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Relationship counseling is the process of counseling the parties of a relationship

Interpersonal relationship

An interpersonal relationship is an association between two or more people that may range from fleeting to enduring. This association may be based on limerence, love and liking, regular business interactions, or some other type of social commitment...

in an effort to recognize and to better manage or reconcile troublesome differences and repeating patterns of distress. The relationship involved may be between members of a family or a couple (see also family therapy

Family therapy

Family therapy, also referred to as couple and family therapy and family systems therapy, is a branch of psychotherapy that works with families and couples in intimate relationships to nurture change and development. It tends to view change in terms of the systems of interaction between family...

), employees or employers in a workplace, or between a professional and a client.

Couple therapy (or relationship therapy) is a related and different process. It may differ from relationship counseling in duration. Short term counseling may be between 1 to 3 sessions whereas long term couples therapy

Emotionally Focused Therapy

Emotion-focused therapy is a short term psychotherapy approach to working with individuals, couples and more recently with families...

may be between 12 and 24 sessions http://www.peterfox.com.au/how_to_mend_relationship4.html. An exception being brief

Brief therapy

Brief therapy is an umbrella term for a variety of approaches to psychotherapy. It differs from other schools of therapy in that it emphasises a focus on a specific problem and direct intervention. In brief therapy, the therapist takes responsibility for working more pro-actively with the client...

or solution focused

Solution focused brief therapy

Solution focused brief therapy , often referred to as simply 'solution focused therapy' or 'brief therapy', is a type of talking therapy that is based upon social constructionist philosophy. It focuses on what clients want to achieve through therapy rather than on the problem that made them to seek...

couples therapy. In addition, counseling tends to be more 'here and now' and new coping strategies the outcome. Couples therapy is more about seemingly intractable problems with a relationship history, where emotions are the target and the agent of change.

Marriage counseling or marital therapy can refer to either or some combination of the above.

The methods may differ in other ways as well, but the differences may indicate more about the counselor/therapist's way of working than the title given to their process .

History

Marriage counseling originated in Germany in the 1920's as part of the eugenics

Eugenics

Eugenics is the study and practice of selective breeding applied to humans, with the aim of improving the species. Widely popular in the early decades of the 20th century, after having become associated with the Holocaust, it has largely fallen into disrepute.- Overview :As a social movement...

movement. The first institutes for marriage counseling in the USA began in the 1930s, partly in response to Germany's medically directed, racial purification marriage counseling centres. It was promoted in the USA by both eugenicists such as Paul Popenoe

Paul Popenoe

Paul Bowman Popenoe was an American agricultural explorer, eugenicist, influential advocate of the compulsory sterilization of the mentally ill and the mentally disabled, and the father of marriage counseling in the United States.- Biography :Popenoe was born in Kansas in 1888 and grew up in...

and Robert Latou Dickinson

Robert Latou Dickinson

Robert Latou Dickinson was an American obstetrician and gynecologist, surgeon, maternal health educator, artist, sculptor and medical illustrator, and research scientist.-Life:...

and by birth control advocates such as Abraham and Hannah Stone who wrote 'A Marriage Manual' in 1935 and were involved with Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood Federation of America , commonly shortened Planned Parenthood, is the U.S. affiliate of the International Planned Parenthood Federation and one of its larger members. PPFA provides reproductive health and maternal and child health services. Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Inc. ...

. They promoted eugenic sterilisation also known as negative eugenics .

Other founders in USA include Lena Levine

Lena Levine

Lena Levine was an American psychiatrist and gynecologist. She was a pioneering figure in the development of both marriage counseling and birth control. She was a close colleague of Margaret Sanger...

and Margaret Sanger

Margaret Sanger

Margaret Higgins Sanger Slee was an American birth control activist and the founder of the American Birth Control League . Although she was initially met with opposition, Sanger gradually won some support for getting women access to contraception...

. The latter also promoted negative eugenics.

It wasn't until the 1950's that therapists began treating psychological problems in the context of the family . Relationship counseling as a discrete, professional service is thus a recent phenomenon. Until the late 20th century, the work of relationship counseling was informally fulfilled by close friends, family members, or local religious leaders. Psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors and social workers have historically dealt primarily with individual psychological problems in a medical and psychoanalytic framework . In many less technologically advanced cultures around the world today, the institution of family

Family

Family denotes a group of people or animals affiliated by a consanguinity, affinity or co-residence...

, the village or group elder

Elder

Elder is a surname. It may also refer to "friends or family" or to:In religion:* Elder , position of authority...

s fulfil the work of relationship counseling. Today marriage mentoring mirrors those cultures.

