If you or your partner has trouble balancing your career life and your home life, marriage therapy can be extremely helpful in creating realistic goals to help improve the tensions that ensue. Many couples have difficulty balancing their home life and work life. Such a balancing act often increases stress within the martial relationship and within the household. Due to the fact that American households are mostly two-income, many couples have difficulties balancing their home life with their career. When one spouse is forced to work longer hours because of his or her job, tension can develop within the relationship. If a spouse loses a job or if the spouse’s salary seems insignificant to his or her partner, then conflict and stress often arises. In many instances being successful at work means giving up family responsibilities which can jeopardize one’s home life. In order to be successful, an individual is required to work a full time job, and then go home to handle all the domestic duties. In order for there to be harmony in the marriage, domestic responsibilities should be shared in a dual income household.
Research shows that marital problems do not spontaneously improve. By the time couples separate or divorce, they have experienced on average 6 years of relationship deterioration. Those couples who seek marriage counseling and spend time improving their relationship when problems first develop have a better chance of having a successful relationship. Marriage counseling or couples counseling can help steer the relationship in the right direction.
Couples that have children are often faced with some stressful and challenging parenting issues. When it comes to parenting issues many couples disagree on the choices they wish to make for their children. When disagreements occur, often conflict and tension within the relationship is the result. Serious issues that test a a marriage include a chronically ill child, a child with learning disabilities, a mentally retarded child, a child with autism, or child’s death. These issues are often devastating to a family and can put stress on a marriage.
Special Education Children:
Maintaining a Healthy Marriage While Raising a Special Education Child
Parents raising a child living with learning disabilities, autistic spectrum disorders, or learning disabilities ( such as ADHD) are confronted with huge challenges regarding the care of their child. These Challenges range from providing the correct medical care to finding the right schools and the right opportunities.
Parents with children living with a disorder find that their entire family is extremely isolated. They begin to be left out of neighborhood functions and as a result lose the powerful connections they once had with friends. The stress of having a multiple handicapped child creates tension within the family and the marital relationship.
Parents may find themselves becoming depressed or grieving for the dreams they once had for their child. When a parent has a special education child he or she may throw him or herself entirely into the lives of their child. The child often becomes the center of his or her world. Another parent may become a workaholic in order to cope. Without balance between family, work and self parents may find themselves becoming increasingly stressed, anxious, angry or depressed. These feelings have a negative effect on the family and marriage. For couples who find that their marriage is suffering due to the stress of having a child with special needs marriage therapy and family therapy can be helpful. It allows each member of the couple to voice each of his or her concerns and achieve greater balance within their lives.
The Chronically Ill Child:
Parents raising a chronically ill child face overwhelming challenges that often result in martial distress. Parents of an ill child are completely responsible for his or her medical care and thus often devote all of their time to taking care of the child. Often such stress places their relationship with their spouse as their last priority. Couples with a chronically ill child often complain that their partner is emotionally distant, that they are unable to communicate, and intimacy is lost. Many couples focus all of their emotion, energy and time on taking care of their child learning very little time. For maintaining their relationship with their spouse. Family therapy or marriage counseling can help build trust, intimacy and secure attachment in the martial relationship.
The Loss of a Child:
The loss of a child is the most devastating experience a parent can face-and missing the child never goes away. A piece of yourself is lost and, our future is forever changed. The age of the child at the time of death does not lessen the hurt or devastation. It feels completely unnatural for a child to die before his or her parents. When a child passes away the parents are forced to live on. One might think that the loss of a child would bring parents together but more often it causes isolation and distance. Sometimes the distance increases to such an extent that one or both partners emotionally and sometimes physically seek comfort outside of the relationship. By seeking marriage counseling in a timely fashion couples can deal with the unfortunate consequences of the death of a child in a healthier, less painful manner.
