A Marriage Therapist's Blog
Thoughts on Marriage Counseling
Archive for January, 2008
Continuing on the discussion about online matchmaking sites, let’s consider the famous 436-question personality test that a person is required to take upon joining eHarmony.com. The company believes so strongly in the test that it won’t let its users just simply browse through all the photos of people in a certain age range and living in a particular area. Instead, the site only allows you to see photos and profiles of potential partners whom it thinks are a good match for you, according to the personality test. In other words, their computer software really is trying to be a matchmaker.
But does this work? The folks at eHarmony.com would like us to believe that the relationships that result from matches made by their software will be happier and longer-lived than relationships that originate…well, randomly, without using matchmaking software. But according to The New York Times, there is no proof of this claim because it has not been scientifically tested. So we really don’t know if eHarmony’s matchmaking software is worthwhile or not. What do you think?
Are you aware of how big the online dating phenomenon has become? Here is one example: eHarmony.com claims that it is responsible for 90 marriages each day! And not only that, the company claims that 100,000 children have been born to couples who met on its website. I’m not sure I believe those numbers - they seem awfully high - but I have no doubt that online dating is huge. Match.com has 1.3 million members paying $35 per month to subscribe.
Both eHarmony.com and Match.com attempt to match people based on the results of personality tests. The eHarmony.com test has 436 questions! Match.com’s test has only 56 questions. (I think that right there is enough information for a lot of people to choose Match.com!)
From a business point of view, online dating is great because it’s recession-proof. Attachment Theory tells us that people don’t like to be alone. It follows that unattached people will tend to put a high priority on finding someone to be in a relationship with, and so a lot of them will consider the monthly subscription fee is worthwhile regardless of what else is going on in their lives.
And when you are attached, but things aren’t well, it affects all aspects of your life. That’s when marital therapy or couples counseling is called for.
I see that HBO has a new five-part series about a psychotherapist. It will be on every weeknight next week (Monday, January 28 through Friday, February 1). The series is called In Treatment and it’s produced by Mark Wahlberg. Each episode is only 30 minutes long and each one has the therapist working with a different client. Apparently the Thursday night episode is a marriage therapy session, but the other episodes are all individual therapy.
As much as I enjoyed The Sopranos (except for the final episode), I never felt the therapy scenes with Tony and Dr. Melfi were very realistic. She was so cold and aloof, so Freudian. I suppose there still are a few therapists like that, but I don’t think there are too many of them.
The short-lived HBO series Tell Me You Love Me did a much better job of showing how therapy really is, in my opinion. And the fact that it was marriage therapy kept me really interested throughout the brief lifespan of the show. I liked the focus on the three couples; their relationships and problems felt authentic to me. The sex scenes were gratuitous, though.
I’ll be tuned in to HBO next week to see how well In Treatment does in presenting therapy.
I figure that I lot of people must be curious about what a marriage therapy session is like. The marriage therapy scenes in television and movies never seem very authentic to me, with the possible exception of the HBO series Tell Me You Love Me. So I decided to write a script of a sample therapy session for you to read. Please know that this is not the transcript of an actual therapy session. This is a fictional session; it is the product of my imagination. I would never violate a client’s privacy!
This is a first session, so I have not met with the couple before. My goals in the first session are: (1) to build an alliance between myself and the clients by showing that they can trust me and that I understand their feelings, and (2) to begin to understand what issues are facing the couple and causing them to be in conflict.
So here we go…
Therapist: Welcome.
Husband: Thanks.
Therapist: So tell me a little about yourselves. How long have you guys been together?
Wife: Together for eleven years, and we’ve been married almost eight years.
Husband: Our anniversary is next month.
Therapist: I see. Did you live together before you got married?
Wife: Yes, for a while…a little over a year, I guess.
Husband: And we had another roommate too! It was an interesting situation.
Therapist: Wow! That must have been tricky at times!
Both: (laughter)
Therapist: Do you guys have kids?
