Goals for Marriage Counseling: What to Expect and How to Set Them
Goals for Marriage Counseling: What to Expect and How to Set Them
One of the most useful things couples can do when starting marriage counseling is to identify clear, realistic goals for marriage counseling. This doesn't mean walking in with a ten-point action plan. It means understanding what you're hoping will shift, what you want to feel different, and what would make the work worth the time and effort. Without that clarity, therapy can feel unfocused or like you're talking in circles. With it, you have a way to track progress and a sense of what success looks like for your relationship.
Marriage counseling at Sagebrush Counseling. We help couples identify meaningful goals and work toward them with clarity and focus. Telehealth throughout Maine, Montana, and Texas. Join from anywhere in your state.
Schedule a Complimentary Consult →Why Goals Matter in Marriage Counseling
Research by Doss and colleagues (2005) on couples therapy outcomes found that goal clarity is one of the strongest predictors of whether couples stay engaged in therapy and whether they report meaningful improvement. When both partners have a shared sense of what they're working toward, the process feels more purposeful. When goals are vague or misaligned, therapy can feel like showing up to talk without knowing what you're trying to accomplish.
Goals also give you a way to measure progress. Without them, you're left with a subjective sense of whether things are getting better, which can be difficult to assess when you're in the middle of it. With goals, you can look back and ask: Are we fighting less often? Am I feeling more heard? Are we able to talk about difficult things without shutting down? Those are concrete markers that can help you know whether the work is moving you forward.
Goals also signal to the therapist what you need most. Not every couple comes to therapy with the same issues or the same priorities, and a skilled therapist will tailor the work to what you're trying to address. But they can only do that well if they understand what you're hoping to get out of the process.
Common Goals Couples Set in Marriage Counseling
While every couple's situation is different, there are some goals that show up frequently in marriage counseling. These are not exhaustive, and your goals may look entirely different. But they can serve as a starting point for thinking about what you want from the work.
- Improve communication. This is the most common goal and one of the broadest. It can mean learning to express needs more clearly, listening without defensiveness, or talking about difficult topics without escalating into conflict.
- Reduce conflict or fighting. Some couples come to therapy because they're fighting frequently or intensely, and they want tools to disagree without damaging the relationship. This is different from eliminating conflict entirely, which is neither realistic nor desirable.
- Rebuild trust after infidelity or betrayal. Trust repair is a specific, structured process. Couples working toward this goal are often navigating the aftermath of a significant breach and need support in deciding whether to stay and, if so, how to rebuild.
- Reconnect emotionally or physically. Many couples come to therapy feeling distant, disconnected, or like they've become roommates rather than partners. The goal here is often to rebuild intimacy, whether emotional, physical, or both.
- Decide whether to stay together or separate. Not every couple enters therapy with the goal of staying together. Some are genuinely ambivalent and use therapy as a structured space to figure out what they want.
- Navigate a major transition or stressor. Parenting, career changes, illness, or relocation can strain a relationship. Couples sometimes seek therapy to help them navigate these stressors without letting them erode the foundation of the partnership.
- Address specific patterns or behaviors. This might include managing jealousy, addressing alcohol or substance use, working through anxious or avoidant attachment dynamics, or changing a pattern of withdrawal or pursuit that's been damaging the relationship.
The goal of marriage counseling is not to eliminate all conflict or difficulty. It's to help both partners feel more capable of navigating what's hard without breaking trust or damaging the connection.
Marriage counseling focused on your specific goals. Telehealth throughout Maine, Montana, and Texas.
Schedule a Complimentary Consult →How to Identify Your Goals
If you're not sure what your goals are, that's common. Many couples enter therapy with a vague sense that something isn't working, but they haven't yet named what they want to be different. The following questions can help you start to clarify what you're hoping to get from the work.
What would need to change for you to feel better about the relationship?
This question gets at the heart of what you're seeking. Is it that you want to feel heard when you talk? That you want your partner to be more present emotionally? That you want to stop walking on eggshells? Naming the shift you're hoping for is the first step toward working toward it.
What are you doing that you want to stop, and what do you want to start doing?
Goals don't have to be about what your partner needs to change. Often the most useful goals involve understanding what you're contributing to the dynamic and what you want to do differently yourself. This might be something like "I want to stop shutting down during conflict" or "I want to start expressing my needs more directly."
If therapy were successful, what would be different six months from now?
This question invites you to imagine a future version of your relationship that feels better. What does it look like? How do you interact differently? What do you feel when you're together? This can help clarify what success means to you, which is often more useful than focusing on what's wrong right now.
Are your goals individual or shared?
