Just because you fell in love and found a way to join your life with someone doesn’t mean it’s going to be smooth sailing. Any partnership is made up of two humans with their own minds, wants and needs — and that means there will always be conflicts, hurdles to overcome and things to talk out.
Healthy communication skills and knowledge about how to fight correctly (yes, there’s a right way to fight with someone you love and a right way to apologize) are hugely beneficial, but a lot of the times you need to bring in a third party — someone who is trained in all the talking and listening that needs to be done, someone who can help you re-learn and re-tool how you navigate your life as an “us” — a couple’s counselor.
But like all kinds of therapy, couple’s counseling can often still have a stigma to it. We’re all very convinced that we were supposed to somehow magically come into this world and into our relationships knowing how to do everything right (which, no, absolutely not — communication skills in relationships aren’t built-in!) and we often feel a level of shame or fear that we are totally failing at life and love because we might need that help. But, rest assured, if you’re attending couple’s counseling or thinking about it, you are not alone and you are not weird or bad at being a partner/lover/spouse.
Per the Gottman Institute “empirically-based couples therapy has demonstrated that couples therapy can create a positive change for 70 percent of couples.” They also note that “only 19% of couples actually seek out some form of couples therapy and only 37 percent of divorced couples worked with a professional prior to signing the papers” and “the average couple waits six years before seeking professional help for marital problems.”
And, as it turns out, a lot of our favorite celebrity couples are really open about their time spent in couple’s therapy — with a number of them sharing in enthusiastic and passionate detail how these sessions helped them save their relationships, get them back from the brink of ending or just learn some preventative communication skills for overcoming the curves life throws their way.
Read on for a few celebrities who have shared their feelings about going to couple’s therapy with their partners. And who knows? Maybe you’ll decide that a session with a good counselor is in the future for you and your partner.
A version of this article was originally published on Aug 2021.
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