A Marriage Therapist's Blog
Thoughts on Marriage Counseling
Posts Tagged ‘divorce’
If your marriage is in trouble, be careful about discussing the details with your friends. This may seem like surprising advice, since friends can be a good source of emotional support. Women especially tend to talk to friends about their relationships.
So why do I say to be careful about it? Because I’ve noticed that friends are too quick to recommend that you divorce your spouse. Here’s why:
- Your friend is only hearing your side of the story. Yes, of course, you think your view of things is accurate and complete, but your spouse has a lot of important feelings and information to offer. This is why marriage counselors prefer to meet with both spouses.
- Your friend is not impartial. They may view your spouse as a jerk or a jerkette. And they may be thinking that they will get more of your time if you leave your marriage. A marriage counselor, on the other hand, is impartial.
- Your friend may be just looking for a quick fix. They may be a “problem solver” who thinks a quick solution is the best one. But repairing the damage to your marriage may not be quick and easy.
So trust your marriage to a licensed therapist who will hear from both of you, who is impartial, and who is trained in marriage therapy.
You’ve probably heard about the Five Stages of Grief. The stages were initially identified by author Elisabeth Kubler-Ross to describe what a person goes through after finding out that they have a terminal illness. Here are the five stages and an example of what a terminally-ill person might say while in each stage:
- Denial: “There must be a mistake. I’m fine.”
- Anger: “Why me? This isn’t fair.”
- Bargaining: “God, I’ll do whatever you want. Just let me live for a few more years.”
- Depression: “What’s the point of anything? I’m dying.”
- Acceptance: “There’s nothing I can do. I might as well make the best of the time I have left.”
Some time after Kubler-Ross introduced this model, relationship experts realized that people who are going through the end of their marriage also go through the five stages of grief. Here again are the stages, along with a person what a person approaching divorce might say in each stage:
- Denial: “He won’t really divorce me. He’ll change his mind.”
- Anger: “This is outrageous after all I’ve done for him.”
- Bargaining: “I’ll do whatever you want…just don’t leave me.”
- Depression: “I never thought I would be divorced. What will people think of me?”
- Acceptance: “Life will go on after the divorce. I’ll be OK.”
I was recently interviewed for the “Workin’ It” website. I’m reposting the interview here:
1. What are the five most common problems that motivate couples to attend marriage counseling?
Here are the top five, but not in any particular order:
Blended family issues. This occurs most often when one of the spouses has been married before and has kids from that marriage. If the kids are at least 10 or so, there can be trouble between them and the stepparent which then becomes trouble in the marriage.
An Affair. One spouse has been caught or has admitted to cheating. This is devastating, of course, and sometimes ends the marriage. But some couples want to work through it, and so they come to counseling.
Porn addiction. This is becoming a bigger issue due to the easy availability of pornography on the Internet. Some men become addicted to porn. They sometimes can hide it for a while, but eventually the problem surfaces.
Stage-of-life crisis. I see this more often in women than in men, believe it or not. The most common case is that of a woman who was a stay-at-home mom but who has something of an identity crisis when the youngest child leaves home. She frequently makes some significant life changes at this point and may re-evaluate whether or not she wants to stay married.
Communication problems. Many couples don’t know how to express their feelings to each other in a healthy way. At one extreme, they may argue constantly. At the other extreme, both people keep their feelings to themselves. Neither option is good.
2. Is it sometimes obvious to you after a session or two that the couple you’re treating would be better off apart?
Yes. For example, if I find out that the husband is physically abusing his wife or is extremely controlling of her and that he is not willing to try to change, then I think it’s better for the wife to leave him. I spent a year working as an intern counselor at a domestic violence shelter, so I am quite familiar with this pattern of behavior on the man’s part. Sometimes the man will claim that he had ‘no choice’ but to hit his wife because she ‘provoked’ him. Or I might find out that the wife has to let her husband know where she is at all times and that she is not ‘allowed’ to go certain places or see her friends. These are all red flags to me.
