Marriage counseling and premarital couples counseling (aka relationship counseling, couples therapy) is an educational experience that emphasizes self-exploration, self-revelation, and the acquisition of interactive skills, which promote mutual understanding, recognition, respect, appreciation of your partner, and the ability to fulfill your own as well as your partner’s expectations in marriage. Other goals of relationship help include learning, developing, and practicing in session with Dr. Gross, and at home, via homework assignments, techniques for constructive communication, and conflict-resolution for long-term marital harmony. This approach in relationship psychology equips you and your partner with lifetime tools that will enable you to honestly and effectively confront and resolve whatever problems may arise in the future in addition to enhancing your relationship and creating a lifelong harmonious setting with each other. Please click here for six articles on “How Does Marriage And Couple Counseling Work?”

In marriage, or couples therapy, for married and unmarried couples, Dr. Gross has a highly developed training program to help couples improve their communication on an emotional level as well as on an intellectual level, and grow in their ability to listen and understand their spouse’s point of view, and his/her reasons for taking that position. This program is particularly helpful with couples who argue futilely, escalate into fights, or, to protect themselves, withdraw during arguments/fights without resolving their differences, or have become so discouraged that they have virtually stopped communicating altogether about personal relationship issues or any other sensitive matter and live a roommate type of existence.

As an experienced and licensed marriage and couples therapist who is an expert in communication, Dr. Gross will teach you constructive communication skills, which will enable you and your partner to explore problems as a team and come up with solutions that meet both of your needs during your marriage counseling session. For more information on this subject, please click here for my article “The A-B-C’s of Communication.” You may also be interested in my article “How to Complain Diplomatically and Argue Constructively Without Fighting: Looking for a Win-Win Situation” click here and for other articles on developing effective communication skills.

Dr. Gross will help you with a wide variety of other problems and the resulting negative emotions that come to the fore. Couples often report frustration, disappointment, hurt, anger, loneliness, pain, and depression due to lack of understanding, diminished affection, loss of friendship, infrequent sex, emotional separation, and a general lack of togetherness during their relationship therapy season. Additional areas of concern may involve a lack of respect for the partner’s opinions or feelings, insensitivity to each other’s emotional needs, and disproportionate outbursts of anger. With Dr. Gross’s understanding of relationship psychology, he will help you explore, evaluate, and agree upon your respective roles and responsibilities to each other, to children (if any, from this or a previous relationship), the day-to-day tasks of living and loving, and making plans for the present and future with each other. If your spouse resists marriage counseling, please click here for “What if Only One Person is Motivated?” click here for “Spouse Resists Marriage Counseling.“

Other problems that bring couples to marriage counseling may center around money, interference from in-laws, anger management, activities of a partner outside of the home, “friend” relationships with ex-lovers or ex-spouses. Dr. Gross is very skilled when working with problems of infidelity. One of his specialties is his work with crisis situations such as the discovery of online, or in-person, emotional attachments with a member of the opposite sex, as well as lying and suspected —or admitted— physical intimacy, and the consequent emergence of feelings of shock, betrayal, depression, anxiety, anger, lack of trust and numerous other emotions which shake the equilibrium of the hurt party and sometimes threaten the future of the marriage. For more information on this shattering experience, click here for his article “There CAN Be a Silver Lining Around The Cloud of Infidelity“