Marriage Counseling                                                  417.496.1867

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How can Marriage Counseling help?

• Provide you with an objective evaluation of your circumstances and relational needs.


• Explore your past and present experiences that may be contributing to your relational difficulties.


• Identify destructive relational patterns that keep repeating themselves in your marriage.


• Form a plan of action to get your relationship moving in a positive direction that may include:
• Defining what "Love" is, what Marriage is for, and How it Works (or doesn't work)
• Creating Emotional Safety in Relationship
• Learning to Communicate in Productive and Respectful ways
• Creating and upholding Healthy Personal Boundaries
• Learning how to Forgive and Reconcile
• Conflict Resolution Strategies
• Healing Hurt and Building Trust
• Establishing Realistic Expectations
• Uncovering Secrets to Sexual Intimacy
• Living with Freedom and Responsibility
• Relating to Extended Family and Raising Children
• Overcoming the Past and Moving Forward
• Developing a Vision for your Marriage and Family
• Communicating your Wants and Needs
• Valuing your Spouse's Wants and Needs
• Being the Best Spouse Possible, in Less than Ideal Circumstances
• Saving your marriage against all odds

Tips for successful marriage counseling

Given the big investment marriage counseling is, it makes sense to make the most of it. Here are some practical thoughts that will help you maximize your marriage counseling experience.

• Don't under estimate the damage.
  Your marriage didn't get where it's at in a day, and it's not going to get back on track overnight. It's going to take time and work.


• Don't over estimate the damage.
  There is hope even for the most severely damaged relationship. It's normal to feel overwhelmed when you don't know how to make things better. Keep your heart and mind open. Let your counselor help you discover the path to healing you've been unable to find on your own.


• Come ready to work.
  Marriage counseling is hard work. Your counselor does not have a magic wand that will fix your problems nor can he or she solve your problems for you. Your counselor can help you know what to do, but it's up to you to do it.


• Take responsibility.
  Nobody can work on your stuff but you. If you're not willing to make changes things probably aren't going to change, no matter how much counseling you receive or how many books you read.


• Understand the power of one.
  The truth is you can't change your spouse. Neither can your counselor. However, you can make changes in yourself that will influence your situation / relationships for the better. Your counselor can help you with that kind of change.


• Don't give up.
  You cannot be defeated if you do not quit. Listen, the saying is true "the night is darkest just before the dawn." Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better; this is normal. Expect things your counselor says to make you uncomfortable at first. Change isn't easy, but it's necessary for us to have the life we want.

Free Marriage Helps

Professional marriage counseling is a big investment with a big payoff. It will cost you: time, energy, and money. In return you can...
• Have the kind of marriage you've always dreamed of
• Enjoy more satisfying relationships
• Save $3,000-$10,000 over a divorce
• Learn what a successful marriage takes
• Gain the skills to be the best you possible

These Free Marriage Resources - Recommendations can help you get the most out of your professional marriage counseling experience.

Marriage Help Search Engine

This custom search engine searches the most trustworthy marriage resources around the world. We have found the information from these sites to be helpful for couples. Search any relational topic to find insightful articles and video clips.

Helpful Marriage Books

• | Boundaries in Marriage Learn when to say yes and when to say no-to your spouse and to others-to make the most of your marriage. Only when a husband and wife know and respect each other’s needs, choices, and freedom can they give themselves freely and lovingly to one another. Boundaries are the "property lines" that define and protect husbands and wives as individuals. Once they are in place, a good marriage can become better, and a troubled marriage can be saved.


• | The DNA of Relationships "Life is relationships; the rest is just details." We are designed for relationships, yet they often bring us pain. In this paradigm-shifting book, Dr. Gary Smalley unravels the DNA of relationships: We are made for three great relationships-with God, others, and ourselves-and all relationships involve choice. Gary exposes a destructive relationship dance that characterizes nearly every relationship conflict, and he offers five new dance steps that will revolutionize relationships. The DNA of Relationships, the cornerstone book in Gary Smalley's relationship campaign, will help you learn to take personal responsibility, create a safe environment, keep their battery charged, listen with the heart, and adopt a no-losers policy. It will revolutionize your marriage, family, friendships, and work relationships!


• | A Celebration of Sex for Newlyweds NOT JUST FOR NEWLYWEDS. This is a guide to enjoying God's gift of married sexual pleasure. A Celebration of Sex for Newlyweds answers specific, often unasked questions about sexual topics, and presents newly-married couples with detailed techniques and behavioral skills for learning sexual pleasure and intimate companionship. This book offers invaluable information in a professional yet sensitive style. If you have sex, or will be having sex, or hope to someday have sex ~ This book will help you! It maybe the best $10 you spend this year.


