Marriage & Relationship / Divorce Counseling in Milwaukee

How to Save Your Relationship

As a society, people are becoming systematically desensitized to the trauma of divorce. Divorce is an everyday occurrence that seems to reinforce society’s matter of fact attitude. Yet, for the thousands of people who experience divorce without support; the pain, grief, sadness, anger, and resentment are not matter of fact, but are the reality of marital and family disintegration.

The 10 most frequent causes of divorce are:

Breakdown in communication
Loss of shared goals and interests
Sexual incompatibility
Infidelity
The fun has gone out of the marriage
Financial difficulties
Conflicts regarding the children
Alcoholism
The changing role of women
Problems with in-laws

While several of these situations usually exist between divorcing couples, one is often experienced as the “intolerable” reason for the marital break.
The process of divorce, although often painful, has some established characteristics. Knowledge of these can make the best of a frightening time and enable the participants to emerge “when the smoke clears” in the most intact condition possible.

How We Can Help

The divorce process is complex. Actually, several divorces occur within a single divorce; the social and community divorce, the physical divorce, sexual divorce, legal divorce, familial divorce, the friendship/ companion divorce, the parental divorce, the financial/economic divorce and the emotional divorce.
American Behavioral Clinics offers a wide range of providers with different specialties to help you and your spouse through your marriage/relationship issues or divorce. We offer individual and family therapy to help you discuss what is the best course of action. Our providers endeavor to help couples see that either choice is viable and that only by looking clearly at both, do they have the best chance of making a choice which will enable the two spouses to “win” (remain intact as persons).
Therapy is continually encouraged for people to seek help while the problems are small and of a manageable size. Counseling can usually prevent a couple’s growth into the crisis stage. This is a perfect example of “an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure.”

When Children Are Involved

When children are present in the family, they can be severely affected by the divorce and the behaviors of their parents. Parents may berate each other in front of the children; the child knows she/he is a part of both parents and suffers when one or the other is put down. They also often encourage children to take sides, which makes the child feel they are being pulled in too many directions. A divorce can also be upsetting the child’s daily routine; parents often feud over visitation rights and/or miss visitation or come late, to annoy the other partner. Parents going to therapy and making the best decision for them and their family is very important when children are involved as marital strife can have devastating effects on them.