Love is a particular kind of need and expectation in a relationship. For many people approaching marriage, love will be the foundation of their entire future together. Committed and passionate love is an important predictor of a relationships success and satisfaction (Hecht et al., 1994). The relationship between passionate and erotic love and satisfaction, along […]

Separate to the issue of needs and wants, a counsellor may find that clients are expressing unrealistic notions about married life. Strong correlations have been found between certain unrealistic notions that are believed or maintained by married people and their levels of marital dissatisfaction (Tysoe, 1994). It is worth looking at some of these areas […]

In 1972 Carl Rogers surveyed the changing marriage scene of his day and said “It is becoming increasingly clear that a man-woman relationship will have permanence only to the degree to which it satisfies the emotional, psychological, intellectual and physical needs of the partners”. He went on to quote the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard , saying […]

To achieve a ‘satisfactory outcome’ a counsellor will need to establish a goal with the clients at the outset of counselling, but the goals will generally fall into one of three categories: For those that are very certain about getting married, giving them the understanding and the tools necessary to be able to negotiate the […]

Relationships are necessarily complex. It will be helpful to a counsellor to align and govern their approach with a particular style. There are three usual styles of approach to pre-marital counselling: Instructive Pre marriage counselling has previously been very much the province of churches and religious groups. In this traditional approach there was a tendency […]

In Australia, over 40 per cent of all marriages end in divorce over a 30 year period, and marriage rates have dropped to the lowest rate they have been in one hundred years (ABS, 2007). Somewhere around one million people in Australia have experienced divorce. The costs associated with divorce, including social security payments and […]