PsychCentral

Couples therapy can help couples improve their relationship in many ways. For instance, it helps couples resolve conflict, learn how to communicate effectively, better understand each other, enhance their emotional connection and strengthen their bond.

Naturally, couples may face obstacles in therapy that stall their progress. They may have inaccurate assumptions about how therapy works, which can keep them stuck. Or they may delay seeing a therapist in the first place, which only deepens their problems.

We asked two relationship experts to share the most common obstacles along with what couples can do to overcome them. Below you’ll find six obstacles and solutions.

1. Wanting the other partner to change.
2. Not acknowledging your role.
3. Keeping secrets.
4. Not following through.
5. Not trusting the process.
6. Waiting too long.

In keeping with so-called, “Divorce week,” here’s a short synopsis of the most common reasons your marriage counselling may not be working.

Five of the reasons are couple related. They are attitudes towards marriage and the therapy process that can tie the hands of even incredibly talented therapists and minimize or even cancel any benefits of the counselling. Read them!

But, #6 (Rastogi) is likely the worst one:

If you are going to therapy as a last resort, Rastogi stressed the importance of keeping an open mind. “Late help-seeking couples” also can use therapy to “weigh their choices, resolve some conflicts or even plan a structured separation that keeps their relationship civil and functional.”

That second last paragraph is a classic example of how therapists destroy marriages for personal profit and a good example of the clinician attitudes that couples need to see as a massive red flag and grounds to immediately seek a different therapist.

The essential foundation of any marital therapy is a therapist who looks at you and says, “If the two of you stood at the end of an aisle/courtroom/Elvis chapel in Vegas or whatever and vowed till-death-do-us-part, then I’m going to take that promise seriously and do whatever I can reasonably do to make that happen — and to make it good for both of you.”

Not a therapist with an, “Open mind…”