Virtual Couples Counseling helps couples in crisis, distance relationships, military families, cross-cultural relationships, and many other situations.
Virtual Couples Counseling is helpful for married couples who are geographically separated. Each client can be in a different city, state, or country. So many factors may prevent people from getting to a counselor’s office on a regular basis. These include: 1) Lack of privacy; 2) Difficulties with transportation; 3) High cost of ongoing individual sessions; 4) Stressful childcare arrangements; 5) Difficulty maintaining a work/life balance due to travel and long hours at the workplace. In addition, dialogues between therapists, counselors, or social workers and their clients cannot occur if they are not actually face-to-face in the same room with each other. The use of webcams allows for an easy way to see each other’s faces in real-time, in addition to the ability to hear each other’s voices.
According to Schechter (2008), virtual couples counseling can be performed over the Internet via email, chat rooms, forums, and Skype, or with traditional methods of treatment such as face-to-face interaction by phone or in person at a private location; or with mixed modalities that combine both traditional face-to-face meetings and weekly individual sessions over the phone. According to her study on virtual couples therapy (VCT), she highlighted three main types of VCT: “Pseudocouples” (i.e., two people who are not actually committed or involved but present themselves as a couple); “Role-playing pairs” (i.e., two people who are not in a relationship but participate as if they were, with or without the guidance of a trained therapist); and “genuine virtual couples” (i.e., two people who have an ongoing relationship where one or both partners are geographically separated from each other).
Virtual Couples Counseling can help to decrease problems that arise due to separation, especially for military families. It is also helpful for cross-cultural relationships because it may be difficult for some couples to meet face-to-face on a regular basis. There are many challenges associated with being married to someone from another culture, including different values about appropriate gender roles, family life, and social customs between cultures. This type of distance counseling is highly recommended by social workers and psychologists who work with immigrants and their spouses to help reduce the risk of marital breakdown and divorce.
Virtual Couples Counseling can be used as a form of premarital counseling for couples who want to learn how to communicate more effectively prior to getting married. It also benefits couples that do not live close enough together to meet in person on a regular basis due to job demands or other family life responsibilities such as raising children.
In conclusion, Virtual Couples Counseling can be used to assist couples that are geographically separated, who want to learn how to communicate more effectively before getting married or when they are in a long-distance relationship.