With increasing modernization or westernization

Westernization

Westernisation or occidentalisation is a process whereby societies come under or adopt the Western culture in such matters as industry, technology, law, politics, economics, lifestyle, diet, language, alphabet, religion, philosophy, valuesindustry, technology, law, politics, economics, lifestyle,...

in many parts of the world and the continuous shift towards isolated nuclear families the trend is towards trained and accredited relationship counselors or couple therapists. Sometimes volunteers are trained by either the Government or social service institutions to help those who are in need of family or marital counseling. Many communities and government departments have their own team of trained voluntary and professional relationship counselors. Similar services are operated by many universities

University

A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...

and colleges, sometimes staffed by volunteers from among the student peer group

Peer group

A peer group is a social group consisting of people who are equal in such respects as age, education or social class. Members of a particular peer group often have similar interests and backgrounds...

. Some large companies maintain a full-time professional counseling staff to facilitate smoother interactions between corporate employees, to minimize the negative effects that personal difficulties might have on work performance.

Increasingly there is a trend toward professional certification and government registration of these services. This is in part due to the presence of duty of care

Duty of care

In tort law, a duty of care is a legal obligation imposed on an individual requiring that they adhere to a standard of reasonable care while performing any acts that could foreseeably harm others. It is the first element that must be established to proceed with an action in negligence. The...

issues and the consequences of the counselor or therapist's services being provided in a fiduciary

Fiduciary

A fiduciary duty is a legal or ethical relationship of confidence or trust between two or more parties, most commonly a fiduciary or trustee and a principal or beneficiary...

relationship. See also alienation of affection.

Basic Principles

Before a relationship between individuals can begin to be understood, it is important to recognize and acknowledge that each person, including the counselor, has a unique personality

Personality

Personality may refer to:*Personality psychology is the theory and study of personality types, personality traits and individual differences*Personality development, the study of personality development over time...

, perception

Perception

In philosophy, psychology, and the cognitive sciences, perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory information. It is a task far more complex than was imagined in the 1950s and 1960s, when it was predicted that building perceiving machines would take about a decade,...

, set of values and history. Individuals in the relationship may adhere to different and unexamined value system

Value system

A value system is a set of consistent ethic values and measures used for the purpose of ethical or ideological integrity. A well defined value system is a moral code.- Personal and communal :...

s. Institutional and societal variables (like the social, religious

Religion

A religion is a system of human thought which usually includes a set of narratives, symbols, beliefs and practices that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power, deity or deities, or ultimate truth...

, group and other collective factors) which shape a person's nature, and behavior are considered in the process of counseling and therapy. A tenet of relationship counseling is that it is intrinsically beneficial for all the participants to interact with each other and with society at large with optimal amounts of conflict. Conflict is not intrinsically adverse to relationship happiness. In fact 60% of divorces occur in low conflict marriages. And where conflict arises as inevitably it does, to manage those conflicts consciously.

Most relationships will get strained at some time, resulting in their not functioning optimally and producing self-reinforcing, maladaptive patterns. These patterns may be called negative interaction cycles. There are many possible reasons for this, including insecure attachment

Attachment theory

Attachment theory is a psychological, evolutionary and ethological theory concerning relationships between humans. The most important tenet of attachment theory is that a young child needs to develop a relationship with at least one primary caregiver for normal social and emotional development...

, ego

EGO

ego are the initials of an abstract poet named ernesto garcia orduna ...Ego is a Latin word meaning "I", cognate with the Greek "Εγώ " meaning "I" and may refer to:...

, arrogance, jealousy

Jealousy

Jealousy is an emotion and typically refers to the negative thoughts and feelings of insecurity, fear, and anxiety over an anticipated loss of something that the person values, such as a relationship, friendship, or love. Jealousy often consists of a combination of emotions such as anger, sadness,...

, anger, greed, poor communication/understanding or problem solving

Problem solving

Problem solving is a mental process and is part of the larger problem process that includes problem finding and problem shaping. Consideredthe most complex of all intellectual functions, problem solving has been defined as higher-order cognitive process that requires the modulation and control of...

, ill health, third parties and so on.

Changes in situations like financial state, physical health, and the influence of other family members can have a profound influence on the conduct, responses and actions of the individuals in a relationship.

Often it is an interaction between two or more factors, and frequently it is not just one of the people who are involved that exhibit such traits. Relationship influences are reciprocal - it takes each person involved to make and manage problems.

