It is a trope among some folks, (Some of which are MRAs, so take that for what it’s worth) that marital counseling is often 1) expensive, 2) biased in favor of one partner, and 3) designed not to resolve the marital problems, but rather, to force one partner into compliance with the other’s demands – in other words, the counselor teams up with one partner to create a 2 vs. 1 dynamic so that the outnumbered “defendant” spouse caves in – especially if the counselor is of the same gender as the “plaintiff” spouse (so to speak).
Some of these must be exaggerated horror stories, no doubt, but how often is it that a marriage counselor will be fair and objective, without bias/prejudice?
Therapists, including marriage counselors, are never completely fair and unbiased. All therapists enter into a therapeutic relationship with their own personal biases. The bias that is discussed more frequently than gender bias is bias either toward or against saving the marriage. Every therapist has their own ideas about which marriages can be saved, and which cannot be saved, and about the best way to go about saving a marriage. A therapist biased in favor of saving a marriage will work to resolve conflict, and that might involve helping one partner to see why they should respond to the needs of the other partner (“accept their demands” is already very biased language).
But for MRA types or other people who feel that marriage counseling is unfair – what are they looking for? Do they want to end their marriage, or do they just want a marriage counselor who will tell their spouse to meet their needs (which would be the opposite bias)? There isn’t some magic third way to resolve conflict.
Given our little MRA in the Pit, I wouldn’t take their complaining too seriously.
I went through counselling with my then-wife years ago. It would have been useful if she hadn’t been so BPD.
For example, one of the things she liked to claim was that since I was seriously abused as a child, that I was going to be an abuser. (I told her that if she honestly thought this, she should not be with me.) One day she said that in front of our therapist and he kind of went off on her (not harshly), telling her that this was a form of abuse and she needed to stop doing it.
We got halfway home and she spat it in my face. I locked up the brakes and told her that if she ever said it again, we were done, and if she didn’t like it, get the fuck out of my car right now and I’ll go home and pack (we were already living together).
Then of course, she never said it to me again, but made sure it was part of her ‘story’ against me in the separation and divorce.
For me, it was helpful. For someone who doesn’t want to listen or isn’t capable of accepting responsibilities for their own actions, it won’t do any good. Unfortunately, that can’t be just one party, it has to be BOTH.
My address to the OP:
- It was free. Provided by work.
- Oh yes.
- Completely my experience.
We ended the counselling after 3 or 4 sessions because I wasn’t being the lapdog I was supposed to be.
I have no recent experience with it, but there’s an obvious pitfall in that if you put a manipulative person in that setting, that person will unsurprisingly manipulate the process to their own advantage. I’m sure there are grains of truth embedded in the MRA tropes having to do with that, but I’m also sure that the complaint itself is part of an agenda - they would not be as interested in hearing about manipulative men, for example, thwarting any efforts. But couples counseling does seem to me to be an attempt at neutral ground and a neutral process; you’re going to get out of it as much as two people, as a team, are willing to put into it.
I went to a counselor to check if there was anything in my behavior or expectations that I needed to change. I can’t see that there would be any other possible use.
Everything good you have heard about marriage counsellors is true for some. Everything bad you have hear about marriage counsellors is true for some.
Good marriage counsellors sniff out power imbalances, manipulation, etc. Bad ones don’t.
Good marriage counsellors provide clients with tools that help them improve their thought processes and actions. Bad ones don’t.
Some clients can change. Some can’t.
This. Apparently, some people pay money to therapists and then get pissed off when the therapist tells them they have to do things differently. My husband deals with this a lot. He’s not a marriage counselor but he works with kids, and the majority of the time, people just dump their kids in front of him and say, ‘‘Fix it.’’ But they don’t want to change themselves and they don’t want to accept that their behavior is at the root of the kids’ problems, or in the very least, exacerbating them. This includes some forking ridiculous relationship dynamics between parents.
This isn’t to undermine anyone’s legitimately bad experience with marital counseling. Sometimes counselors are just shitty. But I think in situations like that, deep down, everyone is hoping the therapist is going to look at their partner and say, ‘‘Oh, this is all your fault.’’ Well, it doesn’t work that way.
By the time most people are so at odds that they are filing for divorce it’s kind of late for any counseling to have much impact or be a solution. In my area the local divorce attorneys were very familiar with the various marital counselors and could almost predict with perfect accuracy what the outcome of a counseling session would be and that for clients desiring a certain outcome they would point them at a specific counselor for that purpose. This is not to say that they counselors were completely corrupt or incompetent individually but it did seem to have the whole feel of a sort sort-of kind-of scam.
