A Marriage Therapist's Blog
Thoughts on Marriage Counseling
Posts Tagged ‘television’
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.
I see that HBO has a new five-part series about a psychotherapist. It will be on every weeknight next week (Monday, January 28 through Friday, February 1). The series is called In Treatment and it’s produced by Mark Wahlberg. Each episode is only 30 minutes long and each one has the therapist working with a different client. Apparently the Thursday night episode is a marriage therapy session, but the other episodes are all individual therapy.
As much as I enjoyed The Sopranos (except for the final episode), I never felt the therapy scenes with Tony and Dr. Melfi were very realistic. She was so cold and aloof, so Freudian. I suppose there still are a few therapists like that, but I don’t think there are too many of them.
The short-lived HBO series Tell Me You Love Me did a much better job of showing how therapy really is, in my opinion. And the fact that it was marriage therapy kept me really interested throughout the brief lifespan of the show. I liked the focus on the three couples; their relationships and problems felt authentic to me. The sex scenes were gratuitous, though.
I’ll be tuned in to HBO next week to see how well In Treatment does in presenting therapy.
I figure that I lot of people must be curious about what a marriage therapy session is like. The marriage therapy scenes in television and movies never seem very authentic to me, with the possible exception of the HBO series Tell Me You Love Me. So I decided to write a script of a sample therapy session for you to read. Please know that this is not the transcript of an actual therapy session. This is a fictional session; it is the product of my imagination. I would never violate a client’s privacy!
This is a first session, so I have not met with the couple before. My goals in the first session are: (1) to build an alliance between myself and the clients by showing that they can trust me and that I understand their feelings, and (2) to begin to understand what issues are facing the couple and causing them to be in conflict.
So here we go…
Therapist: Welcome.
Husband: Thanks.
Therapist: So tell me a little about yourselves. How long have you guys been together?
Wife: Together for eleven years, and we’ve been married almost eight years.
Husband: Our anniversary is next month.
Therapist: I see. Did you live together before you got married?
Wife: Yes, for a while…a little over a year, I guess.
Husband: And we had another roommate too! It was an interesting situation.
Therapist: Wow! That must have been tricky at times!
Both: (laughter)
Therapist: Do you guys have kids?
Wife: Yeah. Two.
Therapist: Tell me a little about them.
Wife: We have a boy who is six. He just started kindergarten. And we have a daughter who is almost four.
Husband: I’ll say right off the bat that my wife is a great mom.
Therapist: That must mean a lot to you. You appreciate that about her a lot.
Husband: That’s true. She’s really good with the kids. I don’t have nearly the patience with them that she does.
Wife: It’s easy. They’re good kids. We’re really lucky.
Therapist: And is this the first marriage for both you?
Husband: Yes, for me it is. For both of us, actually.
Wife: Yeah.
Therapist: OK. Well, what brings you into my office? How can I help?
Wife: (to husband) Do you want to go first?
Husband: (to wife) No, you go ahead.
Wife: OK. Well, starting about six months ago I guess, I just started to feel distant from him, like something had changed. I didn’t know why. I knew I loved him as much as I ever did. I thought we were a happy family. But we just weren’t connected, you know? I worried about it all the time. And I would ask him what was wrong. Please tell me what is wrong. But he always said that he was fine, don’t worry about it.
Therapist: I can understand why you would be worried. You feared that something bad had happened to your relationship, something you didn’t even know about.
Wife: Exactly. And then after a while I started to wonder if there was someone else. He swore there wasn’t, but I didn’t know if I believed him. So one day I checked his emails. He had forgotten to sign out before he left for a doctor appointment. And then I saw all the emails from this woman that he works with. Someone who I had met at the office Christmas party, and I thought she seemed nice. I had no clue that she was talking to my husband behind my back. They were emailing each other, like, five times a day. And I read all the emails that he had sent to her, talking about how he wasn’t happy with me but felt like he had to stay because of the kids. (starts to cry)
Therapist: That must have felt like such a betrayal. And I can see that while you’re sitting here now, thinking about that day, it still hurts.
Wife: (still crying) I was furious. I had always trusted him. So now I find out that he’s got something going on with another woman. And then I realized, to add insult to injury, he’d been lying about it, denying it when I asked him. I felt like such a fool.
OK. That ends part 1. More to come in our next episode.
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