How are things between you and your partner? Are you rolling along well together? Are you talking, laughing, really sharing? Do you feel as though you are deepening in relationship and growing both as individuals and as a couple?

Or have your interactions begun to stall and sputter? As with many couples, has your used-to-be-well-tuned relationship communication become shaky and unreliable over time?

You and your partner may be stuck on the side of Relationship Road, dealing with a communication breakdown.

Don’t panic. You’re not stranded. Don’t make plans to trade in your relationship just yet. Couples counseling can provide the emergency relationship assistance you need.

How? Let’s see:

Couples counseling provides tools and expertise

Sometimes you just don’t know how to fix things between the two of you. Some problems are bigger than you and the skills you’ve learned so far. The best thing you and your partner can do is push, pull, or drag your communication woes to someone who has the professional skill to assess your issues and suggest repairs.

Communication can get bogged down by debate or slowed to a stop due to the silent treatment. You may be missing opportunities for meaningful discussion that a therapist could help reconstruct.

Couples counseling reveals ineffective communication methods and provides you with the necessary tools to interact safely and intimately. Then, you can begin to navigate any future communication breakdown on your own.

Couples counseling gets under the hood

A communication breakdown can leave you feeling helpless and vulnerable. It’s tempting to throw up your hands and look for any way to get somewhere that feels more safe, even if that means leaving your partner behind.

You may be feeling resentment, frustration, blame, or hurt. Where is it all coming from?

A communication breakdown occurs when relationships skip the necessary maintenance. Little problems get bigger and bigger. Big problems get ignored or argued about as if you are chasing your tail. The silent treatment doesn’t solve a relationship challenge – it just causes your relationship to run low on gas and suffer neglect.

Let a skilled therapist get under the hood of your broken-down communication. As a team, you can focus on the knocks and dings to your connection as well as the deeper areas in need of serious repair. You can also focus on the strengths of your relationship – the pieces that make you really want to work through things to begin with.

Couples counseling can help you tackle:

  • Regrets and resentment
  • Intimacy issues
  • Unresolved matters and misunderstandings
  • Childhood hurdles and perspectives
  • Stress and over-commitment

Couples counseling helps restore a communication classic: Empathy

Somewhere along your journey together, you and your partner may have allowed your empathy tank to run dry. Love may have begun to wear out. It’s possible that you stopped feeling for each other and allowed unkind and insensitive feelings about each other drive you to a communication breakdown.

Counseling sessions can allow you the time and support for a full-scale restoration of authentic communication. Rebuilding empathy may help jumpstart positive feelings and intimacy in your relationship.

A skilled therapist may support communication by:

  • Helping you recognize the value of your relationship as a whole.
  • Encouraging you to communicate in ways that honor your connection and history.
  • Assisting you to accept responsibility for your part of the relationship challenges.
  • Supporting your attempts to view communication and conflicts from new angles.
  • Assisting you in communicating for healing, not blaming.

Couples counseling increases the value of all of your relationships

Repairing your communication breakdown reinforces the following lifelong skills and improves your life together and your interactions in general:

  • Coping skills. Couples counseling teaches you to effectively manage differing personalities and perspectives.
  • Persistence. Couples counseling reveals how commitment and hard work help secure the connections you want.
  • Acceptance and Forgiveness. Couples counseling encourages acceptance and shows how forgiveness brings relief and reconciliation.

Communication is precious and absolutely crucial to healthy relationships of all kinds. Without it, we can only go so far in knowing others and allowing others to know us on a deep level.

The ability to effectively communicate keeps couples traveling well together. With a skilled couples therapist, you can safely get back on Relationship Road.

In time, your communication breakdown may actually lead to a relationship re-engineered for the long haul.