• | Forgiving and Reconciling: Bridges to Wholeness and Hope All of us have suffered painful emotional and relational hurts. God calls us to forgive those who have hurt us, but that's often easier said than done. We don't usually know how to forgive others, nor are we always sure if we have truly forgiven them. Psychologist and counselor Everett Worthington, the leading Christian researcher on forgiveness, says that forgiving is a gift we give to others. When we offer forgiveness to others as an altruistic gift, it is more effective than when we forgive only for our own benefit in an effort to "get over" the hurt. True forgiveness is accomplished through a careful process of understanding both the offense and the offender and taking active steps to forgiveness. In this insightful and practical book, Worthington provides a clinically proven strategy and a wealth of resources for moving toward forgiveness.


• | Love Must Be Tough: New Hope for Marriages in Crisis Dr. James Dobson's "tough love" principles have proven to be uniquely valuable and effective. Unlike most approaches to marriage crisis, the strategy in this groundbreaking classic does not require the willing cooperation of both spouses. Love Must Be Tough offers the guidance that gives you the best chance of rekindling romance, renewing your relationship, and drawing your partner back into your arms.


• | The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate Are you and your spouse speaking the same language? While love is a many splendored thing, it is sometimes a very confusing thing, too. And as people come in all varieties, shapes, and sizes, so do their choices of personal expressions of love. But more often than not, the giver and the receiver express love in two different ways. This can lead to misunderstanding, quarrels, and even divorce. Dr. Gary Chapman identifies five basic languages of love: Quality Time, Words of Affirmation, Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch. He then guides couples towards a better understanding of their unique languages of love. Learn to speak and understand your mate's love language, and in no time you will be able to effectively love and truly feel loved in return. Skillful communication is within your grasp!


• | Love & Respect: The Love She Most Desires; The Respect He Desperately Needs Psychological studies affirm it, and the Bible has been saying it for ages. Cracking the communication code between husband and wife involves understanding one thing: that unconditional respect is as powerful for him as unconditional love is for her. It's the secret to marriage that every couple seeks, and yet few couples ever find.


• | Sacred Marriage Your marriage is more than a sacred covenant with another person. It is a spiritual discipline designed to help you know God better, trust him more fully, and love him more deeply.What if God’s primary intent for your marriage isn’t to make you happy . . . but holy? What if your relationship isn’t as much about you and your spouse as it is about you and God? Everything about your marriage--everything--is filled with prophetic potential, with the capacity for discovering and revealing Christ’s character. The respect you accord your partner; the forgiveness you humbly seek and graciously extend; the ecstasy, awe, and sheer fun of lovemaking; the history you and your spouse build with one another--in these and other facets of your marriage, Sacred Marriage uncovers the mystery of God’s overarching purpose. This book may very well alter profoundly the contours of your marriage. It will most certainly change you. Because whether it is delightful or difficult, your marriage can become a doorway to a closer walk with God, and to a spiritual integrity that, like salt, seasons the world around you with the savor of Christ.

Marriage • Love • Relationships
articles ~ exercises ~ quizzes

• | The Crazy Dance ~ this exercise relational quiz can help you gain understanding about the destructive emotional dance you dance when fighting with your spouse.
• | Heart Talk ~ Most of us never learned how to communicate very well about our emotions and yet this skill is at the "heart" of intimacy. Heart talk is a simple approach to learning how to communicate heart-to-heart.
• | Feeling Wheel ~ Identifying and verbalizing feelings can be very difficult. This simple tool can help you put a names to those feelings whirling inside you.
• | 31 Reasons to end an affair ~ This article can help you think through through pros and cons of continuing in an affair.
• | Conflict Resolution Principles ~ these principles for conflict resolution will help you identify your strengths and weaknesses when it comes to resolving normal life problems.
• | Marriage and Men ~ This is an excellent and challenging sermon to men on manhood and marriage from the pastor of Mars Hill Church, Mark Driscoll.

Common Marriage Counseling Questions

What if I'm not sure if I want to save my marriage?

Well, if you're not sure if you want to save your marriage, that also means you're not sure you don't want to save it. Many couples find that the interaction that happens in marriage counseling can help them solidify what they would like to do. So you can use it as a means of determining what you want to do.

