Our day-to-day lifestyle is significantly impacted by the relationships we maintain. Unless you’re someone who chooses to self-isolate, you’ll interact with many different people. Really, even if you isolate yourself from the outside, you’ll still interact, just not in real time.
There will be family members, colleagues, close friends, and a romantic partner. Of course, there will be challenges in these circles, especially with a mate.
As humans, it wouldn’t be natural for things to be perfect without occasional conflict. Everyone has a unique personality, individual quirks, and flaws, making interpersonal relationships strained at times.
In the initial stages of dating, partners tend to prioritize the couplehood, with any problems that come along resolved as they arise. Once the commitment of marriage and all that implies settles in, your significant other is still the priority in your life, as was true when you were dating.
Unfortunately, the demands of your life as a married couple monopolize the time you would typically take to sit down and communicate through the issues instead of sweeping them under the rug.
There then comes the point where they need to be addressed to avoid jeopardizing the partnership. Let’s look at a few more common causes of issues with married couples.
Common causes for marital problems
When married life is in full swing, daily life is a jumble of activities, especially if children are involved. Not only do you have your careers to consider. But there are household responsibilities, finances to handle, self-care for wellness, and so much more.
The idea of keeping your partner as the priority you believe them to seems to get lost in this everyday whirlwind. So when problems crop up, instead of addressing them as you need to straight away, they get brushed to the side.
The more they pile up, the more damage they create between you as mates. Check out some of the more common causes of problems in couplehood.
1. Lack of communication
Most relationship issues result from poor communication between mates. Generally, if couples engage in counseling sessions, they find that communication is the root cause of the problem they’re in therapy for.
A lack of communication can hinder mates from establishing a solid connection keeping them from progressing forward in their relationship toward a deeper bond.
When a couple faces conflict and fails to open a healthy, productive, and calm dialogue as soon as it arises, it can turn into a battle down the road with emotional interaction and neither person listening to the other because it’s been left to fester for far too long.
There’s no need to take it all the way to a counseling office if a couple engages in respectful, open, honest, and vulnerable communication from the moment an issue rears its head. And that is sort of like, dropping everything and sitting down to talk. It should absolutely be that important.
2. Finances
Financial issues can involve a host of problems. That includes a spouse who insists on living like the neighbors, and bills that continue to flow in after an extravagant wedding ceremony. Or even accepting loans from relatives, or feeling a particular way about income or lack thereof.
Money can be a dangerous area for couples to have conflicts. These are not issues you want to differ on, nor do you want to tuck these away to worry about later.
Finances are something you want to set boundaries and intentions on early in the game and not cross those boundaries for any reason.
Arguments over money are one of the leading causes of marriages ending in divorce. It isn’t something a couple needs to see a counselor for.
Two grown adults with respect for each other can sit down and work out a budget, set their boundaries, and agree these are not something that can be negotiated.
If you can’t come to an arrangement of that capacity as a couple, will counseling genuinely be productive?
3. Who does more
If you have to keep a score of who’s doing more, there’s an issue that needs resolving. Obviously, each of you has your share of responsibilities outside the home, and then having to deal with all there is to do within the home is daunting.
That includes shopping for supplies, household chores, cooking for the family, and then someone wants to know why you didn’t handle this or that since you might have popped home five minutes before they did.
Instead of focusing on who’s doing what and where it’s vital to center your mindset on each other. Then make sure that you’re each okay considering all the stress you’re dealing with.
Rather than worrying about an unsupportive partner and why your mate is not handling a responsibility that might be easier or faster if they were to do it, think of things you can do to make life a bit easier for them.
Concentrate on what you do or can do to help a partner and not how you can avoid extra responsibilities. If you both think like this, it will likely ease your stress. The idea is you’ll be reaching out to help each other more and not looking at what you’re doing as a burden to yourself.
4. An immature partner
Many times after getting married, the reality of the person you chose to spend your life with can sink in, and it’s not always what you imagine. In fact, sometimes, it’s a tough pill to swallow.
There are occasions where marriages are annulled, or divorces occur after only a year together because people jump into marriage without fully taking the time to learn what those little quirks, flaws, and eccentricities might be all about.
You might find them cute, figuring that over time the person will mature and these will fade away, or perhaps you believe you will have an influence causing the person to have some sort of transformation simply because they’re with you.
As a rule, people are who they are, and that core stays with each of us regardless of how much someone might try to shake it loose.
When a mate realizes the individual they’ve been dating will never leave and has set up shop with the person they’re married to with no recourse; counseling is often not what they’re looking for.
In some of these instances, mates won’t stay if they can’t change the person. It’s unfair to the partner but better if they find out early on.
Maintaining a strong thriving marriage without counseling
Counseling is a tool just like any other measure that a couple incorporates into their union to ensure it progresses forward as healthily and happily as possible.
Some people take advantage of therapy, and others choose to work through their issues as a couple using effective communication and active listening. A few skills you can add to ensure the optimum connection without a need for third-party help include:
Respect and appreciation
Over time a relationship becomes familiar and comfortable with the risk of taking those comforts for granted. It’s essential always to show respect and the utmost appreciation for the contribution to what you each enjoy most about your lives together.
Sharing
As time passes, give and take in a marriage might begin to take on different meanings. But that’s part of growing in your bond and having a deeper connection.
Once you find a balance of what works best for the two of you, it could work for a while, and then you need to recalibrate. Compromise and sharing ideas are the key.
Conflict is okay
It’s natural and healthy to have conflict in a partnership or marriage. You don’t need to run off and talk to a therapist every time you argue or because of jealousy.
It shows you each have your own opinions with no fear of voicing these and a strong desire to be your own person, which is healthy and normal.
Don’t complain or criticize
If either of you has a problem, don’t bicker with the other person about something you feel they’ve done incorrectly or inadequately or put them down over responsibilities you feel were poorly handled. No one put you in the judge’s chair.
Instead, you can look at what’s happened together and try to figure out a better way to handle it. Allow your mate to come up with suggestions. So they don’t feel at fault for the problem, and you don’t have to look like the mean one. Words hurt; use them wisely.
Conclusion
Counseling is not the enemy for real, but it doesn’t have to be the go-to each time there’s a discourse in your partnership. A couple needs to be able to rely on their own resources to efficiently maneuver through life’s problems as mates.
As always, the primary tool for a couple in handling life’s challenges is communication. If you have strong dialogue as a foundation for your relationship, you can build a brilliant structure from that point without too many tools to assist along the journey.
Don’t ever feel, though, that you in any way failed because you need to reach out to a third-party professional. Sometimes the rough patches consume us, and we lose sight of what precisely we need to say.
The experts can bring us back to the point of reason and show us what we might have otherwise missed.
The priority is to make sure you come through every problem unscathed, regardless of how you choose to work through it. When you hold your hands up like the champs you are and declare that you made it, your couplehood has won, counseling or no counseling – this time.