It's worth distinguishing between goals you have individually and goals you share as a couple. You may each come in with different priorities, and part of the early work in therapy is often about finding alignment. If one person's goal is to rebuild trust and the other's goal is to figure out whether they want to stay, those are both valid, but they require different kinds of work.
What Realistic Progress Looks Like
One of the more common misunderstandings about marriage counseling is what progress looks like and how quickly it happens. Progress in couples therapy is rarely linear. You may have sessions where things feel like they're moving forward, followed by weeks where old patterns resurface. That's normal. The work of changing relational patterns takes time, and setbacks are part of the process.
Research by Christensen and colleagues (2004) on couple therapy outcomes found that meaningful improvement typically occurs over months, not weeks, and that the couples who benefit most from therapy are those who stay engaged long enough to see patterns begin to shift. The early phase of therapy often focuses on understanding what's happening between you, which can feel slow. The middle phase is where the real work of changing those patterns occurs. The later phase is about consolidating those changes and building capacity to maintain them without ongoing support.
Realistic progress might look like: fighting less frequently, or fighting in ways that feel less damaging. It might look like being able to have a conversation about a difficult topic without shutting down or escalating. It might look like feeling more heard by your partner, or more capable of expressing what you need. These are incremental shifts, not transformations. But they're meaningful.
When goals need to shift
Sometimes the goals you set at the beginning of therapy need to change as the work unfolds. You might start with the goal of improving communication and realize partway through that the real issue is unresolved resentment from something that happened years ago. That's not a failure of goal-setting. It's part of the process. Good therapy allows space for goals to evolve as you develop a clearer understanding of what's driving the difficulty.
How to Know If Therapy Is Working
One of the questions couples ask most frequently is how to know if therapy is helping. This can be hard to assess when you're in the middle of it, but there are some markers worth paying attention to.
You're able to talk about difficult things with less reactivity. This doesn't mean conflict disappears, but it means you're able to stay engaged in conversations that used to escalate or shut down.
You're noticing patterns you couldn't see before. Therapy often helps couples develop a shared language for what's happening between them, which makes it easier to interrupt unhelpful patterns when they start.
You feel more hopeful about the relationship. This is subjective, but it matters. If you're starting to feel like change is possible, that's a meaningful shift.
Both partners are doing the work. Progress in couples therapy requires effort from both people. If one partner is engaged and the other isn't, that's worth addressing in session.
You're using tools from therapy in your daily life. Therapy isn't just what happens in the session. It's what you take with you and apply when things get hard. If you're starting to do that, it's a sign the work is taking hold.
If you're not seeing progress after several months, that's worth bringing up with your therapist. It may mean the goals need to be adjusted, the approach needs to shift, or there's something blocking the work that hasn't been addressed yet. A good therapist will welcome that conversation.
Getting Started at Sagebrush
If you're considering marriage counseling and want help identifying what you're hoping to get from the work, we'd be glad to support that process. The complimentary consultation is a good place to start talking about your goals and getting a sense of whether Sagebrush is the right fit.
All sessions are via telehealth, so there's no commute and no waiting room. You join from wherever is most private and comfortable. To understand more about the online format, you can read about how online therapy works at Sagebrush.
We serve couples throughout the state of Maine (including Brunswick and beyond), the whole of Montana, and anywhere in Texas, including Austin, Houston, Dallas, and Midland.
All sessions via telehealth. Join from anywhere in your state.
Marriage Counseling at Sagebrush
Goal-focused couples therapy to help you build the relationship you want. Join from anywhere in Maine, Montana, or Texas. All sessions are virtual.
Schedule a Complimentary ConsultationSetting clear goals for marriage counseling gives the work direction and helps you know when you're making progress. If you're considering therapy or already in it and want to clarify what you're working toward, that conversation is always worth having.
— Sagebrush Counseling
1. Doss, B.D., Thum, Y.M., Sevier, M., Atkins, D.C., & Christensen, A. (2005). Improving relationships: Mechanisms of change in couple therapy. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 73(4), 624–633. View on PubMed
2. Christensen, A., Atkins, D.C., Berns, S., Wheeler, J., Baucom, D.H., & Simpson, L.E. (2004). Traditional versus integrative behavioral couple therapy for significantly and chronically distressed married couples. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 72(2), 176–191. View on PubMed
3. Snyder, D.K., Castellani, A.M., & Whisman, M.A. (2006). Current status and future directions in couple therapy. Annual Review of Psychology, 57, 317–344. View on PubMed
This post is for informational purposes and is not a substitute for professional mental health care or marriage counseling.