Considering the emotional, financial, and relational cost of divorce, don't you think it might be worth exploring, for 90 days, whether or not your marriage could become what you've always wanted?

What if my spouse isn't interested in getting help?

We often get the question "What if my spouse isn't interested in saving our marriage, or getting help? Is there any hope?" The answer is a definite YES. While you can't make your spouse want to save or work on a marriage you do have 100% control over 50% of the relationship. Many times we start work with one spouse only to find the reluctant spouse later willing to engage the process after they start seeing a difference in their partner. It doesn't always happen, but it certainly does happen often. Part of the mechanism at work here is that God is interested in repairing and reconciling relationships. When we get on board with what God is wanting to do, we find that He is able to accomplish things we never could.

Another component at work is that families and relationships are what we call "systems." That is, like a mechanical watch, with all it gears and springs, the pieces of a relationship react with each other. Just like turning a gear in a watch a different direction is necessarily going to change the way the watch works, so changing one part of a relationship will necessarily change the way the relationship functions. It's unavoidable. Now, that doesn't mean that it will be easy or that your spouse will come around to your way of seeing things. It just means that things will be different and can be better. The more you grow personally and spiritually the more likely it is that you will act more lovingly in all your relationships. This will ensure that the 50% of the relationship under your control is the best it can be. In response, often times we see reluctant spouses become more interested in pursuing some changes of their own.

But I don't have any feelings for my mate, why should I think my feelings will change?

Not having feelings at this point is normal. It's common for either spouse to have lost all desire for their mate when a marriage is struggling. In fact, it maybe even worse than that, often it feels as if it's less than zero and the thought of your mate touching you or you having to touch your mate is repulsive. Even so there is a strong probability those feelings will come back, but not without some changes on both parties parts.

Now look, let's get real. People can and do change. The very fact you have different feelings today than you did on the day you got married is proof that you can change. In fact, if on that day some one had told you that you would change and come to the point that you couldn't stand to be near your mate, you would have laughed and said it would never happen. So when I tell you that you can change and find a strong desire for your mate again, then you'll laugh and say it couldn't happen, but your wrong, it can happen.

The challenge however, is that negative change can happen with little or no effort, but positive change takes effort on our part. If you're not willing to do the work, then you're right, change won't happen. But if you'll get the necessary help then it can.

Why does counseling cost so much?

Well, I guess that's a matter of opinion. When considering the emotional, financial, and relational cost of divorce, or worse yet a legal marriage with a miserable, dead relationship, many find the cost of marriage counseling incomparably cheaper. You also have to understand that 100% of the counseling fee does not go directly to your counselor. There are overhead expenses like building rent, utilities, insurance and licensure, advertising expenses, and taxes to name a few.

Tri-Lakes Relational Center also offers reduced fee options to persons unable to afford the full cost of their counseling. Anyone is welcome to request a reduced fee based on their income and circumstances simple by asking and filling out a reduced fee request form. Since counseling is unlike manufacturing we can not make up the difference from reduced fees with "higher volume" because there are a fixed number of hours in a day. The difference has to be made up through charitable donations in order for us to make budget.

We do everything we can to make counseling as affordable as possible and provide services to everyone regardless of their ability to pay the full cost of their counseling.

Why bother, it sounds like too much work?

• Imagine being able to have a marriage where there is mutual respect, mutual caring, mutual honesty, love, and passion. If you could have that type of marriage, why would you settle for an empty, lonely room?


• Divorce is a nightmare, and while that may seem like the only path out of your dilemma, it's not true. Research shows that it takes about five years to recover from divorce, but less than two years to move beyond even infidelity in marriage. And it will only take 90 days to get your marriage back on the right track. Why wouldn't you spend 90 days to see if you could save yourself five years of your life?


• If you have children, then for their sake at least explore whether you can work it out. The impact of divorce on children is staggering; not only does it complicate their lives, but research indicates it puts them at higher risk for all sorts of life problems, it impacts their future quality of life, and literally takes years off their life expectancy.


• For your own sake, if you are the type of person who believes in the institution of marriage and never imagined yourself as part of the divorce statistics, then personal integrity would suggest you explore working through your marital problems, even if it's infidelity.

Marriage Problems

Marriage is tough. No successful marriage exist without times of hardship and struggle. Yet, if these problems are left untreated they can lead to divorce or a legal marriage with a dead relationship.

