A Marriage Therapist's Blog
Thoughts on Marriage Counseling
Archive for April, 2008
I gave u the 411 abt emo affairs in a post lst Oct.
FYI emo affairs R strng friendshps btw ppl who R attrctd to 1 another, but who dnt have sex.
4 xampl, a mn & a wmn who mEt ofn 4 lunch & tlk bout dEp issuz (like probs w/ their m8s).
L8ly Ive sEn a nu twist: emo affairs that R done mostly by txt msgs!
Of corz, U can B busted if ur m8 looks at the cell fone bill & sees there R way 2 mnE txt msgs!
We may LOL at this, but plz member that emo affairs R FUBAR b/c ur cheatin on ur m8. 
U shd B spendin ur tym & emos on him or her, not NE1 else. 
B ur m8’s BFF!
C U l8r.
Marriage Certificate is just another term for a work permit!
When you saw your spouse standing at the altar, did you consider that you would have to work at this? Or did you just assume that you’d live “happily ever after?” Probably not. Most people think of the happily ever after part and don’t even consider the work part! However, to have a good marriage; and certainly to have a great marriage, will take a lot of time, energy, and just plain work. “I didn’t sign up for this,” you might think. I want the happily ever after. Yes, we all do, and yet, it is in the work that the happily ever after comes.
The reward is what makes the work worth it. When you work at a marriage and make it the best it can possibly be, the reward is worth a lot more.
Think of a couple who climb a mountain, going over the rough spots and enduring the dark nights, rain storms, and cold winds on the way up. They camp each night and endure hardships to get to the top. They probably disagree over more than on thing on the way up. But when they get to the top of the mountain, what a view awaits them! As they are holding hands, basking in the breath-taking view, a helicopter lands and another couple get out to share the view with them. Who do think appreciates the view more?
When you are in the midst of difficult times, press on: the view, and the rewards, await you!
Joke of the day:
- Marriage is love.
- Love is blind.
- Therefore, marriage is an institution for the blind!
We can laugh out loud (LOL) at that one. But I wonder if there is a kernel of truth in it?
Wouldn’t our relationships be less conflictual and more satisfying if we could be “blind” to some of our spouse’s faults? You know that your spouse is not perfect, and you probably can reluctantly admit that you aren’t perfect either. So overlooking some of the little things about your spouse that drive you crazy could be a good thing. Remember that you are doing some things that drive your spouse crazy too.
So consider those things that drive you nuts and put on your blinders. Try it for a day, then a week, and see what happens. I bet you’ll be amazed!
Remember back in high-school math class when you were panicked that you completely bombed that last test? And you were really worried about how that would affect your GPA? And that you might not be able to get into Stanford after all? But then Mr. Jones announced that no one had done particularly well on the test, and so he’d decided to grade it “on the curve.” When this first happened to me, I said “Huh? Curve? What’s that mean?”
Of course, I came to understand that the curve was a really good thing, because it took the best score on the test and, no matter how bad that score was, it got a grade of A+. This helped me because even though my score wasn’t the highest, I still had a good shot at getting an A or B on the test. And instead of lowering my GPA, that “bad” test actually might have raised it! (Hello, Stanford!)
I think marriages can be graded on the curve as well. I’m sure we would all agree that since there are no perfect persons on the planet, there are certainly no perfect (100%) marriages. However, there are probably many marriages that could be graded as an 85% or a 90%. Let’s assume for a moment that, grading on the curve, those 85%-90%-scoring marriages are actually the grade A marriages. Do you realize what that does for your marriage? When graded against perfection, yours might score a dismal 60%, but when graded on the curve, your marriage suddenly isn’t that bad! In and of itself, that is good news, and can it should give you hope that you can raise the “grade” even further.
