Turn Your Relationship Around

Studies show that there are great benefits from being in a long-term relationship, including better health, longer life, higher income and better outcomes for children. However a bad relationship can have very negative effects, including causing high levels of stress for both men and women, depression in women and poor physical health in men.

Stress

Stress can have a very damaging effect on your sense of well-being, and there is much evidence that shows that the stress caused by an unhappy relationship is greater than that brought on by unemployment or money problems.

Depression

Many people suffer from depression, persistent feelings of dissatisfaction, unexplainable fatigue or difficulty sleeping. Although there are various treatments available to mask these feelings it is not always easy to find the actual cause. Sometimes, couple difficulties are hidden behind these symptoms. In other words, the individuals that make up the couple experience the symptoms but don’t consciously realise there are any couple difficulties.

Communication

The quality of our relationships can be affected by different styles of communication and the way in which we resolve conflicts. For instance some people always like to talk things out at length, others like to have a good row to clear the air, others still prefer to avoid conflict altogether. If you and your partner have different coping strategies for dealing with conflict, this can lead to insecurity and misunderstandings – if these build up, they can cause resentment which may rock the foundations of a relationship.

Task-Sharing

Dissatisfaction with sharing housework and childcare is one of the areas where arguments happen, and people often measure the quality of their relationship by the way in which these roles are shared out.

Reaping the Rewards

If your relationship is in difficulties, there is clearly a lot to be gained from eliminating the negative effects and reaping the rewards of a positive relationship.

Counselling

Recent research has revealed that relationship counselling or therapy can improve your quality of life and that some of the changes – such as a reduction in stress – exceed those achieved by other types of intervention. The research showed that improvements were “significant and sustained, following an average of around eight counselling sessions”.

It is a fact that therapy can help turn things around in a dramatic way in terms of stress and satisfaction with sharing housework/childcare. In just a few sessions, your relationship can be transformed, and you can be enjoying the benefits of your relationship again.

One of the powerful images of counselling is active listening. Careful listening and speaking can make it easier to see yourself and your partner in a clearer and more honest light, and to realise that you both have strengths as well as weaknesses. Counselling can assist couples develop a "conscious relationship" by revealing relationship patterns, as well as healing wounds. This self-knowledge can then help to ignite greater understanding and tolerance of each other.

With a sympathetic counsellor you can resolve difficulties and enhance your relationship by developing communication and conflict resolution skills in a way that suits both of you.

Staying Together: From Crisis to Deeper Commitment

Susan Quilliam

A good barometer to how your relationship is going is to look at how your love life is now compared to when you first met? Acknowledging any relationship problem is the biggest step. This book will help you to look at problems and take stock of them. If you are committed to trying to make your relationship work this book will help by looking at the past to identify roots of problems and then gives good advice on how to handle change and how to communicate with your partner for both now and the future. I found this book to be a great reference and guide at a difficult time, however some of the exercises are based on you communicating reasonably well with your partner, you may be better to do these under the saftey net of counselling.