Marriage/ Couples Counselling in Durbanville and Surrounds

I have been offering marriage/couples counselling in the Durbanville area for the last 21 years. Over the years the clients that invested in the couples or marriage counselling process did so in order to grow in awareness and care for their relationships, willing to gain insight into and changing unhelpful relationship dynamics.

1. The Need For Marriage or Couples Counselling

Every couple relationship, however you choose to define your relationship: heterosexual, LGBTQIA+, legally married or common-law married, closed, open, polygamous, polyamorous, etc. reaches crisis points that can either be an opportunity for growth as a couple, or can lead to separation or divorce. These crisis points can be anything from destructive relationship dynamics created by partial listening and communication, avoiding conflict or being aggressive, relating to the partner based on your perception of the partner, breaking of trust through affairs or financial decisions that exclude the partner but impacts on the household, to name but a few. Then there are other factors like parenting, managing elderly parents’ needs, other family matters, sexual needs, work demands and stress, job loss, health issues including serious illness and other external factors that impact on the relationship and create difficulties.The ultimate care you can show your relationship, is to seek marriage or couples counselling when such a point is reached. As a couple, with the help of a couples counsellor/ therapist in your area, such as Durbanville where I am based, you can find a way out of the difficulty.

The ultimate care you can show your relationship, is to seek marriage or couples counselling when such a point is reached. As a couple, with the help of a couples counsellor/ therapist in your area, such as Durbanville where I am based, you can find a way out of the difficulty.

2. The Marriage and Couples Counselling Process

To work on your relationship issues requires energy and a firm belief that the relationship crisis or difficulty can be overcome. This is based in hope and unconditional love. It is therefore best to seek counselling before the depths of the crisis point is reached and all hope is lost.

In relationship counselling, I focus on the relationship as my client. The process focuses on restoring and ‘doing hope’. If damage was done to the relationship, we explore what restitution and forgiveness would look like and what needs to be done to ‘do sorry’. If skills are needed to listen and communicate better in order to understand one another and have heartfelt conversations, we will explore these. I always work with the binding factor, love, and both the internal and external resources that a couple have to give them agency and help them overcome the current crisis and move towards a deeper level of mutual understanding, love and intimacy.

3. When Marriage or Couples Counselling Will Not Be Beneficial

Unfortunately, couples sometimes only seek counseling when there is no hope left for the relationship. It then becomes very difficult to restore hope and work on the challenges, and often couples give up on the process as they don’t believe their efforts will bring about positive change. It often happens that one of the partners has already lost all hope for the marriage or relationship, has energetically moved on and only agrees to couples or marriage counselling to appease their partner or spouse. This is unfortunately the point where at least one of the partners has decided that separation or divorce is the only option. To try and work on the relationship will then not be viable. I would then guide the couple to enter the separation or divorce process in the most amicable way possible.

4. In Closure

Local support for your relationship, whether you live in Durbanville or any other area, is available. It is immensely reassuring and comforting to not have to travel far to seek marriage and couples counselling. I am based in Kenridge (near the Durbanville area) and can be contacted at 083 764 5978 or via an online enquiry to make an appointment. My fees are R 850p/h.

Johann van Greunen