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Long ago when my marriage was foundering we went to maybe four or five different counselors. Upshot: therapists usually like me because I’m really good at talking in an interesting way about psychological issues. But they don’t help me. They don’t know what to do with my husband because when he is under emotional stress he stops being able to formulate useful thoughts, much less express anything with words. So: we got nowhere at all.
Then we tried something called Non-Violent Communication, which is a … thing, movement, organization. It doesn’t use any new concepts, just sets some rules about how you can talk, and rules for listening.
We’re still married, and that’s why.
One source of marriage counseling is religious organizations: you can go to a pastor / priest /rabbi… for marriage counseling, and it will be for free (if it isn’t, get the hell out of there). Will it be biased? Yes, since human beings are involved. But neither more nor less than any other type of counselor, and simply knowing which church (or equivalent) you’re dealing with tells you a lot about which biases are you more likely to encounter.
I am certain that, given an experienced, skillful counselor, improvements could be achieved in most relationships between intelligent, well balanced adults.
However, as in most things, Sturgeon’s Law applies. More often than not either the counselor will be crap, or one or both adults will act like they are not adults, or both will be true. So the odds are against success and it is only human nature to come up with a story about why it failed that largely blames the therapist.
My experience was that my wife, becoming shaky, started going to church. I didn’t. She later suggested her pastor as a marriage counselor, and I agreed. The pastor took my side. She left anyway. The pastor and I became good friends, and years later, he officiated my next marriage.
I thought this thread was going to be about a new business venture - Fox Marriage Counseling.
Aren’t there online ratings for marriage counselors? (although dissatisfied customers could well mount a campaign to “bias” the ratings).
I’m going to posit that a large number of persons seeking such help, go in with an agenda. Hoping to ‘fix’ the other. But life isn’t like that, and when the outcome isn’t entirely one sided, for their agenda, they claim bias.
Lots of people leave and dismiss therapy after an experience where it didn’t go how they thought it ought to. (Partner is 100% wrong, I’m 100% right!)
When anyone tells you their therapist is crap, etc, you should just assume you’re NOT getting an unbiased story, in my most humble opinion. Lots of people go in wanting everything their partners claim challenged but will not tolerate any of their stances being challenged in any way.
If we’re being honest, therapy fails for lots of people because they are not really prepared to be honest about their own part in things. We all know people like this. They aren’t suddenly different at the therapist’s office, I suspect.
I’m amused that people think they, with their vested interest in their and their partners’ behaviors, would be unbiased reporters about a therapist’s bias.
It’s like asking a politician if a newspaper is fair about them.
I’ve never personally been to marriage counseling. But from what I’ve read & heard over the years, my impression is that marriage counselors tend to be “biased” in favor of whoever is complaining about things. Because their role is to address and “fix” those complaints.
So if you have two sides who are equally “at fault” in a marriage, in that each are equally selfish/self-centered, and/or have roughly comparable hangups and issues, but one side is inclined to suck it up and tolerate things (or possibly just skeptical of marriage counselors) and the other wants it fixed or they’re outta here and is the one dragging the couple to the marriage counselor, then the counselor is inevitably going to focus on the issues that the other is raising. This will put the onus to improve on the first side, and if/when they fail to do it, it will be their fault that the marriage failed.
Anyone know “the stats” wrt marriage counseling?
I’ve never been, but every couple I know who has gone through it has then divorced.
I can only speak to my own experience but I have found marriage counseling to be very helpful and the counselor work very hard to be unbiased.
Ours may have been a slightly unusual situation in that we came into counseling with a quite strong marriage, but had some issues in dealing with my wife’s experience with past abuse that were affecting our marriage and we wanted assistance in sorting out. We worked together to figure out how I could better give her the support she needed without feeling overwhelmed.
When we did bring up specific kerfuffles he would steadfastly refuse to make a judgement as to who was right or wrong and instead would simply work with us to understand what the other really needed and reach a compromise that we both could live with. Since our commitment to each other was stronger than any individual kerfuffle, and there was no real animosity between us this worked.
However, I could imagine in a situation where there were very strong zero sum antagonistic feelings this approach may not have worked.
I can’t speak on the success/failure rate of marriage counselling, for I usually only see the failures, but I can say that joint counselling in anticipation of or following separation often can help parents deal with parenting issues rather than chew on each other’s shins and shit on their children.