Affair Recovery and Premarital Counseling

Relationship Counseling for wherever you are…

Dallas Psychotherapy provides services for wherever you are in your relationship. From the afterglow of an engagement to the pain of an affair.

Maybe you don’t have any problems at all, but you want to make sure that you’re on the right path for a healthy relationship.

Couples coming to pre-marital counseling typically come from one of two kinds of homes: ones in which their parents were deeply conflicted and miserable and ones in which their parents’ idyllic relationship made it seem effortless.

The difficulty is that in unhappy homes, the lesson you’re left with is to do the opposite of what your parents did. In happy homes, you know the relationship worked, but you don’t know how. Maybe you’ve just been avoiding arguments because that’s all your parents did.

But a life together means arguments and compromise, passion and empathy, and a commitment to continued growth. If the relationship really matters to you, don’t you want to give yourself the best chance of success?

Or maybe there’s been an affair that has threatened the very existence of your relationship.

You’re at a crossroads. All your friends and family want you to leave this relationship behind. “Can you really trust them anymore?” they asked. And a part of you really does want to leave – leave the hurt, the pain, and the feelings of betrayal behind. On the other hand, you’ve been together so long it seems like you’ve always been together. This is the person that you shared your victories with. The person that knows never to order a pizza for you with mushrooms on it. The one you’ve shared all those inside jokes with.

What if you could get over this as a couple? Isn’t a relationship like this worth fighting for? And so you find yourself bouncing back and forth. One minute you’re furious and hurt, ready to pack your things. Another minute, you feel a fledgling hope in your heart, thinking that there’s still a relationship worth saving if you could get help.

Learn How to Be Married

No one made you take a class on how to be married or in a committed relationship – but you sure wish they had. Pre-marital counseling is like getting a tailored class on how to be married and avoid the pitfalls that you see other friends and family members making.

We start by taking a thorough assessment of relationships in your family as well as your relationship. Then we provide you guidance in some of the important issues that all couples must attend: finances, chores, decisions about children and family, occupational balance, physical intimacy, and personality dynamics.

Through these discussions, we teach you the skills you need to manage a relationship. You’ll get practical experience with having healthy arguments, resolving conflict, solving problems as a couple, and having healing emotional conversations. We provide you with the solid foundations that will last for the lifetime of your relationship.

Relationship counseling shouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all approach.

To restore your relationship, we’ll provide you with strategies rooted in the best research and our relationship experience.

It’s no easy matter to recover from an affair. At Dallas Psychotherapy, we follow the Gottman Model for affair recovery. We start with dealing with the pain of the affair. Often in affairs, there hasn’t been openness and transparency, and we provide a safe place for both partners to get the answers they need from each other. By having a guide to fully explore the affair’s hurt and reality, we lay the foundation for healing.

We then help couples become more attuned to each other. After an affair, you don’t feel like you know what is going on inside your partner’s head anymore. Through a series of exercises to build shared meaning and mutual admiration, we help couples know each other all over again.

A particular activity that has been meaningful for couples we work with is called, The Dream Within Conflict, developed by the Gottmans. Often arguments within a couple have little to do with the actual argument. Deep personal experiences trigger the argument, and we help couples begin to identify and share those triggers to have a deeper understanding of their partner.

We help you begin to see the person you fell in love with again and share those things that you still love about them. Finally, we help the couple develop rituals to connect regularly because one of the greatest pains comes from separation. Through this exercise, we work with the couple to create regular points of meaningful connection, such as saying good morning or greeting a partner when they return from work. While these may seem like small things, it is the tiny things like a warm hug when you walk into the door that builds up a relationship.