Marriage Counseling

Is your marriage struggling? In the same arguments with your spouse? Marriage counseling can help restore intimacy and connection.

Eddins Counseling emblem

Marriage Counseling
in Houston, TX and Online

Are You Feeling Alone in Your Marriage?

  • Do you feel there is greater distance between you and your partner?
  • Are you a married couple struggling to figure out what to do after infidelity or an affair?
  • Are you having a hard time standing up for yourself or getting your needs met in your relationship?
  • Do frequent arguments, bickering, criticism or blaming have you feeling alone in your marriage?
  • Do you feel like your marriage is in trouble?

Relationships can be a source of joy and support. However, it can also be a source of deep pain and loneliness too. We crave connection and need to feel safe, wanted, needed, valued, and appreciated in our intimate relationships.

If you’re not feeling this way, marriage counseling can help you find new, effective ways to communicate with one another. While also increasing trust, reducing arguing, understanding each other’s needs, and building a loving relationship.

demo photo 1 x 1 1200

Take Back Control of Your Life With
Marriage Counseling Services

Give us a call at 832-559-2622 to find out more about Marriage Counseling in Houston. Or click "Get Started Now" to schedule an appointment online with our Marriage Counseling Services counselors today. We have therapists near the Montrose, Heights & Sugar Land neighborhoods and offer online therapy in multiple states.

Counseling Can Help You Communicate More Effectively

Do you find yourself in the same arguments with your spouse? Are you tired of the frustration, blame, or even shaming that occurs between you both? You might feel that you’re in a power struggle, back and forth until someone gives in.

Whether it’s conversations about parenting, household chores, finances, or other concerns, it is common for couples to experience communication difficulties. After all, you’re both two separate people with your own backgrounds, beliefs and experiences.

Effective interpersonal communication is a skill. Through counseling with a marriage counselor, you can practice communication skills and get to the root of your repetitive arguments. Much of communication is about understanding how to communicate so that your partner can hear you in a way that builds a connection.

These skills can be practiced and learned – we can show you how.

demo photo 1 x 1 1200
Eddins emblem white

Marriage Counseling Can Help You Rebuild After Infidelity or an Affair

Once trust has been broken in a relationship, it can be difficult to know how to move forward. Can you rebuild the trust and stay married? How do you sort out hurt feelings and move past this crisis? This is an important time to seek an outside perspective.

It can be difficult to sort out hurt feelings and move forward without hurting each other further. A marriage counselor can help you find safe ways to express what is needed to each other and facilitate healing step by step.

Trust doesn’t come quickly. Instead by following the healing process together, it is possible to survive and rebuild your relationship with one another. Working with a marriage counselor at Eddins Counseling Group in Houston, Texas can help you resolve the many questions you may be having about your relationship. You can understand why you’re both feeling the way that you are and understand each other’s perspectives.

It can feel scary to think of marriage counseling after infidelity for both partners. One partner might not want to be blamed while the other might not want to be reminded of the pain. However, by talking through it, and recognizing and understanding each other’s feelings, you can overcome this painful time in your relationship.

You can rebuild trust and safety in your relationship with a deeper sense of connection and commitment to one another.

demo photo 1 x 1 1200

Benefits of Marriage Counseling:

Couples seeking marriage counseling can benefit at any stage in their relationship.

  • Improve communication so that you feel heard and respected
  • Build trust and safety with one another
  • Have fun, play, and enjoy couple time with one another
  • Learn conflict resolution skills and resolve conflict easier and with less pain
  • Increase connection with one another
  • Deepen intimacy with each other and rekindle love
  • Understand your needs as well as your partner’s
  • Maintain, recover and strengthen your relationship with your partner
  • Increase marital adjustment, agreement, and satisfaction with your partner

We can help restore the connection, communication, and intimacy in your marriage.

Marriage Counseling Can Help You Feel Secure in Your Relationship

Perhaps you feel as if you’re not listened to, respected, or taken for granted. You might feel as if your needs aren’t being met by your partner and maybe your partner feels the same way.

You may experience a decrease or lack of intimacy in your relationship or simply not like the way physical intimacy or your sex life is expressed in your relationship. Or perhaps you’re feeling anxious about not knowing where you stand in your relationship.

Maybe it’s been a while since you’ve had a date night together and you struggle to find time for each other. You may feel unimportant or not valued in your relationship.

Married life may not be what you hoped for. Marriage counseling is about learning to communicate and understand one another’s needs in a safe environment.

