I’ve seen marriage counseling mentioned in quite a few relationship threads. I don’t have experience with marriage counseling, but I have the feeling that once a couple gets to the point where they’ve started to despise one another, things are more or less irredeemable. That passionate “I’d do anything for you!” love is gone and both partners just seem consumed by bitterness. But couples, from what I can gather, often don’t consider marriage counseling until they’ve already made it to this point of no return.
In the few cases I’ve heard of couples entering counseling, it hasn’t worked. Has marriage counseling really saved anyone from a breakup? Have any couples been able to regain that passionate love for one another in counseling? Are there any success stories? Right now I’m leaning towards the idea that entering counseling is in and of itself a gesture that you’re willing to try to make things work and that might likely account for any progress that would be otherwise attributed to the counseling. But I’m open to being convinced otherwise.
Anyone have secondhand or, preferably, firsthand experience with marriage counseling?
Well, generally if people are willing to go to counseling I suspect they’re often still sufficiently invested in the relationship to have a fighting chance. Most often what I hear, say, in the “she’s leaving!” threads people post on the Dope, is that one or both partners will not go to counseling.
According to this questionnaire in Cosmo supposedly sourced from two PhDs, marriage counseling will work if your relationship problems are entirely trivial:
I know many married couples that have had their issues, have done counseling, and are still together (and don’t appear to hate each other).
I don’t think you could infer from this that ‘marriage counseling works’, though. Certainly it can be helpful, if the couple really does want to work things out. It can also be helpful in deciding that you would be better off divorced. Counseling and therapy in general is just one tool that can be used for improving things in your life. If you approach it with an actively bad attitude (bitterly despising everything about your spouse qualifies), it usually doesn’t do much to help.
A lot of times marriage counseling is just one of those check-boxes that people check off before leaving a marriage, just so they can say they tried everything to make the marriage work. In that case where the marriage is just about over anyway, marriage counseling is pretty sure not to work.
On the other hand, lots of couples get counseling, and that doesn’t automatically lead to a breakup. So if the couple had counseling, and hasn’t broken up yet, does that count as an instance of where the counseling worked?
And of course, sometimes the proper outcome of counseling is not the preservation of the marriage, but its dissolution. A counsellor shouldn’t advocate that the clients stay together no matter what. Sometimes breaking up is the right thing to do.
Onion story.
I don’t have any experience with it either, but even though that link is supposed to be a joke, I always thought there was a bit of truth in what he was saying.
Any counseling only works if you want it to work and you’re willing to be honest with yourself, and with the other party if it is a joint effort.
If you’re not willing to put in the effort and be honest, then you’re wasting everyone’s time.
In marriage counseling, even if you want to work at it and are honest with each other, it is still only going to work if none of the parties are completely batshit insane. Both parties have to be rational and attempt to be reasonable about solutions.
Before my father went into the administration of social services as a career, he worked as a counselor for Catholic Family Services; worked there for a decade, basically through the 70s.
He switched careers because a study came out that reported what he’d come to suspect from his own experience: That people got better, or worse, or didn’t change with counseling, in the same proportions as those who didn’t get counseling. In other words, the study basically found that counseling was immaterial to outcome. I don’t know what the study was, but there has been academic study of this exact question done before. The field of counseling may have changed over the last 30 years as well.
My hubby’s best friend and his wife had a temporary split, followed by reconciliation, followed by a split, etc. etc. Finally, they went to a marriage counselor, and both of them were committed to the idea of keeping the relationship together and healthy. That was about five years ago, and they’re doing fine.
Before my husband and I married, we both agreed that if either of us ever says “Let’s see a counselor”, the other one is there. But then, we entered marriage with the expectation that we would make it last. Not to say we’d never, ever consider separating, but we would exhaust all of our other options first. We have too much invested, in too many ways, to just give up.
Talking about problems can make you feel better in the moment. It can also empower you to make some changes.
The reality, though, is that very often talking things out soothes the pain temporarily, but it doesn’t cure it. And the changes you make afterward don’t last long, because old habits die hard and acting against one’s fundamental nature is…well, unnatural.
So I’m kind of skeptical on counseling. Not to say that it’s not a good idea to pursue if you’re determined to save a marriage. But I’m a believer that counseling is no substitute for compatibility.
