Relationship counseling is a process where both parties in a relationship are given therapy in an attempt to identify and better handle or settle troublesome differences. The relationship concerned may be between couples, family members, workers or bosses in a workplace, or among client and professionals.

As a distinct and professional activity, relationship counseling just recently became a trend. Before the late twentieth century, the undertaking of relationship counseling was casually fulfilled by members of the family, close friends, or local religious heads. Shrinks and psychologists have previously mainly dealt with individual psychological troubles; and still in a lot of less technically advanced cultures all over the globe today, the body of family, group elders, or the village perform the mission of relationship counseling.

With the modernization in many parts of the world, there has been a constant shift towards more trained relationship counselors, and the old support organizations are no longer needed. The government and social services organizations have lend a hand on those who need counseling. Professional relationship counseling from trained counselors have operated all through different areas, from voluntary to private practice, including companies who keep full-time professional counselors in their offices to bring about better and smoother interactions among employees.

Relationship counseling has been found to be an effective way of dealing with challenging differences within a relationship. From time to time a relationship gets “strained” and no longer works as it should for the people involve, when this happens, it is often very difficult for the parties to accept their contribution to the “strain’, and the only feasible solution is to go through relationship counseling, where the counselor listens, understands, and facilitates a better understanding between the parties involved.

The counselor being the “mediator” presents a non-judgmental side of the issues and is better able to give analysis and advice to the persons concerned. Effective counselors are those who are able to balance their state of mind and outlook, and place themselves in the position of those that they counsel, with the ability to respect their patients thoughts, opinions, and most importantly their emotions.

Almost sixty percent of marital relationships that fail are because of the couples not seeking relationship counseling before the situation worsens. Relationship counseling has played an important role in saving relationships; it has been beneficial and has jointly given confidence to participants to provide their best attempts at re-learning their bonds with each other.