A Marriage Therapist's Blog
Thoughts on Marriage Counseling
Archive for August, 2008
My wife and I are celebrating 30 years of marriage today. We are still together and happy thanks to marriage counseling!
Sometimes I am baffled when people whose marriage is in trouble tell me that they can’t afford marriage counseling. I can’t think of anything more important to me than my marriage. If my wife and I needed counseling, we would do whatever we had to do in order to find a way to pay for it.
As corny as it may sound, if your marriage is in crisis, you can’t afford not to begin marriage counseling.
Here’s another way to look at it. If your car needed a new transmission, you would buy a new transmission, right? You need a car. Well, I happen to know that a few months of marriage counseling costs less than a new transmission! And just like you need a car, you need a happy marriage.
Here is a little quiz about how well you and your spouse (or partner) resolve your conflicts. There is no scoring, but hopefully you will find it thought-provoking.
By the way: time spent with a skill marriage counselor can greatly improve your conflict resolution ability!
- Do you sometimes not say things during arguments because you don’t want to hurt my spouse’s feelings? Or can you comfortably (and respectfully) state your position?
- Do arguments over little things turn into big arguments? Or are they resolved quickly?
- Do the two of you have different opinions about the best way to handle your disagreements? Or do you have a reliable method to reach resolution?
- Do you usually end up feeling guilty after an argument?
- Do you do too much to avoid arguments? Or are arguments something that you don’t need to fear?
- Do you tend to give in too soon in order to end an argument with your spouse? Or are you able to proceed comfortably?
- Does your spouse not take your side seriously? Or does he/she respect your opinion?
- Can you not tell your spouse your feelings because of his/her possible reaction?
- Does your spouse not understand your point of view during disagreements? Hopefully he/she takes the time to see things from your point of view.
- Do some of your disagreements never get resolved? This can lead to ongoing contempt and resentment.
Yesterday I wrote about how some men want to minimize and not talk about their affairs (whether emotional or physical). As a real-life example, I give you John Edwards.
Last night Edwards, the ex-senator and former presidential candidate, finally admitted to having had an affair, after denying it for months. This pretty much shatters his carefully-cultivated image of the loyal husband standing by his wife while she battles incurable cancer.
I noticed several interesting things in the television interview that Edwards gave and in the written statement that he released. All of them seem like attempts to minimize the damage.
- The timing was no accident. Fewer people pay attention to news on Friday evenings since it’s the beginning of the weekend. Also, a lot of people were tuned into the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. Finally, Russia’s invasion of Georgia was another distraction.
- The words affair and cheating were never used. He spoke of having had “a liason” and making “a serious error in judgment.” (You think?)
- He said that his had been “99 percent honest” while denying the affair for the past year or so. That’s just laughable.
- But he did say somthing that I find very credible: “in the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic.” Ah, narcissism, one of my favorite topics. Remember that narcissists believe that they are special and that the rules don’t apply to them. Yeah, that fits here.
When I work with a couple who are recovering from the husband’s emotional affair, I almost always notice a striking difference between how the man wants to deal with the problem as opposed to how the woman wants to deal with it. The husband, having been caught and/or admitted to the affair, has apologized to his wife and wants to move on right away and put the affair in the past. The wife, on the other hand, says “not so fast, buster.” (OK, she doesn’t actually say that, but that’s what she’s thinking.)
Typically after a few counseling sessions in which the affair is discussed, the husband begins to get frustrated and wonder why we still need to talk about it. After all, he has apologized, right? He feels bad about it, it won’t happen again, etc., etc. What else does he need to do? I have to say to him (sometimes more than once per session) that his wife is not over what happened, that it’s going to take some time for her to recover, and that he needs to trust the counseling process.
So why is it that the man is so anxious to put the affair in the rear-view mirror and move on? Because men are problem-solvers by nature? Yes. Because men don’t like to talk about emotions as much as women do? Of course. But I believe the chief reason is defensive: the husband feels terrible about what he did and it’s painful for him to think about it, let alone talk about it.
Yes, these sessions are difficult for the husband. His wife is crying and talking about how betrayed she feels. My job is to help the husband be empathetic. He needs to understand what is wife is going through and to know how she feels. Ultimately, my goal is for the husband to absolutely convince his wife that he understands what she is going through. Then the healing can begin.
You can now easily and comfortably read this blog (and the rest of the site too) on your mobile phone! The web server will detect browsers that are running on cell phones and will serve condensed pages without any images. This means that web pages will load quickly despite the relatively slow connection speeds that cell phones have. Also, you won’t have to do any painful left-right scrolling. Give it a try! Go to http://eastbaycouples.com/blog on your mobile phone. If you have any trouble please let me know and I’ll fix it ASAP.
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