Falling in love is easy, staying in love is another matter. Instead of examining why you are stuck, learn to focus on solutions. Confidential Care Professional Counseling offers solutions if:

• Your relationship seems to take a back seat to everything else
• You and your partner keep arguing about the same subjects
• You feel angry, resentful, misunderstood or hurt much of the time
• You and your partner get along well, you just want to feel closer
• You are single and want to find and keep love
• You feel hopeless and are considering divorce.

• Teach you how to communicate so your partner will hear you
• Help you master skills to make your relationship more loving
• Help you rediscover the joy in your relationships
• Teach effective and appropriate communication skills
• Teach you to work as a couple on parenting issues, including blending families (step parenting)

• Help you learn to stop the power struggles and find win/win solutions
• Teach you to find compromise regarding financial issues
• Learn to apply your Christian values to your healing

The Marriage Counseling Process: The initial meeting is an evaluation meeting. It is the beginning of identifying what issues or problems need to be addressed. Over the years I have found increased success when the evaluation consists of three parts. Usually the first meeting is done with both partners. I have found it useful to then spend a full visit alone with each partner. This allows me to gather individual information including family of origin info i.e. what did you learn about marriage growing up. The individual meetings include assessment for any individual emotional issues. Most importantly, this allows individuals to fully express their perceptions about the marital issues without fear of offending their partner.

In some cases, particularly high conflict cases, the recommendation is made to do separate sessions to work on the marriage. The counseling sessions are a time to work on effective communication. Most importantly, I encourage couples use what they hear from their partner to look for what they need to change about themselves to make the marriage healthier. Instead of focusing on what each person did wrong, it is more important to focus on what each of you can do differently to achieve a better outcome in the future.

One of the most important elements to making a marriage healthier is committing to couples time. Sometimes couple loose this simply because of other things getting in the way. It is important to come up with a concrete plan to spend quality couples time together. Sometimes couples stop spending time together because they have grown so distant they have lost their friendship. In those cases there is a slower rebuilding process to rediscover the friendship.

Does it work? My favorite joke is: How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb? One, but it has to want to change. The Couples counseling success rate is in direct proportion to the motivation of the participants. In other words, the more motivated both partners are to make changes, the higher the likelihood of success. What if one of you is more motivated? That’s ok too. Systems theory is based on the concept that when one part of the system changes the other parts will also change in order to adapt. With counseling direction these changes can be positive instead of negative.

Every family is unique with unique issues, but after 25 years of experience in inpatient, outpatient and private practice settings, no problem is to big or to small to be resolved. Marital problems can be caused for many reasons including: Family of origin or extended family issues, Individual emotional unhealth, Sexuality issues, Infidelity, Infertility, Parenting issues, Pregnancy, Ex-spouse issues, Grief and Loss, Stress of a move, Poor anger management skills.

If your partner won’t join you come alone - You can still learn tools to make your marriage better and to feel better about your situation.

About Divorce: Divorce is the second most traumatic loss a person and family can face besides death. As long as you are willing to make changes you will always be encouraged to salvage your marriage at CCPC. Unfortunately, for various reasons couples sometimes make the choice to end their marriage.

If you think you might be at this point please contact us for education about Détente Mediation and Collaborative Divorce. Détente Mediation is the newest hybrid divorce option.

Détente mediation is new, smart, and different. You will not find it anywhere else in Texas. Détente is designed to replace messy, public battles in court with a sane, reasonably priced, quick and private process for resolution of divorce and family disputes. Each session is conducted by an attorney mediator familiar with family law and a co-mediator who is a family and marriage therapist. That way parties get guidance on legal issues and procedure, but also meaningful help in dealing with their anger, frustration, and emotions. Parties learn new ways to talk constructively with each other to reach meaningful and fair agreements rather than forever ending in a stalemate on old arguments. Détente mediation can include financial neutrals, parenting neutrals or other neutral professionals. Parties choose if or how to utilize attorneys. The make up of the professional group is designed to fit the specific needs of each client and case.

Collaborative Divorce is not mediation. It follows a specific process of information gathering, and developing option choices. Collaborative Divorce allows couples to make their own choices in the comfort of an office instead of the discomfort of a court house. It utilizes a full team approach including two attorneys, a communication coach, a financial neutral and sometimes a specific parenting coach. It can teach co-parenting skills for children of divorce. If you have children, divorcing a person does not mean they leave your life completely. It is imperative to your children's' well being that you restructure your relationship with the children's' other parent for your child's emotional health and your own sanity. If the litigation process has already begun to damage those relationships Divorce Coaching, Collaborative Divorce or Détente Mediation can help put those relationships back on track.

Learn more about Détente Mediation.