The point here, of course, is that every marriage has difficult times, but those times are usually not fatal. And many marriages, even the 90% ones, can benefit from marriage counseling. Looking at your marriage on the curve helps you to see that there is hope and that the “grade” of any marriage can be raised. If you score a 75%, you could try marriage counseling and raise it to 90%. You may not be able to make your marriage perfect, but you can make it a lot better.
Why not try to “raise the grade” on your marriage?
I’ve gotten a lot of good comments from people who enjoy this blog. However, I just found a dissenting opinion on a blog called Full-Grown Single, which, not surprisingly, is oriented toward single people. The author called my blog a “steaming pile of poorly-assembled references to half-read Reader’s Digest articles.” That was so clever that I laughed out loud.
I think people are entitled to their opinions. But for the record, I pride myself in that I haven’t picked up a Reader’s Digest in, oh, twenty years or so. I get my news from The New York Times.
If you want to tell me what you think about my blog, you can click the comment link below. Thanks!
John Gottman writes and speaks about how important it is for couples to have lots of conversation. He points out that a good conversation every day has a big effect of reducing stress between two people. In marriage counseling, I frequently find myself in the position of trying to get couples to talk to each other more than they do. I doing so, I have met the enemy, and the enemy is television.
I am amazed at how much television people watch these days. When I ask couples how they spend a typical evening, many of them say something like “eat dinner, watch TV all evening, then go to bed.” I point out to them that it’s hard to have a conversation with the television on. In response, some people say they talk during the commercials! This is when I roll my eyes (actually I can’t roll my eyes, but if I could, I would do it at this point). Even if you mute the television while the commercials are on, most people are still looking at the screen. So how good can the conversation be if (1) it can only be as long as the commercials last, and (2) instead of looking at the person you’re speaking with, you are looking at the television? Not very good.
Of course, this presumes that both people are watching the same television. Some couples tell me that one person watches television in one room while the other watches a different television in a different room. This is because they don’t like the same shows. Yikes! Don’t people want to be together anymore? And what happened to compromise, at least when it comes to deciding what to watch?
As a marriage counselor, I work lots of evenings because that’s the only time a lot of couples can attend counseling sessions. Because I work evenings, I couldn’t watch much TV even if I wanted to. I don’t even know who is in the running for American Idol. I’ve never seen House or Desperate Housewives. Oh well.
So, a modest proposal: turn off the TV an hour earlier (or turn it on an hour later) than you normally would, and do something (anything) else. Play a game (Twister, anyone?). Go for a walk. Give each other massages. Oh yeah, and talk to each other.
Recently during a marriage therapy session, a young couple was telling me about the issues that had been causing them to be in intense conflict. It was a typical session for me until the couple mentioned a particular problem with an extended family member. Unfortunately for me as their therapist, that particular issue was very similar to a problem that had caused some strife several years ago in my own marriage. At that point in the therapy session I had to summon the self-discipline to stay in the moment with my clients and to block out thoughts and emotions regarding what had happened to me a few years back.
If you and your spouse have ever been to marriage therapy, you know what it’s like. As the clients, you sit on the therapist’s office couch and talk about your roles as husband and wife, your communication problems, and your areas of disagreement. Usually you and your spouse are doing most of the talking. The therapist occasionally interjects observations and asks some probing questions in order to help you better understand yourselves and the issues that are afflicting your marriage. Some therapists may also at times engage in “psychoeducation,” in which they take on more of a teaching role rather than the usual listening and observing roles. No matter what the details of your therapy sessions are, you presumably view your therapist as a professional, an expert in the field of relationships and psychotherapy, perhaps even someone who will impart some wisdom to you and your spouse.
Maybe you have wondered if your therapist has ever been in your place, that is, if your therapist and his or her spouse have ever been the clients of another marriage therapist, talking about their own problems with some other expert counselor. Can you imagine your therapist as a client? It may be difficult. (Try to visualize Freud lying on another analyst’s couch while having his own dreams analyzed!)
