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Thoughts on Marriage Counseling

 

Jun 28

I Disagree

By Jay Slupesky
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About Marriage Therapy

Make a WishI ran across an online article entitled Why Marriage Counseling Doesn’t Work Anymore which was, not surprisingly, very critical of marriage counseling. The article made many claims that I think are just plain wrong. Here are a few of them of them, along my comments:

“When you turn to marriage counseling, the focus is on behavior, action and doing.”

Not true, at least not in my office. I practice Emotionally Focused Therapy which goes beneath behavior and gets at lower level emotions in order to make lasting changes in a relationship. Making positive behavioral changes is not a bad thing, but they usually don’t last. When you get at the root of the problem, the chances of the changes “sticking” are greatly improved; satisfaction goes up because each partner feels heard and understood.

“Did you know that most marriage counselors do not believe your marriage is valuable?”

This is an outlandish claim! I believe strongly in the value of marriage, and I’ve never met a marriage counselor who feels otherwise. How could a marriage counselor not believe in the value of marriage? Does a medical doctor not believe that wellness is valuable?

“Many of them [marriage counselors] have already divorced”

Since it’s a fact that 50% of marriages end in divorce, I’m sure there are some divorced marriage counselors out there, but what constitutes many? I’ve never been divorced; my wife and I will celebrate our 30th anniversary in August. Of all the therapists (marriage and otherwise) I am personally acquainted with, I would estimate 15% are divorced. Is that many?

“They [marriage counselors] believe marriage is simply expendable and that the kids will be ok.”

Certainly not. Marriage is worth saving, and the negative effects of divorce on kids are well-documented.

“Many of the couples I’ve worked with over the years who have attended marriage counseling told me that their marriage counselor actually advised them to divorce!”

This probably does happen once in a while. However, in my practice, it is very, very rare for me to advise a couple to divorce. One exception to this would be if there is ongoing violence which a man is refusing to address. Then I might recommend divorce, or at least separation, for the safety of the woman and/or children.

“marriage counselors need to take a good look at their massive failure rate and realize that they’re doing more harm than good.”

Wrong. The Journal of Marital and Family Therapy reported a study where clients of 526 marriage counselors were surveyed; 91.2% of the clients said they were satisfied with the amount of help they received.

“they [marriage counselors] prefer to work with each person individually, instead of as a couple.”

Wrong again. I prefer to work with the couple, because the problem is usually not with one of the individuals. The problem is in the relationship, and both people need to be present to work on that.

“Our marriage counselor took sides and made my spouse angry.”

Marriage counselors usually avoid taking sides because it is counterproductive to long-term counseling success. As I mentioned above, the “client” is the relationship, not one or the other of the individuals. That said, if I feel one partner needs to make a change in a particular area, I’ll say so.

“Counselors throw a wrench into the works of marriage by encouraging you to talk about problems”

How do you solve a problem if you don’t talk about it and address it? Would you ignore a problem at work and not talk about it? It’s important to talk about problems early in therapy. It’s how we get at the underlying emotions. Once we get to that point, however, the focus is off the problems and instead is on solutions and using emotions to heal the relationship.

I think it’s safe to say that a large portion of the people bashing marriage counseling are doing so because they want you to buy their book or CDs on how to fix your marriage. Unfortunately, a lot of these folks are unlicensed and/or underqualified.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, June 28th, 2008 at 12:20 pm and is filed under About Marriage Therapy.

2 Responses to “I Disagree”

  1. Jennifer B Baxt, LMFT, LMHC Says:
    June 29th, 2008 at 5:58 am

    Hello:
    Kudos for you for rebuking this article. The problem with the press is that they just write what they feel. I had an article written about me once that was completely false. There is no way that you can generalize over all marriage counselors. That is just wrong and one thing that we learn in school is to never generalize or judge. Guess it takes a counselor to be able to understand this because the world is judgemental as it is. take care for now

    Jennifer Baxt
    jennifer@completecounselingsolutions.com

  2. Gymncymn Says:
    August 3rd, 2008 at 8:44 pm

    I agreed with you

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