Resources for Marriage Counseling
The technological age makes certain things that were once best left to a trained professional in the hands of the everyday Internet user, like fixing the brakes on your car or disassembling your PC. And while marriage counseling is a field that one might study for years to become merely competent, the Internet has no shortage of sites offering advice and resources for you to try a bit of do-it-yourself relationship repair.
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The NDMFC
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The National Directory of Marriage and Family Counseling is a portal that bridges the online and offline worlds of marriage counseling. The site is a place for counselors to list their practices and for prospective patients to find a professional to speak to about their marriage. There are helpful articles and forums for online group support. For a fee, you can connect through the site to speak live with a counselor, either by live chat or phone. The site also has a list of other online resources that address situations that may put pressure on a marriage, such as eating disorders, child abuse and infidelity.
The Loving Path
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According to the Loving Path's mission statement, the site was "developed as a pathway for marriages and relationships in difficulty." There's a large collection of videos and user-submitted stories to help couples figure out their relationships. The "Online Marriage Counseling" section doesn't consist of links to counselors online, but instead a collection of free resources. In addition, the site has a "Resources" page with links to the websites of professional counselors.
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Marriage Builders
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Marriage Builders offers free, professionally produced resources for personal use. The site has a collection of lengthy questionnaires to download and instructions on how to use them. The language used on the site centers on understanding a relationship in terms of value, and couples are asked to make emotional "budgets" and to "bank" relationship currency. You can also listen in to previous broadcasts from "Marriage Builders Radio" on a sample basis, or pay to have access to the full library of radio programs.
Save Marriage
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Save Marriage is a site from the United Kingdom that focuses on "transforming" marriages that are in trouble to save couples from divorce. The U.K.-based directory of counselors may not be helpful for people living in the U.S., but the site has a great collection of articles and resources that are universally valuable. The articles are organized into four categories: infidelity, relationship advice, marriage counseling and stopping divorce. There are well over 100 articles available for free, as of February 2011.
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References
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