Shaublog

William Doherty is a nationally recognized authority in marital therapy who has written a host of really helpful books – my favorite being Take Back Your Marriage.  Doherty came to speak to the annual conference of the Washington Association of Marriage and Family Therapy on 3/3 and introduced a room full of raptly attentive marital therapists to Discernment Counseling.  “How do we deal with the couple,” Doherty asks, “where one partner is leaning into the marriage and the other is leaning out?”  To attempt conventional marital therapy in such situations is an invitation to disappointment on everyone’s part.  So Doherty has devised a powerful approach in which he works mostly separately with each partner.  The referral often comes from divorce lawyers and in situations in which the “leaning out” partner is feeling done, but is willing to at least speak to someone because some ambivalence (if even ever-so-slight) remains.  The partners agree that divorce will be off the table for six months as they work to see if reconciliation is even possible.  The benefit of this kind of work is that that therapist can have open and very candid conversations with each person about the consequences of divorce; their own role in bringing the marriage to its current state and whether each is willing to make an all out effort to see if the marriage can be brought back.  Studies have shown that of divorcing couples, fully 30% have at least one partner who is ambivalent and in 10%, both parties are.  For more information, you can check out Doherty’s Couples on the Brink website.

John Gottman has observed that, on average, couples come in for counseling after they have been experiencing serious problems in their relationship for 6 years.  That means that when you sit in that client’s chair for the first time, you probably will be feeling angry, hurt and hopeless.  You will probably feel blamed by your partner.  You may be trying desperately to save your relationship – or you may be almost out the door and have agreed to give this one more shot.  You might have had a horrible fight recently that leaves both partners exhausted and wounded.  So now I’m going to share a prejudice of mine: People who seek the help of a therapist for couples work should see someone who is specifically trained to work with couples.  A therapist who is really good at working with individuals, may not be so helpful with couples.  Teaching communication skills can be very useful, for sure, but every couple brings with them a rich and complex dynamic.  It is this dynamic (or system….or cycle) that a therapist needs to understand and touch.  When we are stressed in our relationship we already feel alone and isolated.  Working with couples from an individual perspective only strengthens this sense of isolation, I think.  There are a number of wonderful ways to think about, and work with, couples in distress.  Many like Susan Johnson’s Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy.  Others develop an expertise in John Gottman’s approach.  Still others use Brent Atkinson’s Emotionally Intelligent Couples Therapy approach, or Dan Wile’s Collaborative Couples Therapy.  I prefer Johnson’s work, spiced by the work of these other exceptional and gifted people.  There are certainly more kinds of couples therapy out there.  My suggestion is that whoever you work with, make sure they have specific training and focus in an approach to couples therapy.

Heard a great story on NPR this morning on parenting teens.