A viable solution to the problem and setting these relationships back on track may be to reorient the individuals' perception

Perception

s and emotions - how one looks at or responds to situations and feels about them. Perceptions of and emotional responses to a relationship are contained within an often unexamined mental map of the relationship, also called a love map by John Gottman

John Gottman

John Gottman, Ph.D. is known for his work on marital stability and relationship analysis through scientific direct observations published in peer-reviewed literature...

. These can be explored collaboratively and discussed openly. The core values they comprise can then be understood and respected or changed when no longer appropriate. This implies that each person takes equal responsibility for awareness of the problem as it arises, awareness of their own contribution to the problem and making some fundamental changes in thought

Thought

Thought and thinking are mental forms and processes, respectively . Thinking allows beings to model the world and to deal with it according to their objectives, plans, ends and desires. Words referring to similar concepts and processes include cognition, sentience, consciousness, idea, and...

and feeling

Feeling

Feeling is the nominalization of "to feel". The word was first used in the English language to describe the physical sensation of touch either through experience or perception. The word is also used to describe experiences, other than the physical sensation of touch, such as "a feeling of warmth"...

.

The next step is to adopt conscious, structural changes to the inter-personal relationships and evaluate the effectiveness of those changes over time.

Indeed, "typically for those close personal relations there is a certain degree in 'interdependence' - what means that the partners are alternately mutually dependent on each other. As a special aspect of such relations something contradictory is put outside: the need for intimacy and for autonomy."

"The common counterbalancing satisfaction these both needs, intimacy and autonomy, leads to alternately satisfaction in the relationship and stability. But it depends on the specific developing duties of each partner in every life phase and maturity".

Basic Practices

Two methods of couples therapy focus primarily on the process of communicating. The most commonly used method is active listening, used by the late Carl Rogers

Carl Rogers

Carl Rogers was an influential American psychologist and among the founders of the humanistic approach to psychology...

and Virginia Satir

Virginia Satir

Virginia Satir was a noted American author and psychotherapist, known especially for her approach to family therapy and her work with Systemic Constellations...

, and recommended by Harville Hendrix in Getting the Love You Want. More recently, a method called Cinematic Immersion has been developed by Warren Farrell

Warren Farrell

Warren Farrell is an American author of seven books on men and women's issues. His books cover twelve fields: history, law, sociology and politics ; couples’ communication ; economic and career issues ; child psychology and child custody ; and...

in Women Can’t Hear What Men Don’t Say. Each helps couples learn a method of communicating designed to create a safe environment for each partner to express and hear feelings.

When the Munich Marital Study discovered active listening to not be used in the long run, Warren Farrell

Warren Farrell

observed that active listening did a better job creating a safe environment for the criticizer to criticize than for the listener to hear the criticism. The listener, often feeling overwhelmed by the criticism, tended to avoid future encounters. He hypothesized that we were biologically programmed to respond defensively to criticism, and therefore the listener needed to be trained in-depth with mental exercises and methods to interpret as love what might otherwise feel abusive. His method is Cinematic Immersion.

After 30 years of research into marriage John Gottman

John Gottman

John Gottman, Ph.D. is known for his work on marital stability and relationship analysis through scientific direct observations published in peer-reviewed literature...

has found that healthy couples almost never listen and echo each other's feelings naturally. Whether miserable or radiantly happy, couples said what they thought about an issue, and "they got angry or sad, but their partner's response was never anything like what we were training people to do in the listener/speaker exercise, not even close. "

Such exchanges occurred in less than 5 percent of marital interactions and they predicted nothing about whether the marriage would do well or badly. What's more, Gottman noted, data from a 1984 Munich study demonstrated that the (reflective listening) exercise itself didn't help couples to improve their marriages. To teach such interactions, whether as a daily tool for couples or as a therapeutic exercise in empathy, was a clinical dead end.

By contrast emotionally focused therapy

Emotionally Focused Therapy

Emotion-focused therapy is a short term psychotherapy approach to working with individuals, couples and more recently with families...

for couples (EFT-C) is based on attachment theory and uses emotion as the target and agent of change. Emotions bring the past alive in rigid interaction patterns, which create and reflect absorbing emotional states. As one of its founders Sue Johnson says,

Forget about learning how to argue better, analysing your early childhood, making grand romantic gestures, or experimenting with new sexual positions. Instead, recognize and admit that you are emotionally attached to and dependent on your partner in much the same way that a child is on a parent for nurturing, soothing, and protection.

Relationship counselor or couple's therapist

The duty and function of a relationship counselor or couple's therapist is to listen, respect, understand and facilitate better functioning between those involved.

