and felt it greatly improved her relationship with her husband. Counselling isn't only for serious mental-health problems either — even if you simply feel worn down by your relationship, you can seek out the help of couple counselling.

There are many reasons couples turn to counselling: a loss of trust between partners, frequent arguments, communication breaking down, finding it hard to accept a partner's way of living, problems in their sex life, and more. You might feel dissatisfied, angry, betrayed, or disrespected because of these issues, and those emotions can keep wearing away at the passion and intimacy you once shared, leaving you numb and letting the relationship you have continue to deteriorate. Whatever stage of your romance you're at, and whatever relationship problem you're facing, you can talk it over with your partner and consider couple counselling. As long as we stay open to it, breaking up isn't the only way to resolve relationship problems.

So what does couple counselling actually involve?

Couple counselling usually takes a solution-focused approach, meaning the counsellor concentrates on the problem and works with the clients to find a way to resolve it. Although couple counselling focuses on solutions, at the start of the process the counsellor will get to know the clients' background, or carry out some personality assessments, so that they can support the clients in resolving their relationship problems from a fuller perspective.

The counsellor will try to identify the "negative interaction cycle". So what is a negative interaction cycle? In a couple's day-to-day life, both partners interact through words and actions. A negative interaction cycle refers to interactions between the two partners that provoke ever more negative emotions in both of them. For example, the man might brush off the woman's concerns; the woman then asks whether he actually values her; that question makes him feel dissatisfied, and he wonders in turn whether he'd be more comfortable single, which infuriates the woman — and the two slide into an endless argument. Within this cycle, each person's negative emotions get expressed through negative words and behaviour, and those words and behaviour then trigger still more emotions or thoughts in the other person, building up without end into a negative interaction cycle. These negative interaction cycles are very often the reason relationships run into trouble, which is why this is one knot a counsellor tries to untangle in order to resolve relationship problems.

After getting to know the clients and identifying where the problem lies, the counsellor helps the clients understand their views about love, so that both partners can see how their long-held attitudes or behaviours have led to the problems in the relationship — and from there work out a solution suited to the couple for tackling those problems. Although discussing couple counselling like this may sound simple — first recognise the problem, then come up with a solution — in practice couple counselling generally takes several weeks or longer, because each step needs time for the clients to absorb the concepts or to put what they've seen into practice. Relationship problems are something every relationship will inevitably encounter. We tend to assume, as a matter of course, that these are matters for the two people alone to handle, but if we stay just a little more open, a professional really can help us resolve these problems and make the relationship better. We hope that if you're going through relationship problems, you can come to see that breaking up isn't the only way forward — and we wish every couple in love a lasting, lifelong partnership.