Couples Therapy Exercises – 3 Helpful Tips
Here are three couples therapy exercises that you and your spouse or partner can do at home! Yep, these tips can be done in the privacy of your own home versus in a therapist office. However, if you are having trouble with any of these and want help, please consider contacting a professional couples therapist.
A trained therapist in marriage counseling and couples therapy can help.
But, if you’re ready to try these out on your own…here we go:
Couples Therapy Exercises Tip 1
Have a mentor couple! Mentor couples can be real or fictional and serve to help guide your relationship in ways that align with what you both want and need.
Maybe you’re stuck in a cycle of talking to each other in ways that you’d like to change.
Maybe you’d like to be kinder with your words toward each other, or maybe you’d like to show more appreciation through your actions and words but don’t know how…
This is where having a mentor couple comes in. A mentor couple can help you learn how to relate to each other in ways that honor your relationship and how you’d like to be in your relationship.
It’s helpful to note that with the start of any new action, behavior, or language you start it might feel hard to do or phony – like it’s not really you – at first. But this will change. It’s similar to any new thing you start – it might feel awkward at first, but after you do it for a while it becomes second nature.
Couples Therapy Exercises Tip 2
Do you share with your spouse or husband all the positive things you think about them? Or, how grateful you are for all that you share together?
When they look attractive to you or when they do something nice for you, do you let them know?
It can be easy to think many positive things about your spouse and actually never tell them! I wonder how it might change things between you if you started voicing some of these positive thoughts directly to your spouse or partner…
Couples Therapy Exercises Tip 3
Saving the best couples therapy exercise for last…
While the above couple therapy exercises are important, I really think this one is critical.
The final couples therapy exercise tip is to become aware at how many distractions are keeping you from connecting to your spouse or partner and take action to turn that around.
It can be eye opening as you begin to think about how many things – distractions – take you away from actually looking at your spouse or partner. That are taking you away from talking to your spouse or partner.
Once you begin to notice this, you can take action.
Turn toward your spouse or partner and away from the distractions…
*By Anna McElearney, LMFT, LPC, NCC
Blog is intended for informational and educational purposes only.
