A counsellor may be helpful regarding special issues affecting your relationship. It is important to select a good counsellor from the many available.   Some suggestions for picking a counsellor follow:

There are 4 Stages of Marriage:

(1) Romance, (2) Disillusionment, (3) Misery, and (4) Awakening. Due to the high divorce rate many couples never make it to the 4th Stage of Awakening.

Maria and Paul went out together for eight years and lived with each other for three of them so that by the time they got married in 1991 they felt they knew each other. "We did, but not quite as well as we thought,'' says Paul.

Article taken from The Irish Independent, February
Retrouvaille is a different concept in relationship counselling it empowers couples to sort out their problems by helping them to re-learn to communicate meaningfully with one another.

By Irish Times article, Monday, September 29, 1997
Ireland may now have divorce but many troubled couples still want to stay together if they can. Aine McCarthy reports on a new programme that helps them at least try

Looking back on 47 years of marriage, Helen Whelan could see that six children, two jobs, separate interests and different agendas all posed typical challenges to their relationship. Yet, beyond these stressors, deeper challenges had eaten away at their marriage’s foundation – the cancer death of their youngest child, withered marital communication, isolation from one another, years spent married solely for the sake of their children and Peter’s two affairs.