A Marriage Therapist's Blog
Thoughts on Marriage Counseling
Posts Tagged ‘Emotionally Focused Therapy’
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.
Many couples tell me that their marriage would be better if they didn’t have so many disagreements. In fact…is there any couple that would like more disagreements in their marriage? No, we want less conflict. Fewer arguments, in other words. How can you do that? Well, one really good way to begin that process is to identify the roles that you and your spouse play when it comes to talking about issues that you disagree about.
Most often what we see is that one spouse plays the role we call the “pursuer” and the other is the “withdrawer.” The pursuer and the withdrawer.
What is a pursuer? Here are some of the things I hear pursuers say: “He ignores me. He’s hardly ever around. He works too much. He never listens to me. I’m not very high on his priority list. He doesn’t listen to me. I feel like we’re just roommates.” Does any of that sound like someone you know?
Now, what does a withdrawer say? Check these out: “She takes little things and blows them way out of proportion. She brings up things that happened 10 years ago. Sometimes I feel like I never get it right. I’m not sure I could ever make her happy. When she gets angry I just shut down and want to get away.”
Have you figured out whether you are a pursuer or a withdrawer? What about your spouse? Typically the woman is the pursuer and the man is the withdrawer.
So once you and your spouse know which roles you play, how do you use that knowledge to improve your marriage?Answer: if you’re a pursuer, you can work on “softening” the things you say, such as changing critical statements into I statements that talk about how you feel. For example, “I feel lonely when you work so late” is much softer than “you work too much.” This kind of phrasing improves communication and makes your spouse less defensive. If you’re a withdrawer, you can resolve to try to stay more engaged in discussions, which becomes easier once the pursuing spouse begins to soften her communication.
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.
It probably wouldn’t surprise you to know that husbands and wives who come to marriage therapy don’t always agree about what their problems are. And sometimes one spouse (typically the husband) thinks that everything is fine, while the wife thinks there are big problems in the relationship. In this scenario, if I were to ask the husband what brings the couple in to marriage counseling, he might say something like, “the only problem is that she thinks there’s a problem.”
He’s right, to a certain extent. If either spouse thinks something is a problem, then, in my opinion, it’s a problem for both of them. So if the wife thinks there is a problem in the relationship, she is automatically correct! It can’t be disputed.
However, I think the husband would probably be wrong that there are no other problems. A man who says something like that is likely to be one who distances himself from his wife - and that’s a problem right there. We would need to look at why he distances himself. Does he feel attacked, or does he feel hopeless that he will never be able to please his wife, or is it something else? That’s something we would delve into in marriage therapy.
One problem that we marriage therapists face is working with men who don’t seem to be in touch with their emotions. Another way of describing these men is “inexpressive.” In my experience, younger men (say age 35 and under) are more likely to be inexpressive than older men.
A big part of emotionally-focused couple therapy is to get to the root (or primary) emotions which underlie the partners’ pain, and have the man and woman express these emotions to one another, perhaps for the first time. This can be a bit of a challenge with an inexpressive male.
Here’s a fictional (but typical) example. Let’s say the woman has just finished talking about how lonely and abandoned she feels when her husband works late almost every night instead of coming home and being with her and helping her with their children.
Me: “John, what’s it like for you to hear Mary talk about how lonely she feels, and how much she misses you, when you work so late every night?”
John: “Well, my boss is putting a lot of pressure on me lately…” (defends himself and doesn’t answer the question)
Me: “I understand that your boss is unreasonable, but what is going on inside you when you hear Mary describe how she feels?”
John: “I know it’s a problem, and I think it’s going to get better in a few months.” (still not answering the question)
Me: “John, I am asking how you feel, not what you think.”
John: “Oh. Well, I guess it’s kind of sad.”
Me: “OK. Tell me more about feeling sad.”
Emotionally focused couple therapy is very effective with inexpressive men! It can have a powerful effect on their wives to hear them express a deep emotion, possible for the first time in years. And for the men, it can be very therapeutic to have a counselor who understands and validates their emotions.
This week I’m in Pasadena, studying Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (EFT). The workshop is being taught by two of the best-known researchers in the field.
Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy is quite different from many other marital therapies. There is no educational aspect to it: no lessons in communication skills or conflict management. Also, there is no behavioral aspect to it (such as trying to do more nice things for your spouse).
The three stages of EFT are:
- De-escalate the conflict cycle.
- Changing interactional positions (such as softening blame and getting the withdrawn partner to re-engage).
- Consolidate and Integrate.
EFT has done very well in effectiveness testing with real couples.
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