“Marriage is a contract. Love is an emotion. A relationship is work.”
– Lori Gordon, author of If You Really Loved Me …
Simply stated, marriage is a contract between two people to create a life together with a mutual set of agreements. The challenge is that many people never articulate those agreements and assume the other is living by a set of rules “everyone” knows.. The reality of these assumptions is what causes many people to come to me seeking to repair or peacefully end their marriage.
Love is an emotion. Like any emotion, it comes and goes, swelling in us in response to events or thoughts of events. Most of the time we are emotionally neutral as we go about our everyday business.
Marriages succeed because of commitment to the underlying relationship. This is a place of both joy and work. A relationship with anyone, a friend, a co-worker, even a neighbor, is work. The relationship of a marriage is intense work. In a marriage you have more responsibility, more decisions, more everything than in any other relationship and nowhere to hide. All the outcomes in that marriage belong to the two people who brought it into existence.
Wouldn’t it be nice to start the marriage with a clearer understanding of each other’s expectations? Wouldn’t it be nice to know how to adapt to them as they change? Wouldn’t it be nice to have an agreement about how to resolve differences – and the required commitment to do so – rather than suffer in silence or fear the worst?
These are all skills anyone can learn and apply if they are willing to work at the relationship with their partner.
Azevedo Family Psychology offers:
- Premarital coaching to help couples clarify their expectations and discuss the five common stumbling blocks for marriage.
- Marital Therapy to help couples resolve current issues and heal the relationship.
- Marital Coaching to prevent issues from arising and strengthen the relationship against future stress.
- Discernment Counseling to decide if you are willing to engage in marital therapy or if the relationship has deteriorated to the point where divorce becomes necessary.
- Collaborative Divorce Coaching as part of a multidisciplinary approach to a peaceful, respectful, and less expensive divorce process that includes lawyers, psychologists, and financial professionals to help you make the best decisions to support the two families that will emerge.
- Co-Parenting Coaching to facilitate parenting in two different households for the benefit of the children.
To get started, contact Azevedo Family Psychology today!
