5 Signs Your Relationship Needs Counseling

Struggling in your marriage and not sure if you need help? In this video I discuss the top 5 signs your relationship needs counseling. As you listen, discern how many of the signs you're experiencing in your marriage. Reaching out for help can be difficult because we want to feel like we can solve things on our own. However, we go to the dentist for our teeth and the mechanic for our car. Sometimes, we need to go to a marriage expert for our marriage. 

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Transcript

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I'm couple therapist Dr. Wyatt, and today I'm going to focus on five signs that your relationship needs counseling. The first sign is that conflicts are not resolved. A lot of couples fall into this trap where they have a conflict, they escalate, they get flooded, and then they don't come back to resolve it because they don't know how. And they don't want to retalk about that same topic because things are just going to escalate again. So what do they do? They sweep it under the rug and they just pretend it didn't happen and they try to move on. And when that becomes a pattern of conflicts not getting resolved, that's one sign that you might need some counseling. Because the more things are swept under the rug, the more problems you're going to have in your relationship. Because every conflict is a pressure point. Every conflict is an indication that you or your partner are not happy. There's frustrations, there's tension. But when you're not resolving those conflicts, that is a sign that you need some support. Number two is needs not being met. There's different types of needs. The leading two needs in marriage are emotional intimacy and physical intimacy. When someone has a need for emotional intimacy, that means they want to feel connected. They want to feel close. They want to feel like best friends with their partner. They want regular time to share from their heart what they're going through in life. And they want to hear about what their partner is going through in life. They want a lot of empathy in the interactions. They want to feel supported. That's emotional intimacy. That's a top need for a lot of partners. And when that need is not met, they start feeling starved. They start feeling alone. They start feeling hungry for that kind of connection. Another top need in marriage is physical intimacy. These are the higher libido partners and they create that physical connection. They want that skin-on-skin contact because for them, physical intimacy is the top way they feel loved, the top way they feel valued. And when that need for physical intimacy goes unmet in the marriage, eventually they start feeling starved. They start feeling hungry. They start feeling alone. And so a top way to know if your relationship needs counseling is if your top needs in the relationship are not being met. And further, you bring up your top needs and it falls on deaf ears. Your partner doesn't do anything about it. They don't make any changes. And when that starts becoming the pattern, that means you need some counseling. Before moving into number three, if you want my free PDF on how to rebuild your marriage in 90 days, comment the word PDF below and I'll send it to you. Number three is communication breaks down. When you have unresolved conflicts and you have needs not being met, the next logical result for a lot of couples is your communication breaks down for a couple reasons. One is it's hard to talk freely and openly because you don't want to start another fight, because there's so much tension under the ground. There's so much tension in the air. And so it's a matter of time before there's a sharp word or a sarcastic comment or a criticism. So partners start avoiding communication because they don't want things to erupt into a conflict at any moment. And that's what happens when you have unresolved issues in your relationship. When you have unresolved conflicts, when needs aren't being met, that leads to resentments. And when you have active resentments, communication gets very strained and it comes out sideways. It comes out in subtle digs. It comes out in sarcasm. So if you're struggling communicating with your partner, that's probably why. If you can relate to this, you're struggling in communication in your relationship. Go ahead and comment me too in the comments because you are not alone. Number four, you start feeling like roommates. This is the result of having unresolved conflict, which leads to resentments, not having your needs met, having a communication breakdown. The next thing that happens is you start feeling like roommates with your partner. You don't feel like lovers, you don't feel connected, you don't feel bonded, you just feel like two ships passing in the night. You feel like business associates, you feel like siblings. And when you reach that stage, you start getting disillusioned because no one signs up for marriage to eventually feel like roommates. And a lot of couples find themselves there. And this is where my wife and I found ourselves many years ago. We had a lot of unresolved conflict. We had a lot of tension. Our needs weren't being met. Our communication was breaking down. And I can remember waking up, laying right next to her, but feeling a million miles away. And all I remember thinking was, we are roommates. And when you get to that roommate stage, you start second guessing everything. You start wondering if you're ever going to be happy. You start wondering if you're ever going to make it out of this hole that your marriage is in. You start wondering if your needs are ever going to be met again. And thankfully for my wife and I, we did reach out for counseling. And that was hard for me because I'm a therapist. I'm a counselor myself. But I'm not objective in my own relationship. So I had to swallow my pride and be willing to reach out for support because otherwise we were not getting better. And I knew we had to see a marriage counselor, someone who was objective in order for us to improve. And it did help us. We worked with several counselors over several years and we worked through all of our resentments and then we slowly started tending to each other's needs again. We started communicating better and we learned how to fall back in love. So if you're starting to feel like roommates, that's a sign that your relationship needs counseling. Number five, hopelessness sets in. When you put all this together, you have unresolved conflict, your needs aren't being met, your communication breaks down, you start feeling like roommates. The natural result of all of that is you start feeling hopeless. You don't see a path forward. Despair sets in, and you start thinking this is how it's going to be for the rest of my life, and I can't handle this because I'm so unhappy. And so hopelessness is a great sign that you need some counseling. Your relationship needs counseling. Because hope is established when you see progress, when you see a path forward, when you see your partner starting to make changes, that creates hope. And so the opposite of hope is hopelessness. And that's when you don't see any progress. You don't see a path forward. You don't see your partner making any changes despite your many attempts of bringing things up. So when you start feeling that, and if that's where you're at right now, you're feeling hopeless, you definitely need some marriage counseling for your relationship. If you can relate to this and you're starting to feel hopeless and despair in your relationship, comment the word hopeless below because you're not alone. A lot of couples, a lot of partners find themselves in this situation where they're starting to feel hopeless. As a reminder, if you want my free PDF on how to rebuild your marriage in 90 days, comment the word PDF below and I'll send it to you. So those are five signs that your relationship needs counseling. Number one, conflicts are not getting resolved. Number two, needs are not being met. Number three, communication is breaking down. Number four, you're starting to feel like roommates. And number five, hopelessness is setting in. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to subscribe to my channel and click the like button. And if you enjoyed this video, be sure to watch this one next. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.