Relationship Counseling: Setting Up A Talk Session
All relationship counseling is about getting the two people in the relationship to talk to each other and start to try to understand each others feeling more. The problem that any relationship counseling advisor will tell you is that getting those two people in the same room for more than a few minutes and remaining calm throughout is the difficult part.
If you’re experiencing relationship problems of your own, here’s a few tips you can try yourself at home, with your partner, before you consider looking for qualified (and potentially expensive) relationship counseling services.
Plan a time when you are not likely to be disturbed. You will need maybe ten minutes if this is your first talk session, but it would be better to leave a bit of leeway after the session.
Turn off any music, radio or television, and put the phone on ‘answer’.
Set a kitchen timer, alarm or stopwatch for ten minutes from the start (or two five-minute periods to give you a changeover time).
When starting your relationship counseling at home, you should both come with a written agenda for one or two things you would like to talk about.
Try to have an agreement that you will not say hurtful things during the ten minutes.
Divide the time equally between you.
Decide who will start with their agenda items.
Switch over to the other person after five minutes.
If arguments begin, you could try to end by ‘agreeing to differ’ at the ten minute deadline, or if they are getting out of hand, you could just stop the session and plan to meet at another time.
In later sessions you could use communication training or negotiation as the main agenda.
In your later “in home” relationship counseling sessions you could extend the time, if you both agree that it is safe to do so, up to 20 minutes at the most.
This approach should be very helpful, and as you can see doesn’t involve any relationship counseling services – you can easily work through this plan of attack in the comfort of your own home.
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Filed under Counseling by on Jul 14th, 2009. Comment. 
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Comments on Relationship Counseling: Setting Up A Talk Session
Hi! Im dating a loving caring guy,he has a three year old child outside.The problem is the mother of his child was working far from them and now she is back.She sometimes calls him to discuss their child issues.what hurts me most is he sometimes switch his phone off for no reason and says the battery was low.Im i wrong to suspect that when his phone is off it might be that his with the mother of his child.We fight a lot about his phone being off.Please help me, I LOVE him very much i dont want to lose him.What can i do to solve this?
Hey there!
You are not wrong for having those feelings. A lot of people in relationships especially relativley new ones are still trying to learn every aspect of the person they are dating so its natural to wonder these things, especially if they have had a child together.
You do have to realize that he is going to talk to the mother of his child for more than likely the rest of his life because they have a child together. That is going to be an important aspect of your relationship with him that you are going to have to “be okay” with. They may not “talk” alot but especially when the child is young they will need to discuss certain issues.
Now, I do have a question for you. How often is he “turning his phone off or having the battery die?”
Is it when you are around him or not around him?
Did this happen before the mother of his child came back to your area of town?
How long ago did your boyfriend and his ex breakup? Do you know why they did?
I think you also need to rely on your “gut” instincts. A women always can feel what the truth really is. Email me back at my website and I can help you out further.
His phone is of when im not around him and it happened before the mother of her child came back.They broke up last year around August,because he didn’t want her to go and work away from them.They were communicating then they stoped communicating.It happened again that he avoided me two weeks ago after that i tried to talk to him but he didn’t go much into details.He sad his ex called and demand that they should work things out because they didn’t break up it was just a distance relationship.And he don’t want to talk about it,he says he don’t want to hurt me and most of all he don’t want to lose me and his child.This whole thing is confusing me i don’t know what to do or say.Or maybe he didn’t be honest with me from the start,i just don’t know.