Both of your perspectives and needs can be shared and heard in a neutral way. It can be difficult or scary to start these conversations. A marriage counselor can be your guide to help you both explore what is important to you and what you need to build connection with one another while learning practical skills on how to make it happen in a loving way.

demo photo 1 x 1 1200
top therapist in houston and sugar land texas

Marriage Counseling Services FAQ's

Marriage therapy is first and foremost about helping the couple. What this means is that no one person is to blame and while both perspectives are important, the emphasis and focus in marital therapy is on the relationship as a whole.

Your licensed marriage and family counselor has one objective and that is to help improve your relationship. 

Research shows that talk therapy combined with making some simple changes to the way you think and talk to each other can improve your marital satisfaction significantly. 

Marriage counseling helps couples build skills for increased connection, communication, and resilience.

What happens during marriage counseling?

First, you will meet your counselor as a couple. Your therapist will work with you to diagnose the problems ailing your relationship. Once they have a handle on what you and your partner are working with, treatment will begin. 

“Treatment” will mean learning new skills for communicating effectively, increasing intimacy, conflict resolution, and more. 

You may decide to make couples counseling a regular part of your routine or that you only need a few appointments. Be prepared to make a time commitment initially to produce the best result in your relationship.

Our therapists use research based counseling methods to include Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy and the Gottman Method Couples Therapy.

Marriage counseling typically involves exploring and understanding your strengths as a couple as well as your goals and shared vision for your relationship. A therapy session may focus on practicing a specific skill or exploring a common pattern in your relationship.

We like to recommend marriage counseling as a preventative step before distance builds between you both. It’s natural with any two people that you will have conflicts, communication difficulties, and frustration whether it’s spoken or not.

Counseling is about interpersonal skill building, clarifying needs, creating understanding, and establishing connection, safety, and intimacy with your partner. From this standpoint, marriage counseling is about learning skills before significant problems arise.

However, it’s never too late to work on your relationship, even after an affair. Researcher, Dr. John Gottman, a marriage researcher with the Gottman Institute, found that married couples wait six years on average before seeking counseling for marriage problems.

By this point, problems are often deeply ingrained patterns that can be much more difficult to work through. You can certainly improve a troubled relationship at this point, but you might expect to spend a longer time working on skills and rebuilding your connection. Gottman couple therapy focused on building these skills from the ground up. 

Some couples seek marriage counseling right from the beginning, to explore relationship dynamics, and cope with outside influences such as parents, trauma, job and career changes, or co-parenting and blended family concerns.

Consider marriage counseling if major decisions need to be made as well. It can help you both think through the sides clearly with an outside perspective.

Marriage counseling can be utilized at any time in your relationship. It can be used to restart your marriage or just to be sure each partner is as satisfied and happy.

We still recommend that you come to explore on your own in individual therapy how you can improve your relationship.

It only takes one change in a system to make a significant impact – just like the pebble in a pond analogy.

We start by helping you understand your needs and how to communicate more effectively with your partner. And we also help you see both perspectives so you can create new ways of interacting in your relationship.

Sometimes it can be useful for you to learn assertive communication or understand relationship patterns in your life. When you spend time learning how to be happier in your relationship, your relationship improves – without you trying so hard. Read more about our relationship counseling services.

Individual relationship counseling has been shown to lead to improvement in couple relationships as much as couples counseling in some cases. 

Whether in couples or individual relationship therapy, you ultimately can only change yourself, not your partner. However, when one partner changes and focuses on being happier, the negative pattern in the relationship changes.

And, when your partner sees you taking an active role in the betterment of the relationship, that often leads to a place where they are more open to counseling.

Yes, marriage counseling can be effective for recovering from infidelity. In fact, we recommend that couples try marriage counseling first before making any major decisions after infidelity. Working through an affair is tough, but can help you restore trust and deepen your relationship.

Marriage counseling can help you identify new skills and ways of communicating and connecting to build a stronger relationship foundation.

Your experience will mostly depend on the state of your relationship.

Generally, you will meet with the therapist together and discuss issues. There may be times when each person meets with the therapist individually. 

You and your partner can expect a neutral third party that safely guides you through difficult conversations. At its core, each marriage counseling session will teach you how to communicate, discover the real causes of stress, and deal with conflict in constructive ways. 

Though it may seem like common sense, we promise, it’s not. In your own relationship, do you disarm conflict by acting as if it never happened or do you work through it until each party feels understood and soothed? You will learn to do so in counseling.

Many people wonder how long marriage counseling takes to make the desired changes in their relationship. The average time varies, with the most important factor being the couple’s goals for the relationship. If the goals are coaching or solution oriented such as resolving issues around parenting or day to day responsibilities, the amount of time for relationship coaching could be 4-8 sessions.

