A 6 session program of counselling and guidance on how to have a healthy divorce for individuals and couples with children:

Session 1: where are you now?

Session 2: what happened? What lead up to it?

Session 3: nuts and bolts of relationships and their breakdown

Session 4: what needs to happen next, versus what you want to happen next

Session 5: roots of a relationship, feelings that won’t go away

Session 6: look back in…what? And moving on

Couple counseling is the process of therapeutically helping partners in a relationship to recognise and better manage or reconcile troublesome differences, conflict or repeating patterns of distress.

In couple counselling we recognize and acknowledge that each person has a unique personality, perception, set of values and history that might be different and at odds from their partner’s.

It appears to be an inborn drive in human beings to relate to other people and to seek security and safety from an early age in another’s arms. But what we often forget is that this need continues throughout adulthood and into old age, that the human requirement for safety and security is present in adult relationships as well as childhood ones.

Even if the relationship was not a good one, a separation or divorce can be one of the most painful experiences in our lives.

The relationship that we believed would be with us for the rest of time, that would nurture us and hold us in our old age, that would contain all of our hopes and dreams is gone, and for some the end of a relationship, particularly if it is one marked by betrayal, is worse than a death.

We’re plunged headlong into uncharted territory, our life is disrupted and appears in ruins, and the breakup is felt across the whole of our emotional, psychological, sexual and financial lives creating deep anxieties about the future.

John Gottman says that we bid for contact and connection in our communications and We bid in the most ordinary ways, such as:

• Do you like my dress?
• What do you fancy doing tonight?
• You’ll never guess what my manager said to me today!

He says that we ask for connection during our bidding and there are 3 possible styles of responding:

1. We can turn away from our partner
For example:
What do you fancy doing tonight?
Dunno. (TV on in the background, partner looking at TV) I’m in the middle of this game, really not bothered………………..

In some marriages or couple relationships it can seem that one partner exudes a wealth of confidence and charm whilst another appears to be quiet or withdrawn; one partner appears to create a lot of commotion and the other appears calming and contained. It’s as if together they make up a whole and in this togetherness the whole spectrum of emotions and thoughts are managed. The feeling of wholeness couples have when they are together is what the relationship psychotherapist Henry Dicks, in his book Marital Tensions, called the marital or ‘couple fit’.

Finding yourself in a relationship that is often called “parents but parted” can be daunting and confusing. Here are a few tips to help you navigate you way through. Remember: you are still parents, and might still have that bond between you forever. Time to work from the best in you, even if you have found this hard over the past few months.

Part of the benefits of being in a loving relationship is that we know we can come to the other person to get our needs met.

However, sometimes we find our needs are not met by our partner, much in the same way that our needs were not met fully in our upbringing. This can cause us considerable anxiety, and can create arguments and conflict in a relationship. Being able to “grow” the relationship so that it contains and soothes our anxieties and distresses-making it a place that not only we can go to for comfort (the arms of our loved one) but we carry in our hearts is deeply important and a part of a living, breathing relationship.

See if you can rate them out of 10; highest you do this most; lowest you are never this role.

Ask yourself “what encourages me to be this way? What if I took on another role?”

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