I'm a Marriage Therapist—3 Small Changes Can Help Couples in Trouble

As a licensed marriage and family therapist, I've seen countless couples come in for therapy with the same goal—to improve communication.

Keeping a healthy relationship is a lot like fine-tuning a car. Just filling up the tank won't cut it—you need to check the oil, brake fluid, and ensure there is enough air in your tires. Without these essentials, your car won't go far.

Similarly, communication is just one piece of the puzzle to keep the engine in relationships running smoothly. What really revs up the connection with your partner is a strong emotional bond fueled by validation, empathy, and understanding.

I'll never forget when I met this couple for therapy. They claimed they needed help with their communication, and boy, did they ever. Picture this: for an entire 50 minutes, it was like watching a never-ending tennis match. Back and forth they went, arguments flying left and right, and my head was spinning faster than a whirling tornado.

Usually, I can step in and grab their attention, but this session was on a whole other level. I decided to let them carry on because I wanted to witness their usual dynamic before redirecting them towards a healthier way of relating. I thanked them for showing me a glimpse of their home life and assured them of a unique approach in the upcoming session.

The following week, the couple returned, and guess what? As I promised, I had something unconventional planned using some of my quirky props.

Validating Your Partner

In my counseling room, I've got fun, squishy stress balls that look like a world globe and fit in the palm of your hand. I gave each of them one and said, "This is your world, a universe entirely dedicated to you—your thoughts, feelings, ideas, and experiences. Now, when you talk to each other, you have to sit on each other's worlds, literally, so that you will be immersed in hearing, understanding, and truly experiencing your partner's perspective."

This is called validation. When you validate your partner, you unleash the power of acknowledgment and recognition, honoring their feelings, thoughts, and experiences as valid and legitimate. This doesn't mean you're obliged to agree with their every word, it's all about your incredible capacity to understand and empathize with their unique point of view. By doing this, you'll steer clear of tossing their emotions aside and crashing and burning on the relationship highway.

Fostering a Sense of Empathy

In the third session with this couple, we practiced another key component to strengthening their relationship: Empathy. This is one of the best ways to fuel your relationship engine.

Empathy is often described as the foundation of strong and healthy relationships. It allows us to truly listen to our partner without judgment or bias. When we are empathetic, we not only understand what someone is feeling but also how they are feeling.

This allows us to respond in a supportive and caring manner, which can strengthen the bond between individuals. Empathy is like putting yourself in the driver's seat of your partner's emotions. It's not about feeling sorry for them—that's sympathy. Empathy allows you to dive deep into your partner's world of sadness, hurt, frustration, and more.

Building this skill is no small feat and requires much practice and dedication. It involves actively listening to others, being mindful of their feelings, and showing compassion and understanding. It also requires us to be vulnerable and open to being empathized with in return.

By cultivating empathy in our relationships, we can create a safe and nurturing environment where both partners feel heard, understood, and valued. It should not be a one-way street, but rather a two-way exchange that strengthens the connection between individuals.

When you show empathy, you hit the accelerator of your emotional connection! To help my couple truly grasp the importance of this, I introduced two additional props—heart-shaped squishy stress balls.

I handed each of them a heart, encouraging them to tap into their own emotions and show their partner that they can truly understand and feel what their partner is experiencing. I challenged the couple to fine-tune their active listening and empathic skills, using the sentence starter, "I can imagine that must make you feel", and firing up the right emotional words, precisely mirroring their partner's feelings. They were floored by the newfound level of connection they experienced simply by communicating in this manner.

Processing in a Unique Way

My couple was cruising along smoothly, and in the fourth session, I unleashed the final piece of the puzzle to fortify their connection: understanding each other's unique processes. In my book, I dedicate an entire section to couples and decoding their processing.

Partners can find themselves caught up in a whirlwind of frustration due to their divergent processing styles. Picture one person as a talker, while the other is a skilled avoider. Consider one person shedding tears to deal with pain, while their partner's strategy is shifting it into reverse and repressing pain. The relationship is affected by all these variables.

With the many twists and turns that shape each individual and weave into the very fabric of relationships, it's absolutely crucial for couples to grant one another the freedom to process in their own unique way.

Once my couple delved into a profound understanding of their partner's unique processes, they discovered the key to avoiding misunderstandings and conflict. With a fresh and new perspective, this couple transcended their differences, forging a bond of more harmony and unbreakable connection.

What I've discovered from working with couples as a marriage and family therapist is that relationships can be messy and couples roll in from all sorts of different roads—it's a bit like a demolition derby. They haven't mastered the art of validation or the dance of empathy. They believe communication alone is all that is needed to keep the relationship running smoothly. That's where I come in.

I help couples step on the gas of the emotional connection by teaching them how to validate, empathize, and understand each other's emotional processes. This will increase their connection and fine-tune their conflict resolution skills while they are riding shotgun on the couch.

Darla Gale is a licensed marriage and family therapist and the author of Sifting Through the Ashes: Finding Beauty, Peace, Love, and Strength Through Trauma.

All views expressed in this article are the author's own.

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