Couples Counselling for Premarital and Newlyweds: Building a Strong Foundation

Couples Counselling
Written By Williamson & Associates

Explore Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) Couples Counselling for Newlyweds with Williamson & Associates. Build a strong foundation with counselling for premarital and newly married couples. Transform your union now!

You've found the person you want to spend your life with. Someone with whom you hope to share passion and develop a deep emotional connection. You both have hopes and dreams for the connection you wish to develop in this relationship. However, the transition into married life can be both exciting and challenging. You both come into the partnership with different prior experiences and attachment styles – the emotional bonds we form in our families of origin, which can be secure or anxious, avoidant, or disorganized. These attachment styles linger with us throughout our lives, profoundly affecting our adult relationships.  

Understanding Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) For Premarital and Newlyweds

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) is one of the most well-validated couples therapy techniques, founded by Dr. Sue Johnson and Les Greenberg in the 1980s after 50 years of research. Dr. Johnson also pioneered emotionally focused couples therapy. Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) focuses on primary and secondary emotions, seeing them as the music to a relationship dance between the partners. In Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for couples, early attachment and bonds we form in childhood are believed to shape our ability to nurture and sustain adult relationships.

If you are securely attached, you will most likely create open and trusting bonds in your relationships. But if you did not have secure relationships within your family, navigating intimacy and closeness may be tricky. If your attachment style is anxious or avoidant, you may crave closeness and fear abandonment or prioritize independence at the expense of intimacy.  If one of you comes from a family with disorganized attachment, you may exhibit unpredictable behaviours. All of this leads to feelings of insecurity, detachment, and conflicts in relationships.

Premarital counselling or marriage counselling for newlyweds is a great place to understand these patterns so that you can establish a strong, enduring foundation for a healthy marriage. Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) can help you deepen your emotional connection and intimacy by developing skills to get to your own deep emotions and attachment needs, tune into each other's primary emotions, learn how to recognize your negative cycle and stay out of it. 

Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT) For Premarital and Newlyweds

Do you sometimes struggle to understand where your partner is coming from? Does it seem like you're not speaking the same language? You both end up frustrated and hurt because you do not know how to communicate your needs and feelings so that the other side will understand. Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT) for premarital and newlyweds helps couples learn how to express their needs and listen, really listen to each other. You'll realize that it's more important to know how to deal with conflicts in marriage than to avoid them altogether. You'll understand it's not about who wins but genuinely understanding each other's perspectives. This prevents small displeasures from escalating into big issues. Also, if you haven’t lived together before, moving in can reveal all sorts of different habits. Couples counselling for premarital and newlyweds can help you create a balanced shared space so that you both feel comfortable.

Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT) can help you learn to connect with your own vulnerabilities and with your partner’s vulnerabilities. Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT) therapists understand how relationships work, how they fail, and what is required to repair them. You and your partner are encouraged and guided to explore your emotional experiences, the narratives you've constructed around them, and the patterns that emerge from them. Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT) therapists aid you in moving from a place of emotional distress to one of emotional health, balance, and fulfilling interpersonal connections.

Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT) For Premarital and Newlyweds

Do you long to experience the warmth and security of your partner’s embrace and disclose the deepest parts of yourself without the fear of judgment? This need for connection is so strong that it endures even if we've learned in the past that being close and emotionally open in relationships is dangerous or harmful. But at the same time, you are afraid of being hurt again, so you put up walls and pull away. Working with an Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT) therapist will help you reprocess any prior trauma that may be stopping you from being close and having a fulfilling intimacy, learn how to develop more stable relationships, and create a solid foundation for secure attachment and nurturing connection.

Emotionally Focused Family (EFFT) For Premarital and Newlyweds

Emotionally Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) is an excellent alternative for premarital and newlyweds looking to strengthen family bonds and balance family expectations when, for example, both sides of the family have their traditions and beliefs. So, you can, for example, attend Emotionally Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) with your parents and in-laws to learn how to set boundaries and navigate these waters. Or, if you are a couple with children from past relationships, Emotionally Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) can be an excellent family therapy option for blended families.

Building a Strong Foundation For Premarital and Newlyweds With Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT)

Have you addressed how you would handle your finances and develop a budget now that you are no longer single? Which parenting style are you going to follow? Do your views on parenting differ? Will you have any children at all? Will you both pursue your careers? How will you use your leisure time? These are critical issues to consider before beginning your life together.

Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT) gets to the core of your beliefs, emotions, and needs so that you can adjust expectations, carve time for each other in your busy schedules, and set healthy interaction patterns early on. This creates a long-lasting foundation for your marriage.

Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT) Credibility in Couples Counselling

Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT) for premarital and newlyweds can help you avoid years of marriage therapy or divorce by healing attachment wounds from prior relationships or trauma. Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT) is an evidence-based approach: 90 per cent of couples who undergo Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT) improve, and 70-75 per cent overcome distress.

Conclusion

In Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT), the therapist and clients develop a strong and supportive therapeutic alliance. The Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT) approach helps premarital and newlyweds strengthen bonds and resolve negative patterns. Doing so at the beginning of a marriage lays the groundwork for a resilient, fulfilling relationship.

If you want to learn to build the foundation for a harmonious and secure connection, call us to schedule a free 15-minute phone consultation with Williamson & Associates Counselling.

Premarital, Marriage and Couples Counselling in Olds, Alberta

At Williamson & Associates Counselling in Olds, Alberta, our couples counsellors are trained in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT), Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT), and Emotionally Focused Family Therapy (EFFT). Our counsellors offer in-person individual, family or couples counselling at our Olds, Alberta location, or online individual, family or couples counselling to anyone in the province of Alberta. Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT), Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT), and Emotionally Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) can help you feel connected and emotionally safe in your marriage, family and relationships. Reach out today to book your free phone consultation here with one of our amazing individual, couples and family counsellors for premarital and newlywed therapy.

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Williamson & Associates

Williamson & Associates Individual, Couple & Family Counselling in Olds, Alberta, offering support and whole family care with mental health, trauma and relationship challenges.

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