Common Marriage Problems

communication problems | dependency issues | financial stress | broken trust | emotional neglect | addictive behavior | emotion or physical abuse | separation | boredom | emotional infidelity | silent treatments | lack of fulfilling sex | midlife crisis | lack of appreciation | stubborn spouses | lack of affection

The truth is these problems do have the potential to destroy a relationship. However, they can also serve as a catalyst to get help, which in time can make the relationship healthier, stronger, and more satisfying than you you ever could have imagined.

Marital Affairs ~ Infidelity ~ Cheating ~ Unfaithfulness

Few things in life hurt more than being betrayed by some one you love. When a spouse cheats either emotionally, physically with a sexual affair, or with infidelity through pornography the devastation is crushing.

Five Types of Affairs

• Low rent rendezvous
  This is your typical one night stand and may be a one-time betrayal. These often occur in conjunction with drinking and anonymity. The core of the betrayal is based upon bad choices, poor boundaries, lack of integrity, and the opportunity to act.
  • An affair of convenience or opportunity. It is not something sought out, but rather occurs as the result of an opportunity that is presented.
  • The betrayer does not want to leave the marriage.
  • There is not an ongoing relationship.
  • Does not necessarily indicate sever problems in the marriage.


• Lonely hearts club
  Characterized by two individuals who believe they are "in love". The betrayer believes he or she has "fallen in love" and feels powerless over powerful emotions. The betrayer may feel guilt, but feels they are unable to be happy in their marriage and therefore must / should / or deserves to be with the affair partner.
  • Unlike low rent rendezvous this type often does indicate a deeper problem in the marriage.
  • Betrayer wants out of the marriage.
  • Betrayer seems incapable of making decisions as to what they are going to do.


• Looking for love in all the wrong places
  These affairs are committed by those with an ongoing patter of sexual betrayal such as frequenting topless bars and/or adult bookstores, viewing pornography, compulsive masturbation, prostitution, repetitive encounters with sexual partners, and other behaviors that are destructive to both the individual and to the marriage relationship. Interestingly, this category of affairs is not about the marriage, and often the betrayer will state they do not want their marriage to fail. Betrayers often feel hopelessly trapped by their behaviors.
  
  This type of betrayal is especially difficult for the spouse because their suffering is not just from the betrayal, but also from their inability to understand their mates behavior. What the addict had done seems so foreign the spouse can not comprehend it. Or they are in shock when they discover the sheer magnitude of the compulsive behavior (like the man who visited more than 300 prostitutes).
  
  • It is common for the betrayer to have made past efforts to stop the behavior, and to have actually been successful for a season, only to relapse after they believed things were better.
  • Typically the betrayer wants to save their marriage, but has a compelling drive to look else where to meet their needs.
  • Often these behaviors began before marriage, stopped after marriage, and then began again after the addict realized the marriage couldn't meet the need met by the addictive behavior.
  
  • This article discusses the difference between porn-related sex and healthy sex
  •This article discusses the hazards of pornography


• Having your cake and eating it too
  This is an affair where the betrayer is involved with a single person, but at the same time he or she does not want to leave their marriage. To them, the affair partner is a "soul mate". These affairs frequently spring from relationships where two individuals share something in common they don't share in common with their mate. It is as if this person develops two lives.
  • Individuals want to stay married
  • However, betrayers do not want to give up the affair partner
  • The betrayers life is divided into two very distinct parts; the relationship with the affair partner and their relationship with their spouse


• You're not my lover, you're my friend
  This relationship is commonly referred to as the emotional affair. Although some would not consider an emotional entanglement an affair, this type of relationship can be just as devastating and destructive as a sexual affair. If a mate is closer to a friend than to their spouse, then it's already an affair.
  • Boundary issues are a factor
  • Betrayer keeps secrets wi ht their friend instead of their spouse
  • Betrayer wants to stay married but does not want to choose between the friend and their spouse

Adapted from Rick Reynolds 5 Types of Affairs.
See also Rick's 31 reasons to stop an affair.

While the pain of infidelity is devastating it doesn't have to equal divorce. It is possible not only to heal from an affair, but to have a stronger marriage after than before.

Marriage Tune-Up : Good to Great

Your marriage doesn't have to be in pieces before you get help. You can schedule sometime with a marriage counselor to find out ways to take your relationship from good to great! No matter how good your marriage is there's always room for improvement. Surprise your spouse with a marriage builder visit to take your relationship to the next level.

Pre-Marital Counseling

You can start making your marriage better Today!

With Flexible Fee Options, everyone can afford to get help.

2131 S Eastgate Ave, Springfield, MO 65809