3. What problems do you sometimes see that can’t be solved through the counseling process?
Occasionally I will get a couple where one spouse has announced that he/she wants out of the marriage. The other spouse doesn’t want the marriage to end and has convinced the unhappy partner to attend counseling in an attempt to patch things up before agreeing to separation or divorce. Unfortunately, by this time it is usually too late to fix things because the unhappy spouse has been unsatisfied for years and already has one foot out the door. This is a case in which the couple should have begun counseling several years earlier.
4. Do couples have to be married to engage your services?
No. I see unmarried couples as well as married ones. This includes young couples who are planning to be married as well as older couples who have no plans to marry. Although many relationship problems are common to both married and unmarried couples, I have noticed that unmarried couples are more likely to have “trust issues.” They suspect that their partner is cheating on them and so will be spying on them by reading their email, checking their phone, looking at their MySpace page, etc. A lot of times people with trust issues have been cheated on in previous relationships so it’s not hard to understand why they fear that it will happen again.
5. Do you occasionally get couples with very minor problems that can be worked out quickly, but simply need an intermediary?
Yes. A couple may be generally happy and satisfied with their relationship but be stuck on one particular issue. It might be something to do with job choice, a financial decision, or a major decision involving children. When this happens they may come to me for a few sessions just to have an impartial third party engender a healthy discussion and point out options that may not have been considered.
6. Do you find that people are often surprised by what is said by their partners during a counseling session?
Yes, this happens sometimes. For example, sometimes a person will ’save’ an issue for the next counseling session rather than bringing it up at home. This is because he/she feels safer discussing the issue with me in the room; I won’t let the discussion get nasty or out of control.
7. What general advice can you give to couples who want a long, successful partnership?
Try to see things from one another’s points of view. I’ve written about this recently on my blog. It sounds easy, but in fact it’s not easy at all and requires some concentration. If you can put yourself in your spouse’s shoes and feel things as if you were in his/her position, you go a long way toward being able to understand him/her. When both spouses understand each other at this level, conflict goes way down.
The sad fact is that many couples will argue just for the sake of trying to convince each other of who is right and who is wrong. They completely gloss over the hurt feelings that caused the argument to begin in the first place. They should really be talking about the hurt feelings and not who is right and who is wrong.
8. How many jobs have you held in your life?
Fast food worker, warehouse clerk, landscaper, radio station engineer, electrical engineer and therapist. I guess that’s six.
We’ve all heard of a man having a “mid-life crisis” during which he does things like buy a sports car and try to look and act younger in an (ultimately futile) effort to stave off feeling like an old man. This happens to middle-aged men all the time, but lately there is a new phenomenon that affects women who are in mid-life: the Walkaway-Wife Syndrome. I have been seeing more of this recently in my marriage counseling practice. (The term “Walkaway-Wife Syndrome” was coined by Michelle Weiner-Davis.)
Walkaway Wives usually initiate divorce within a year or two of the youngest child’s graduation from high school, when the home has become an “empty nest.”
Remember that during the early years of a marriage, the wife is typically the primary caretaker of the relationship. As the years go on, if she is unhappy, and her husband is unresponse to her concerns, she may eventually give up on the relationship and “check out” emotionally. However, she keeps this decision a secret because she wants to hold on until all of the kids have left home.
Then one day, “D-Day” in a way, she tells her husband that she wants a divorce. He is taken by surprise: “I had no idea you were unhappy. Why didn’t you tell me?” In fact, she had told him many times, but eventually gave up because he was unresponsive.
At this point, a lot of men will spring into action in an attempt to save the marriage. He’ll get in shape, losing weight and going to the gym. He’ll start to go church. He’ll read relationship books. He becomes very attentive and responsive to his wife for the first time in years.
Now the wife has a dilemma. Are these changes genuine, and will they last? Or will her husband go back to his old ways once she decides to stay in the marriage?
This is a very delicate time in the relationship, and marriage counseling can help the couple navigate through it.
I 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.
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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