In Search of Lost Time: Marriage Therapy

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April 21, 2005

Marriage Therapy

Married With Problems? Therapy May Not Help
By SUSAN GILBERT, New York Times
Published: April 19, 2005

In the last few years, efforts to find ways to save more marriages and other long-term relationships have increased.

With an experimental approach called integrative behavioral couples therapy, for example, 67 percent of couples significantly improved their relationships for two years, according to a study reported in November to the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy.

Instead of teaching couples how to avoid or solve arguments, as traditional counseling techniques do, the integrative therapy aims to make arguments less hurtful by helping partners accept their differences. It is based on a recent finding that it is not whether a couple fights but how they fight that can destroy a relationship.

Especially encouraging, all of the couples in the study were at high risk of divorce. "Many had been couples therapy failures," said Dr. Andrew Christensen, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles and the lead author of the study.

Some studies indicate that couples who take marriage education classes have a lower divorce rate than couples who do not take the classes.

But Dr. Gottman, who uses marriage education workshops and couples therapy, has found that workshops alone are insufficient for 20 percent to 30 percent of couples in his research. These couples have problems - like a history of infidelity or depression - that can be addressed only in therapy, he said.

Couples therapy, also called marriage counseling and marriage therapy, refers to a number of psychotherapy techniques that aim to help couples understand and overcome conflicts in their relationship.

A relatively new approach that studies have found highly effective is called emotionally focused therapy, with 70 to 73 percent of couples reaching recovery - the point where their satisfaction with their relationship is within normal limits - for up to two years, the length of the studies.

Dr. Johnson, who helped develop emotionally focused therapy in the 1990's, said that it enabled couples to identify and break free of the destructive emotional cycles that they fell into.

"A classic one is that one person criticizes, the other withdraws," she said. "The more I push, the more you withdraw. We talk about how both partners are victims of these cycles."

As the partners reveal their feelings during these cycles, they build trust and strengthen their connection to each other, she said.

Surprisingly, Dr. Johnson said, until emotionally focused therapy came along, therapists were so intent on getting couples to make contracts to change their behavior that they did not delve into the emotional underpinnings of a relationship.

"It was like leaving chicken out of chicken soup," she said.

Dr. Johnson's latest research, completed in January, included 24 of the most at-risk couples, people who were unable to reconcile because their trust in each other had been shattered by extramarital affairs and other serious injuries to their relationship.

"These injuries are like a torpedo," she said. "They take a marriage down."

The study found that after 8 to 12 sessions, a majority of the couples had healed their injuries and rebuilt their trust.

Most important, these gains lasted for three years. "It's very satisfying to know that we can make a difference with these couples and that it sticks," Dr. Johnson said.

Alice, a library program coordinator in Honesdale, Pa., credits her couples therapy, which focused on emotional issues, with getting her and her husband to reunite after a yearlong separation.

"The marriage counselor brought us back together," she said.

Alice, who did not want her last name used out of privacy concerns, said an important catalyst for their reunion was the therapist's asking each to think about the ways that the other person wanted to feel appreciated and loved. Gradually, she said, she has come to see that her husband's needs were different from her own.

"Going back to this exercise is one thing that has gotten us through hard times," she said.

But not all marriages are salvageable, therapists say. "Some people are fundamentally mismatched, and they can't benefit from therapy," Dr. Gottman said.

Others - beyond the scope of couples therapy or marriage education programs - are people with personality disorders and relationships marred by violence and intimidation.

"We have nothing to offer them," he said.

Posted by mrl at April 21, 2005 10:50 AM

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In Search of Lost Time

子曰:「人而不仁,如礼何?」人而不仁,如乐何?」Confucius said, "If a man be without benevolence, what has he to do with the rites? If a man be without benevolence, what has he to do with music?" - 《论语》，The Analects 3:3

April 21, 2005

Marriage Therapy

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