How To Win Him Back

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In Judith Wallerstein’s book “The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce” (2000), she followed 100 children of divorces from childhood to adulthood. She found that, years later, the pain of their parents’ divorce still affected their relationships, work and parenting. She found that people whose parents divorced are more likely to be become delinquent, be sexually active, suffer alcoholism or get divorced themselves. However, the real impact of a divorce reaches a crescendo when the kids are in their 20s and 30s and feel despondent, as though they could never expect a relationship to succeed. Before the kids are affected, the help of marriage counselors should be sought out.

Divorces are frequently caused by financial hardship. Therefore, the counselors who could help most are often skilled in financial planning. “I’ve never seen a case in my 18 years of doing this where there hasn’t been a reason to have hope,” said Karin Maloney Stifler, a certified financial planner from Hudson, OH. She said she sees a lot of couples who are affluent but failed to save up a sufficient enough nest eggs to keep them afloat during tough economic times. Karyn Pistone, a financial planner from Beachstone, says she counsels a lot of people who are big spenders, often reaching beyond their means with credit and winding up in massive debt. The advisors say the best marriage therapy is in forming common goals and a united plan for spending and saving.

Another option is to attend divorce counseling with mental health counselors, rather than attorneys. “Divorce counseling” is sort of a misleading term because it’s intended to smooth the divorce process, rather than prevent it. If you’ve tried seeing licensed counselors and realize that there’s no other alternative, then divorce counseling can help avoid an expensive and hotly contested court battle. Often divorced couples feel deep resentment over property or the kids, which can be avoided by seeking divorce assistance. With therapeutic help, couples can gain a sense of closure and prepare for their separate futures. They’ll gain help deciding upon property division, child custody/visitation, child rearing and coming to a fair agreement.

Abandonment, abuse and adultery are certainly grounds for divorces. Finances, intimacy and boredom are things that could be fixed through counseling for couples. Even though relationships are viewed as personal affairs, it can help to have an impartial party helping to uncover and resolve your conflicts. There are certain strategies for problem solving, expressing discontent and promoting a healthy relationship that trained, licensed counselors can offer.

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When we think of going to the doctor, we often imagine steely tools, long waiting rooms and rubber gloves. However, Dr. James Cordova, Ph.D. (from Clark University in Worcester Massachusetts) envisions an annual marriage checkup to keep relationships healthy and strong. “Marital satisfaction improves for couples who have been through the Marriage Checkup and for “control couples” who aren’t improving,” he reported after running a six-month study of 136 couples visiting a couples counselor trained in mid-level interventions.

Most of the people in Cordova’s couples counselor study were around 47 years old for husbands and 44 years old for wives, married for an average of fifteen years, although there are some newlyweds and some seniors also involved. Typically, they’ll videotape a couple discussing a problem and the counselors will review it later. “We watch them talk about a problem in their relationship together,” Cordova explains. Two weeks later, he can point out strengths and weaknesses in the tape, then presenting a “menu of options” for dealing with the situations. Sometimes couples may need to see licensed professional counselors, read books or simply spend more time together. Six months later, the couple will respond via a questionnaire to report their progress.

The initial results of these annual counseling sessions for couples have been promising, Cordova reports. In the first 68 couples, most reported increased marital satisfaction, improvements in intimacy and a higher level of cooperation and acceptance in their households. “People that have been through the marriage checkup are improving in all kinds of ways in comparison to couples who haven’t.” He admits that some couples will undoubtedly relapse, as anyone would in medical or emotional therapy, yet those with access to treatment always fare better.

In the future, Cordova and his team hope that an annual couples counselor package will be widely available across the country. Even though couples can find a family marriage counselor as it is, he hopes that his method and the affordability can be marketed nationwide. After all, this brief intervention yields significant improvements that can help families stay together to raise their children, without sacrificing personal happiness.

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