However, more frequently couples are dealing with long-standing relationship patterns, complex issues such as infidelity or an affair, or individual issues such as depression or anxiety.

We offer effective methods of couples therapy including Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy and The Gottman Method to help couples create lasting change in their relationships.

On average, successful marriage counseling is 12-16 sessions.

Other factors that contribute to a successful couples therapy outcome are consistency (participating regularly in couples therapy), active participation (practicing skills in between sessions at home with your partner) and motivation. It can be harder to change when one partner is evaluating whether to leave the relationship.

Typically, couples meet weekly to begin learning new skills. Once they have begun implementing skills, sessions decrease to less frequently allowing time for more practice in between. It is well-worth the effort to invest in your relationship, the earlier the better.

If there has been unfaithfulness in your relationship or if one partner is trying to decide whether to stay or leave, you might prefer to schedule a marital therapy intensive session, which is an extended session.

This provides you and your partner with enough time to get to the heart of the issue and begin working on healing your relationship. In these situations, you may prefer to get more accomplished in a shorter period of time. These intensives can last 2 or 3 hours or even longer but a marriage counseling intensive is a great way to save a marriage.

Yes, for scheduling convenience online marriage counseling is available in multiple states throughout the US. You and your partner can join the online session together on one computer or at the same time on different computers in different locations.

Online marriage counseling works just the same way as face to face marriage counseling with the exception of the location.

Many partners find it easier to coordinate their busy schedules by using the online marriage counseling option.

To Get Started with Marriage Counseling:

At Eddins Counseling in Houston, TX we understand that it’s hard to reach out to get support for your relationship. Maybe you are having a hard time admitting that your relationship needs some support from a marriage counselor. On the other hand, maybe you’re worried about what it means to start marriage counseling. We want to make this process easier for you. Follow these Guidelines:

  1. It starts by contacting us by phone, or by booking an appointment.
  2. You can set an appointment for marriage counseling in the mornings, daytime, evenings, and weekends. Whichever is more convenient.
  3. Talk with a marriage counselor to see if online marriage counseling services would be available depending on your unique situation and goals. Learn more about how online counseling works here. 
  4. Learn more about how marriage counseling can help your relationship.

You deserve love and connection. You deserve to be happy. And we’d be honored to help you find that intimacy and closeness again.

Get Help From a Specialist in Marriage Counseling

image of Courtney Chiles-Cloud

Courtney Chiles-Cloud

Courtney works with youths and their families that have experienced trauma or are struggling with anxiety, depression, self-harm, suicidal ideat…

BOOK AN APPOINTMENT
image of Diana Parlante

Diana Parlante

Diana specializes in assisting couples through lack of connection, betrayal, miscommunication, and other relationship struggles. She also works…

BOOK AN APPOINTMENT
image of Kelsey Engdorf

Kelsey Engdorf

Kelsey enjoys working with teens, young adults, and couples to help them build the lives they want and make meaningful changes.

BOOK AN APPOINTMENT
image of Maggie Burkett

Maggie Burkett

Maggie enjoys working with children, teens, and adults experiencing trauma, anxiety, depression, abuse, PTSD, self-harm, etc. Maggie is also a c…

BOOK AN APPOINTMENT
image of Rebecca Perez

Rebecca Perez

I’m passionate about helping people overcome life’s challenges.  Whether you are struggling with a personal crisis brought on by trauma, relatio…

BOOK AN APPOINTMENT
image of Roddy Young

Roddy Young

Roddy has been providing counseling to individuals and couples in both medical and private practice settings for over 20 years. He specializes i…

BOOK AN APPOINTMENT
image of Shannon Forbes

Shannon Forbes

Shannon offers counseling for adults & couples. Her specialties include anxiety, career concerns, depression, grief & loss, ocd, trauma and rela…

BOOK AN APPOINTMENT
image of Steven Serrano

Steven Serrano

Steven is a bilingual (English & Spanish) psychotherapist. Steven’s experience includes counseling individuals, couples, families and teens in t…

BOOK AN APPOINTMENT
image of Suzanne Kamfar

Suzanne Kamfar

Suzanne (Susan) is bilingual (English & Farsi). Her focus is on helping you navigate through life with balance, harmony, and authenticity. She w…

BOOK AN APPOINTMENT
image of Vanessa Guidry

Vanessa Guidry

Vanessa works with teens, young adults and families. She helps with behavioral concerns, emotional stress such as anxiety, anger and depression,…

BOOK AN APPOINTMENT

What Clients Are Saying

Great Service

My counselor is amazing! Great service.

VO

Eddins Counseling emblem