Wife: Yeah. Two.
Therapist: Tell me a little about them.
Wife: We have a boy who is six. He just started kindergarten. And we have a daughter who is almost four.
Husband: I’ll say right off the bat that my wife is a great mom.
Therapist: That must mean a lot to you. You appreciate that about her a lot.
Husband: That’s true. She’s really good with the kids. I don’t have nearly the patience with them that she does.
Wife: It’s easy. They’re good kids. We’re really lucky.
Therapist: And is this the first marriage for both you?
Husband: Yes, for me it is. For both of us, actually.
Wife: Yeah.
Therapist: OK. Well, what brings you into my office? How can I help?
Wife: (to husband) Do you want to go first?
Husband: (to wife) No, you go ahead.
Wife: OK. Well, starting about six months ago I guess, I just started to feel distant from him, like something had changed. I didn’t know why. I knew I loved him as much as I ever did. I thought we were a happy family. But we just weren’t connected, you know? I worried about it all the time. And I would ask him what was wrong. Please tell me what is wrong. But he always said that he was fine, don’t worry about it.
Therapist: I can understand why you would be worried. You feared that something bad had happened to your relationship, something you didn’t even know about.
Wife: Exactly. And then after a while I started to wonder if there was someone else. He swore there wasn’t, but I didn’t know if I believed him. So one day I checked his emails. He had forgotten to sign out before he left for a doctor appointment. And then I saw all the emails from this woman that he works with. Someone who I had met at the office Christmas party, and I thought she seemed nice. I had no clue that she was talking to my husband behind my back. They were emailing each other, like, five times a day. And I read all the emails that he had sent to her, talking about how he wasn’t happy with me but felt like he had to stay because of the kids. (starts to cry)
Therapist: That must have felt like such a betrayal. And I can see that while you’re sitting here now, thinking about that day, it still hurts.
Wife: (still crying) I was furious. I had always trusted him. So now I find out that he’s got something going on with another woman. And then I realized, to add insult to injury, he’d been lying about it, denying it when I asked him. I felt like such a fool.
OK. That ends part 1. More to come in our next episode.
Some marriages of couples in their 40s or 50s are in trouble, and the couple is in marriage therapy, because the husband is having a “mid-life crisis.” But what does that term mean, exactly? It’s usually thought of as the man realizing that he is in the second half of his life, that he is not going to live forever after all, and that he’s not going to be rich and famous like he always dreamt he would be. Supposedly the guy wakes up one day and asks himself, “Is that all there is?” And then he goes out and has an affair with his 25 year-old secretary in an attempt to make himself feel young again.
But does the midlife crisis really exist? Richard Friedman, a psychiatrist who writes a column in The New York Times, wonders if it might just be a handy excuse for the impulsive behaviors of a middle-aged narcissist. Friedman writes,
…you have to admit that “I’m having a midlife crisis” sounds a lot better than “I’m a narcissistic jerk having a meltdown.”
As a marriage therapist who sees men in self-declared midlife crises, I’m a bit skeptical about the ”crisis” being an actual emotional condition. I fear that it tends be used as an excuse for behavior that should be inexcusable.
When there has been infidelity in a couple who is in marriage therapy, questions about rigorous honesty and disclosure usually arise. This is because the unfaithful spouse has been keeping secrets and telling lies. In some cases, he (I’ll assume it’s the husband who was unfaithful) may even have been living a double life, sometimes the good husband/father, but at other times the drinking/flirting/sneaking cheater.
Part of the healing process is to restore honesty, openness, and transparency. Confession is part of this. However, hearing the truth can be very painful to the aggrieved spouse. Handling this disclosure process in marriage therapy can be tricky.
I ask the wife how much detail she wants to know. I find that some wives want to know only in general what happened, while others want to know all the details. But by letting her decide how much material will be shared, I am able to give her a small sense of power in this situation in which she may feel powerless and helpless.
