Counselling for Couples

If you’re considering leaving a relationship or marriage, or you are experiencing problems on an ongoing basis, our professional relationship counsellor, Natalie Prior, is here to help you.

You may have experienced betrayal or infidelity in the relationship. Perhaps you are having communication problems, arguing regularly, experiencing less intimacy and feeling disconnected from your partner. These issues are resolvable with the right help and guidance.

Some common questions around couples counselling:

We love each other, why does our relationship keep going wrong?
Effective communication is a key part of relationships that work. Loving each other is a wonderful thing, but on its own is not enough to make a relationship work over time. Having partnership therapy helps you identify where the problems are and learn the skills needed to resolve them. Often we are not fully aware of what we really want and how that is different from what we currently have. Counselling with an experienced therapist helps you to see where you are, find out what you want and learn how to get there, both individually and as a couple. To commit to couples counselling is to begin to empower yourself and the relationship.

We feel so far apart, how can we connect again?
Sometimes couples find themselves living separate lives and they drift apart, not knowing how to come back together as a partnership. You may need more time doing things together and with help you can look at what you both want around this. Therapy helps you learn to find the emotional language needed to ask for what you feel you need in the relationship, whether that’s help with children, with tasks around the house, better communication or issues with intimacy and sex. A safe space to explore where you have disconnected and what each of you would like is the doorway to reconnection. Your counsellor can support you in walking through that door by helping you to resolve issues and empowering you with new skills around communication.

My partner doesn’t listen, how will counselling change that?
This is one of the most common issues in relationships. A good relationship counsellor can help both partners in this. We often don’t verbalise problems when they arise, leaving them to fester and anger or resentment builds. Sometimes we try to speak with our partner at a moment when they will not be able to hear us. Some of us find it painful to listen to feedback from partners, but working with a trained, objective expert in relationships can help you identify where the problems are arising and why. You can then learn to express in a way your partner can hear you, and listen in a way that allows your partner to know they have been heard. Together you can find a way that works.

We can’t agree on how to bring up our children. What do we do?
It is quite common for couples to have different ideas about parenting. Often partners find it’s only after they have had children that they realise they have never discussed how they would like to bring them up. This can cause myriad problems. Working through these differences with an experienced relationship therapist can help you find the compromises that will work for you and your children. Natalie Prior, our expert in couples counselling, is qualified in family systems therapy as well as relationship therapy and can help you and your partner to see how your relationship affects the family as a whole and work together to help each other and the children.

I’m not sure we will make it together. Why should I bother trying to resolve issues with my partner?
If you don’t resolve issues with your partner, you will end up carrying them on to your next relationship. Many people do this, thinking it will be different next time but they simply find themselves repeating patterns.
You can get stuck in patterns of relating to your partner and without help resolving the issues and learning how to relate differently, this can go on for a lifetime. Working out the existing dynamics between you with the help of a qualified relationship expert will enable you to learn to do things differently. Doing things differently brings different outcomes.

Why should I go to couples counselling when my partner has the problem?
Taking responsibility for yourself and your role in any relationship is empowering. Relationship therapy will help you help yourself so that you can see what you want in your relationship more clearly. To take responsibility in relationships is to give yourself greater choice and a much greater chance at happiness together.
If, however, a relationship is toxic, abusive or unhealthy, you don’t have to stay in it. Therapy will help you empower yourself by understanding how this came about and what can be done differently another time.

Call us on 01227 290 098 if you would like to see our experienced couples counsellor, Natalie Prior. Natalie has 20 years of experience working in therapy and has been specialising in relationships for more than 10 years. She has qualifications in couples therapy, relationships and family systems therapy.

“The work we have done together has been invaluable. I cannot recommend Natalie highly enough.” DB