The basic principles for a counselor include:

Provide a confidential dialogue
Dialogue
A dialogue is a conversation between two or more people. It is also a literary form in which two or more parties engage in a discussion.-Literary and philosophical genre:...

, which normalizes feelings
To enable each person to be heard and to hear themselves
Provide a mirror with expertise to reflect the relationship's difficulties and the potential and direction for change
Empower the relationship to take control of its own destiny and make vital decisions
Deliver relevant and appropriate information

As well as the above, the basic principles for a couples therapist also include:

To identify the repetitive, negative interaction cycle as a pattern
Pattern
A pattern, from the French patron, is a type of theme of recurring events of or objects, sometimes referred to as elements of a set. These elements repeat in a predictable manner...

.
To understand the source of reactive emotions that drive the pattern.
To expand and re-organize key emotional responses in the relationship.
To facilitate a shift in partners' interaction to new patterns of interaction.
To create new and positively bonding emotional events in the relationship
To foster a secure attachment
Attachment theory
Attachment theory is a psychological, evolutionary and ethological theory concerning relationships between humans. The most important tenet of attachment theory is that a young child needs to develop a relationship with at least one primary caregiver for normal social and emotional development...

between partners.

Common core principles of relationship counseling and couple's therapy are:

Respect
Respect
Respect denotes both a positive feeling of esteem for a person or other entity , and also specific actions and conduct representative of that esteem. Respect can be a specific feeling of regard for the actual qualities of the one respected...
Empathy
Empathy
Empathy, which literally translates as 'in feeling', is the capability to share and understand another's emotions and feelings. It is often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes".-Etymology:...
Tact
Tact
Tact may refer to:* Tact , a term used by B. F. Skinner for a type of verbal operant* TACT * TACT Records, a record label* Tact Meyers, a Galaxy Angel character...
Consent
Consent
Consent refers to the provision of approval or assent, particularly and especially after thoughtful consideration.-Tort:Consent can be either express or implied. For example, participation in a contact sport usually implies consent to contact by other participants, when contact is permitted by the...
Confidentiality
Confidentiality
Confidentiality has been defined by the International Organization for Standardization in ISO-17799 as "ensuring that information is accessible only to those authorized to have access" and is one of the cornerstones of information security...
Accountability
Accountability
Accountability is a concept in ethics with several meanings. It is often used synonymously with such concepts as responsibility, answerability, enforcement, blameworthiness, liability, and other terms associated with the expectation of account-giving...
Expertise
Evidence based
Certification
Certification
Certification refers to the confirmation of certain characteristics of an object, person, or organization. This confirmation is often, but not always, provided by some form of external review, education, or assessment...

, ongoing training
Training
The term training refers to the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and competencies as a result of the teaching of vocational or practical skills and knowledge that relate to specific useful competencies. It forms the core of apprenticeships and provides the backbone of content at institutes of...

and supervision
Supervision
Supervision means the act of watching over the work or tasks of another who may lack full knowledge of the concept at hand. Supervision does not mean control of another but guidance in a work, professional or personal context....

In both methods, the practitioner evaluates the couple's personal and relationship story as it is narrated, interrupts wisely, facilitates both de-escalation of unhelpful conflict and the development of realistic, practical solutions. The practitioner may meet each person individually at first but only if this is beneficial to both, is consensual and is unlikely to cause harm. Individualistic approaches to couple problems can cause harm. The counselor or therapist encourages the participants to give their best efforts to reorienting their relationship with each other. One of the challenges here is for each person to change their own responses to their partner's behaviour. Other challenges to the process are disclosing controversial or shameful events and revealing closely guarded secrets. Not all couples put all of their cards on the table at first. This can take time.

Novel practices

A novel development in the field of couples therapy has involved the introduction of insights gained from affective neuroscience

Affective neuroscience

Affective neuroscience is the study of the neural mechanisms of emotion. This interdisciplinary field combines neuroscience with the psychological study of personality, emotion, and mood.-Brain areas related to emotion:...

and psychopharmacology

Psychopharmacology

Psychopharmacology is the study of drug-induced changes in mood, sensation, thinking, and behavior....

into clinical practice. There has been interest in use of the so-called love hormone – oxytocin

Oxytocin

Oxytocin is a mammalian hormone that also acts as a neurotransmitter in the brain.It is best known for its roles in female reproduction: it is released in large amounts after distension of the cervix and vagina during labor, and after stimulation of the nipples, facilitating birth and...

– during therapy sessions, although this is still largely experimental and somewhat controversial.

