Until the late 20th century, relationship counseling was informally provided by close friends, family members, or local religious leaders.
Psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors and social workers historically dealt primarily with individual psychological problems within a medical and psychoanalytic framework.
With increasing modernization or westernization and the continuous shift towards isolated nuclear families, the trend is towards trained and accredited relationship counselors or couple therapists.
Some large companies maintain full-time professional counseling staff to facilitate smoother interactions between corporate employees and to minimize the negative effects that personal difficulties might have on work performance.
[citation needed] These numbers vary between countries and over time; for example, in Germany only 35.74% of marriages ended in divorce, half of those involving children under 18.
Institutional and societal variables (like social or religious groups, and other collective factors) which shape a person's nature and behavior, are considered in counseling and therapy.
[11] Most relationships will experience strain at some point, resulting in a failure to function optimally and causing self-reinforcing, maladaptive patterns to form, sometimes called "negative interaction cycles."
There are many possible reasons for this, including insecure attachment, ego, arrogance, jealousy, anger, greed, poor communication/understanding or problem-solving, ill health, and third parties.
A viable solution to the problem, and setting these relationships back on track, may be to reorient the individuals' perceptions and emotions - how one views or responds to situations, and how one feels about them.
Each helps couples learn a method of communicating designed to create a safe environment for each partner to express and hear feelings.
He hypothesized that people are biologically programmed to respond defensively to criticism, and therefore the listener needed in-depth training with mental exercises and methods to interpret as love what might otherwise feel abusive.
Whether miserable or radiantly happy, couples said what they thought about an issue, and "they got angry or sad, but their partner's response was never anything like what we were training people to do in the listener/speaker exercise, not even close.
What's more, Gottman noted, data from a 1984 Munich study demonstrated that the (reflective listening) exercise itself didn't help couples to improve their marriages.
As one of its founders, Sue Johnson says, Forget about learning how to argue better, analyzing your early childhood, making grand romantic gestures, or experimenting with new sexual positions.
[30] Although results are almost certainly significantly better when professional guidance is utilized, numerous attempts to make the methodologies generally available via self-help books and other media are available (see especially family therapy).
Using modern technologies such as Skype VoIP conferencing to interact with practitioners is also becoming increasingly popular for the added accessibility as well as discarding any existing geographic barriers.
Differing psychological theories play an important role in determining how effective relationship counseling is, especially when it concerns gay and bisexual clients.
[24] Most relationship issues are shared equally among couples regardless of sexual orientation, but LGBT clients additionally have to deal with heteronormativity, homophobia, biphobia, and both socio-cultural and legal discrimination.
In many jurisdictions, committed LGBT couples desiring a family are denied access to assisted reproduction, adoption and fostering, leaving them childless, feeling excluded, other, and bereaved.