The next time you’re in a therapy session, you might ask your therapist if he or she has ever been in therapy. This question may well catch your therapist off guard, and he or she may even get a bit uncomfortable or defensive and ask you why you would want to know that information. Of course, you have a very good answer to that question: you want to know if your marriage therapist knows what it’s like to be in pain, to be a damaged relationship, and to be seeking help from a third party. This may well be more information than your therapist is willing to reveal to a client. (I’m sure that Freud wouldn’t have shared that information!)
Regardless of whether or not your therapist fesses up, the question remains: can someone be a good marriage therapist without ever having been in marriage therapy as a client? Yes or no? I’m going to take the “no” position. Why? Because in therapy, the most important factor for success is the quality of the relationship, the rapport, between the clients and their therapist. The clients have to believe that their therapist “gets” them, that he knows exactly how they feel. If clients don’t feel heard and understood, the therapy won’t be very effective. And it’s so much easier for therapists to understand how spouses in therapy feel if those same therapists have themselves been therapy.
Some powerful people agree with me that counselors should be in counseling. In California, marriage and family therapists who are in training internships are strongly encouraged to seek their own therapy. They are even rewarded for doing so by the licensing board in a unique and powerful way: every hour, up to a maximum of 100 hours, that an intern spends in his or her own therapy is counted as three hours of experience toward the 3000 hours of total experience required during the internship. That’s a strong motivation for an intern therapist, and it speaks to how strongly the licensing board believes that therapists in training should be in therapy themselves. I took full advantage of this when I was an intern.
Here’s another way to look at it: therapists should fully understand their own minds, their own emotions, defenses, and beliefs, before helping someone else to do the same thing. Furthermore, marriage therapists should understand their relationships, both past and present, including the ups, downs, strengths, and weaknesses, so that they can better help their clients to mend their own relationships.
Therapists also need to be able to deal with the feelings that they experience while listening to their clients speak. This phenomenon of the therapeutic process engendering feelings in the therapist is called “countertransference,” and it is an unavoidable aspect of therapy. It’s important, therefore, that therapists are well-prepared to handle these feelings, and this preparation is enhanced when therapists have already been through their own therapy.
A marriage therapist works with many couples and over the years will hear innumerable different relationship crisis stories. Sooner or later, probably sooner, and probably when it’s least expected, all therapists find themselves listening to a client describing a situation that parallels the worst relationship event in the therapist’s life. What will happen at that point? If the therapist has not worked through that crisis in his or her own personal therapy, the result may be a welling up of emotion – grief or anger, for example - and result in the therapist becoming much less effective as a helper, not only in that session, but in future sessions with the same clients when the therapist is again reminded of the painful events of the past.
Remember my clients and their extended family problem that was so similar to my own issue? Fortunately, I was able to handle that situation well. I didn’t get emotional, and I remained focused on my clients. How was I able to do that? Because I’d already worked through that issue in my own personal therapy.
So the next time you’re looking for a marriage therapist, I suggest you look for one who has experienced marriage therapy from both sides of the room: from the client’s couch as well as from the therapist’s chair.
Marriage is hard work. We all know that. As a marriage therapist, I see it every day. Two people, with their different personalities and different needs, are not going to be in a state a state of bliss 100% of the time. Far from it.
So sometimes it seems easier to blow it off and get divorced. No more conflict! No more obligations! Freedom!
But hang on a second. There is more to this than meets the eye. Here are some interesting statistics, courtesy of some recent scientific studies on the subject:
- People who never married don’t live as long as married folks. (Well, think about it. You have to take care of yourself if you’re married; your spouse should insist on it. No more deep-fried Oreos, for example.)
- Single people are more likely to drink and smoke heavily than married people.
- Married people have lower rates of of mental problems and suicide.
- Married folks have lower rates of cardiovascular disease and cancer.
- Married folks have less stress, or least they handle it a lot better.
- There is one piece of bad news: married men are more likely to be overweight than single men.
Is this enough to convince you that marriage is a good thing?
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