I believe in Marriage Counseling. Well, of course: That’s why I do it! But the cynics among you might think, “Yeah, well, she gets paid after all.” Now that’s a good point. I do get paid, as you do for your work. But honestly, if you did your work, whether it was building buildings or neurosurgery or closing real estate deals, how would you feel about it if it hardly ever worked? How would you feel if your job was a lot of work that went nowhere?
You’d come to hate it.
That’s what I thought you’d say.
I’ve been doing this a lot of years and I love it. I don’t expect to ever get tired of it and I don’t plan on retiring. And the reason is that I get a lot of satisfaction seeing that light bulb go on over people’s heads. (Yes, I can just about see it!) I get intense pleasure when a formerly insensitive person turns with tenderness to his or her spouse and says something kind and validating. That’s my best payment.
On the other hand, there is room for cynicism because the stories I’ve heard make me sad. I’d like to see everyone who needs it benefit from marriage counseling, and unfortunately, that is not the case. So I’d like to present you with three possible sorts of situations in which it fails.
If You Were An Abused Child, Now Is The Time To Heal
The first one is that it can’t get off the ground because a person simply is not ready to confront his pain. Here’s the scoop: Let’s take a hypothetical case of a man named Stu. Stu has, for 25 years, blasted nearly everything that Sue says, criticized it or pooh-poohed it, making Sue feel like less than zero in her husband’s eyes. Although she recognizes that her husband is a good man at heart, Sue decides that she has had enough of the put-downs and wants out. She tells him she wants a divorce.
Suddenly the veil lifts from Stu’s eyes. All the complaints Sue had over the years about how he treated her suddenly make sense. In a panic, he starts therapy. But there are parts to the therapy that Stu doesn’t like. He can tolerate being told that he needs to work on his choice of words. He can even tolerate doing those silly breathing exercises to calm down. But the buck stops with examining the pain his father inflicted on him in childhood. He knows it’s there and he’d rather not discuss it.
The problem is that to feel empathy for the way he has made Sue feel—and that is the only antidote to his continuing to mistreat her—he must connect with her pain. To do so, he has to feel pain, and he can’t or won’t. A person who is anesthetized to pain cannot feel empathy. So his therapist returns time and again to his childhood so as to help him connect with his soft and vulnerable center. But he just won’t go there.
For Stu and Sue, therapy might not accomplish anything. Stu will definitely learn new behavioral tools and he will “manage” his anger. But he won’t get to the place where he no longer has the anger and where the least thing someone else does no longer triggers it. He will still be disconnected emotionally from Sue—which means their relationship will go through the motions without intimacy.
If the therapist is capable and Stu connects with her, this problem can be resolved. Stu himself needs to heal from whatever it was in his childhood that created his bad behavior. If the therapist can start the healing process right away with him by teaching him guided imagery, hypnosis, affirmations, recognizing victim thinking, and rooting out abuser values, he can heal at the same time as he faces his pain.
You Have To Want To Give Up Narcissism
A second situation under which therapy probably won’t work is when one partner is selfish. In order for a person to make changes that are meaningful, that person has to care about the effect of his or her behavior on the partner. A selfish person doesn’t care and won’t go through the motions. Although I don’t enjoy giving people diagnoses, the label that shrinks like to put on this is narcissism.
A quick and easy way to tell if someone is selfish is to see what he or she does after the divorce. If this person finds a new playmate rather quickly, it’s a sign that the relationship that was left behind had no depth. There are also people who do not get involved in a new relationship who nevertheless are selfish people, so that is not the only test.
Therapists Need The Right Tools
The third reason for therapy failure is the therapist’s fault and this makes me disappointed in my profession. It is the lack of tools. People who don’t treat their spouses in a way that is conducive to a deep and meaningful relationship just never learned how. They probably didn’t see their own parents doing it right and they are even clueless that they are missing something. No matter what the theoretical orientation, it is incumbent upon the therapist to provide answers to people who are crying out for solutions. When a therapist fails in this, he or she has been derelict in his duty. The solution to this one, however, is easy: Move on and try a new therapist.
Therapy is great. But it is a partnership between you and your therapist. You’ve got to get past your obstacles and the therapist has to provide the means to do so.
Hi.
My name is Tony 46yrs living in Nairobi Kenya .
I have been married for 10yrs
I have a BIG problem.
I have been brought up is a strong catholic family.
Since i was a child, i have never seen any conflict between my health parents, now over 70. They taught us how important the family institution is and how much commitment it needs. I am a faithful, honest, patient husband.
My wife is 41 yrs.
She just touches lightly on what a challenged childhood she had.
In her entire family of 6 girls and 1 boy, she was out rightly neglected by her parents.
Her mother is so strong that the late father had no room to lead the family. There were many arguments and the dad opted to live in town and visit on weekends only, many arguments erupting. She knew her dad had other friends out of marriage.
After high school she became a nun, but found a hostile religious hierarchy full of infidelity. She opted out after 7 years.
Her first boyfriend committed suicide under unclear circumstances she does not care to explain.
I met her in 1999 at my insuring firm.
Because of her big headed nature, she was dismissed from her secretarial job she had.
Since her mother who supported the entire family by farming refused to support her, I payed for her Administration diploma.
We got married in 2002.
Slowly i started to see her rebellious nature in almost everything.
She fell out with my family and blamed them.
She mismanaged our first bakery business I had started 6 years earlier by disrupting the spirits and team work of the employees who stole and run down the business.
We are on the second one with 2 silent partners (a couple) importing house hold items. She had no time to keep records. We are all working elsewhere and since we don’t report there, we have no right to Question her operations.
Last year I found out she had a lover, he impressed her with all the lovely word and gift and slept with him in 2 week courting. I found text and mail as she tried to chase him as she could not read between the lines that he is a womanizer who had no time for a any woman after sex.
She has threatened with suicide 3 times,
I would like to keep my family.
I do not know how to reach her. Any time I advice her, she fight back thinking I am undermining her intelligence.
Our mental abilities are obtuse. I am studying my PHD in Art and Design lecture in a local university, She barely made the Diploma.
We have started canceling sessions that have a standard pattern.
I think the canceler need to know our history to tailor make our sessions.
Can you Help.
Regards.
It’s not only you that your wife doesn’t value, but herself. She didn’t experience enough love growing up to really know what love is. The first thing your wife needs is to learn to love herself. When she does, she will not engage in self-defeating behaviors as she is doing now. To get to that place, she needs counseling. I am very concerned because of the suicide. If the counselor you are seeing is not qualified, search carefully for another one. You must get someone highly competent in the area of childhood trauma. Please don’t wait! This is very serious.
The unknown factor here is your wife and her feelings. It seems to me that you and she lost communication a long time ago. When you say she is not the person you married, that sends up a red flag for me. It says you didn’t really know her when you married. We all have a great deal of depth. We can’t know someone thoroughly very easily. But you may have known a great deal less than you thought you did. My solution would have been to get to know her when you were in Germany and first noticed a problem. Right now she may not believe you care to know her, and that is a shame. See, she probably had the affair because this other person made her feel like he was interested in who she was. Although your post is long, there’s a lot missing–her side. Until I would hear that, I can’t answer you.