If there have been many acts of infidelity, it’s typical for the unfaithful spouse to only admit to as few as he thinks he can get away with revealing. I know this in advance, and I tell him that it will be much better for the health of the relationship if he comes clean right away with everything that he did. Only admitting part of it, then maybe a little more later on, then a little more as necessary, is called staggered disclosure, and it’s much more damaging to the aggrieved spouse, because she is never sure if she has heard everything yet. This makes it more difficult to rebuild trust in the relationship.
I haven’t been to Phoenix in many years, but one thing hasn’t changed at all since my last visit: it seems as if there is a Circle K store on almost every corner. In case you don’t know what Circle K is, think 7-Eleven or Kwik-E-Mart. Circle K stores are so ubiquitous here that I almost think you could give someone driving directions along the lines of “turn right at the third Circle K, then go a little past the second Circle K, and it’ll be on your left.”
January is a great time to visit Phoenix because the high temperatures are only in the 60s, instead of the 110s or 120s of summertime.
This week I’m in Phoenix, studying treatments for sex addiction at workshop given by the International Institute for Truma and Addiction Profesionals (IITAP). I’ve been interested in sex addiction for a some time, mainly because of the number of men I’ve worked with who had an internet pornography addiction.
This workshop is being led by Dr. Patrick Carnes, who was a pioneer in the research and treatment of sex addiction. His book, Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction, written in 1983, was the groundbreaking book in the field. Also teaching is Dr. Kenneth Adams, who has also written books on the topic.
Sex addiction is an increasing problem in our society, due in large part to the internet. Online, it is easy to access pornography of every variety, find partners for casual anonymous sex, and locate prostitutes. The discovery by a spouse or partner of a secret sex addiction is, of course, very damaging, and often brings couples into marital therapy.
When I’m talking to couples in marital therapy, there are a few things that I’m always listening for. One thing that gets my attention is all or nothing thinking, which I prefer to call black or white thinking. A person who thinks in terms of black and white can’t see all the subtle shades of grey that lie in between those two extremes. What this means is that things that happen to this person tend to be perceived as either great or terrible; they can’t be somewhere in between.
Here’s a simple (fictional) example: if a husband forgets to pick up his wife’s dress at the dry cleaner, and that’s the dress she was going to wear to the party tonight, and the dry cleaner is now closed until Monday…well, that’s going to be a big disappointment. If wife interprets this as he must not love me, I will point out the flaw in her thinking. Maybe (hopefully) the guy loves her to bits - but is just forgetful.
Black or white thinking can ruin relationships. In my example above, when the husband hears his wife say that he obviously doesn’t love her anymore, he is likely to get upset and defensive, and a nasty argument could ensue. (And by the way, neither of them is going to enjoy the party!) If conflicts like this happen on a regular basis, the result could be the beginning of emotional disengagement. To continue my example, at some point the husband is going to begin to withdraw from his wife just to protect himself.
So remember…in between black and white there are many shades of grey!
Recently a potential client couple told me that they were Christians, and that their faith was very important to them. They said that to understand them well, I would have to be conversant with their Christianity. They wanted me to know this about them before they began marriage therapy. I assumed that they were going to ask me if I were a Christian as well, and that if I were to answer “no” then they would look for another marriage therapist.
They never did ask me, but I went ahead and told me that I was a practicing Catholic. I also mentioned that Emotionally Focused Therapy, which is the mode of marital therapy that I favor, is well-known in Christian circles and is taught at Fuller Theological Seminary and Indiana Wesleyan University.
The clients were fine with that and began marriage therapy with me.
A Brief History of Plagiarism & Copyright Infrigement of this Website
©2007, 2008 Jay Slupesky, M.A., MFT. All rights reserved.
Referer: none
East Bay Couples
Counseling
Three Convenient Locations
- San Ramon: Off I-680 at Crow Canyon Road
- Livermore: Near Valley Memorial Hospital and LifeStyleRx
- Walnut Creek: Off I-680 at South Main Street