Tag divorce

The true cost of couples/relationship therapy

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On average 120,000 couples divorce, in the UK every year. This would be no surprise to most, but what if those couples had gone to couples therapy, before they started legal proceedings?

MAN AND WOMAN ON COUCH, OPPOSITE SIDES

MAN AND WOMAN ON COUCH, OPPOSITE SIDES

The financial cost of divorce and the price of couple’s therapy

 

The cost of the court alone is £340, with legal fees averaging around £1200, and that’s if there’s no property involved. This figure can escalate if the couple, argue about parental access and who sees the children when and where, and who owns what as far as property is concerned.

On average couples therapy will cost £60 a session. You may say this is expensive, but looking at the cost above, one would say that it’s worth a try before you and your husband or wife embark on divorce proceedings.

Often couples do not have what is called irreconcilable differences, just a difference of opinion. This easy to forget when lawyers get involved that the couple once loved each other, and thus could fall in love again, with each other.

Simply talking to someone about your relationship.

Is often found in couple’s therapy that simply talking to someone that’s not emotionally involved and is non-judgemental, helps the couple to think clearly about their relationship, and map out a new direction going forward. Furthermore, if the couple and up splitting often, therapy allows for all the unfinished business, the couple may have, to be aired.

Of course, if there are children involved, then there’s the emotional wrench of one of the partners leaving the family home, it would be unjust and unfair to put a value on this, but the emotional pain alone, could be avoided, may be, if the couple came to couples therapy.

 

Returning back to the financial cost, simply doing the maths, if the couple were to have six sessions of couple therapy at £60 per session that’s £360, if a couple get divorced the court fees alone are £340. In the cold light of day, it is surely worth giving couples

therapy a chance.

How long does couples therapy take?

It may be that the couple stay longer, in therapy than six sessions, anecdotal evidence suggests that couples that do have more than six sessions, have a relationship that can be repaired, and differences that can be overcome.

How do I get couples therapy?

If after reading this you feel that you and your partner may need couples therapy, then there are many online directories of local councillors, who can offer couples therapy.

 

 

Terminator star says he won’t be back to couples therapy.

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Movies_____Terminator_2_judgment_day-Arnold_Schwarzenegger_086750_It was reported in the London free newspaper Metro that Terminator in  an interview with Arnold.shock jock DJ Howard Stern, blamed his divorce from his ex-wife Maria Shriver on the therapist, that was helping the couple, after the omission that Schwarzenegger fathered a child with the couple’s housekeeper.

Mr Schwarzenegger, cited the experience as totally counterproductive, and how he was convinced by his ex-wife Maria Shriver to see the therapist.

One caveat that Schwarzenegger did add to this interview is that he feels that couple should get help, when they need help.

Fortunately, not all experiences of couple’s therapy are as negative as the terminator stars. Couples often enter relationships with unfinished business from their past, whether that’s childhood wounds or past hurts from a romantic involvement.

Unfortunately, lots of couples try to work out past hurts within the marriage, this in itself causes ruptures which cannot be repaired without professional help.

There is no doubt that couples therapy can save relationships, with divorce rates high, furthermore, statistical evidence supporting, what is commonly felt as an overall increase in divorce. In fact, there are 13 divorces in England and Wales every hour. With half of these divorces happening within the first 10 years of marriage.

And like the terminator star’s own divorce, one in seven divorces, within the UK, cites adultery for the breakdown of the marriage. One harrowing statistics, is that 42% of all marriages will end in divorce.

Couples therapy, gives each member of the couple time to air grievances and unmet expectations, and emotional hurts, in a safe confidential place.

Indeed, like Mr Schwarzenegger’s marriage, infidelity, can be difficult to overcome, for a couple, but with professional help it can become easier.  Having that third person in the room, in the form of the therapist, who is not emotionally invested in the relationship, helping the couple, rather than judging them, can be of enormous help.