Relate counselling UK - marriage and relationship guidance

Seek marriage counselling services online - UK - USA

Relate counselling services have been helping UK marriages and relationships for more than 60 years now. Today the organisation is the country’s biggest couple counselling and sex therapy service, and is getting bigger all the time. Relate counselling for marriage and other relationship issues can be obtained face-to-face at one of the many centres around Britain, or over the phone. The organisation also runs courses. There’s a ‘Couples Course’ which, as the name suggests, is for couples who are about to embark on a big step such as moving in together or having a baby. There are anger management courses and courses for people who have just left a long term relationship. And there are courses for families and step families. There are also Relate books, written by experienced counsellors, on a wide variety of issues. If you want to get information online, you can browse the website at www.relate.org.uk or send in a particular query by email to receive an individual response.

As Relate has grown, so has its workload, which has its pros and cons. It’s a stock observation that while the US has long been more than willing to discuss its problems with therapists, us Brits have favoured an often painfully stiff upper lip. Now people are more willing to talk about their relationship problems than ever before. They are also more willing than ever to quit marriages that are perceived as unsuccessful. The last time marriage was legally defined in Britain was as long ago as 1868. Since then institution has, like the rest of society, seen some enormous changes.

Now Britain has one of the highest divorce rates in Europe – at the time of writing it’s only beaten by Belgium (France, incidentally, has one of the lowest rates). Staggeringly, and rather sadly, almost half the couples who got married in the 1990s are now divorced. In the end it’s nobody’s business but a couple’s (except for their children and, perhaps, other family members) as to whether they should stay together or not, but Relate believe in giving people the best chance of making the right decision.

© The Pink Fridge Online Magazine 2008 - Relate counselling UK