Popularized methodologies

Although results are almost certainly significantly better when professional guidance is utilized (see especially family therapy

Family therapy

), numerous attempts at making the methodologies available generally via self help books and other media are available.

Some resources include:

Gottman's what makes marriage work
John Gottman
John Gottman, Ph.D. is known for his work on marital stability and relationship analysis through scientific direct observations published in peer-reviewed literature...
The Five Love Languages
Gary Chapman (author)
Gary Chapman is a relationship counselor and author of the The Five Love Languages series. He is the director of Marriage and Family Life Consultants, Inc...

- what spouses respond to.
Please Understand Me
Please Understand Me
Please Understand Me: Character and Temperament Types is a psychology book written by David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates which focuses on the classification and categorization of personality types. The book contains a self-assessed personality questionnaire, known as the Keirsey Temperament Sorter,...

- determining personal psychological makeup.
Hold me Tight
Sue Johnson
Sue Johnson is one of the creators of Emotionally Focused Therapy or EFT. She is a Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Emotionally Focused Therapy. She is also the director of the Ottawa Couple and Family Institute. -Further reading:*...

- 'Love demands the reassurance of touch. Most fights are really protests over emotional disconnection. Underneath the distress, partners are desperate to know: Are you there for me? http://www.peterfox.com.au/how_to_mend_relationship4.html'
Getting the Love You want
Harville Hendrix
Harville Hendrix is a clinical pastoral counselor who holds a Ph.D. in Psychology and Theology from the University of Chicago and is a former professor at Southern Methodist University...

- the Imago dialogue is a process which makes it easier to understand our partner, without feeling threatened or under attack ourselves. And for them to understand us in the same way http://www.peterfox.com.au/how_to_mend_relationship2.html

Relationship counseling with homosexual/bisexual clients

Most relationship issues are shared equally among couples regardless of sexual orientation, but LGBT

LGBT

LGBT is an initialism referring collectively to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. In use since the 1990s, the term “LGBT” is an adaptation of the initialism “LGB” which itself started replacing the phrase “gay community” which many within LGBT communities felt did not represent...

clients additionally have to deal with heteronormativity

Heteronormativity

Heteronormativity is a term for a set of lifestyle norms which indicate or imply that people fall into only one of two distinct and complementary sexes with each having certain natural roles in life, and that heterosexuality is the only normal sexual orientation, thus making sexual and marital...

, homophobia

Homophobia

Homophobia is defined as an "irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals", or individuals perceived to be homosexual; it is also defined as "unreasoning fear of or antipathy toward homosexuals and homosexuality", "fear of or contempt for lesbians and gay...

and both socio-cultural and legal discrimination

Discrimination

Discrimination is a sociological term refering to treatment taken toward or against a person of a certain group that is taken in consideration based on class or category. The United Nations explains: "Discriminatory behaviours take many forms, but they all involve some form of exclusion or...

. Individuals may experience relational ambiguity from being in different stages of the coming out

Coming out

Coming out of the closet, or simply coming out, is a figure of speech for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people disclosing their sexual orientation and gender identity...

process or having an HIV serodiscordant

Serodiscordant

Serodiscordant is a term used to describe a couple in which one partner is HIV positive and the other is HIV negative. Serodiscordant relationships are also referred to as "magnetic"...

relationship. Often, same-sex couples do not have as many role models of successful relationships as opposite-sex couples. In many jurisdictions committed LGBT couples desiring a family are denied access to assisted reproduction, adoption

Adoption

Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting for another who is not kin and, in so doing, permanently transfers all rights and responsibilities from the original parent or parents...

and fostering, leaving them childless, feeling excluded, other

Other

The Other or constitutive other is a key concept in continental philosophy, opposed to the Same. It refers, or attempts to refer, to that which is 'other' than the concept being considered. The term often means a person other than oneself, and is often capitalised...

and bereaved. There may be issues with gender-role socialization that does not affect opposite-sex couples.

A significant number of men and women experience conflict surrounding homosexual expression within a mixed-orientation marriage

Mixed-orientation marriage

A mixed-orientation marriage is a marriage between a man and a woman in which one of the partners is heterosexual and the other is either bisexual, homosexual, or asexual.- LGB spouse :...

. Couple therapy may include helping the client feel more comfortable and accepting of same-sex feelings and to explore ways of incorporating same-sex and opposite-sex feelings into life patterns. Although a strong homosexual identity was associated with difficulties in marital satisfaction, viewing the same-sex activities as compulsive facilitated commitment to the marriage and to monogamy.