Counselors Can Help Troubled Marriages

In the 1970s and 1980s, Doherty used the neutral approach. But as he treated more couples, and as he continued treating individuals who remarried and raised stepchildren, he noticed the individuals who’d chosen divorce weren’t necessarily happier.     

“I wasn’t seeing many of these good divorces that people write about,” he said.       

Also, research began to show that the thinking which prevailed during the 1970s, that divorce didn’t carry long-term consequences for children, was misguided.      

A marital therapist’s role should be “a holder of hope,” sometimes even when the couple has none, Doherty said. They should have a master’s or doctorate, a license and a minimum of two years supervised clinical experience in family therapy. (About 80 percent of private practice therapists in the United States say they offer marital therapy, but most do not have the same rigorous training as therapists who specialized in the field, Doherty said. Instead, they are individual therapists who picked up training “on the side” at workshops.)  Marital therapists also must be able to handle two people in a session, one of whom likely doesn’t want to be there. It’s their job to ensure the session isn’t consumed by conflict; it’s rather like chairing a meeting.       

At any point one spouse may abruptly quit therapy. To avoid this, Doherty tries to get couples to agree at the start to postpone a decision about their marriage until after a specified course of therapy.       

He tries to schedule one-on-one sessions with ambivalent spouses to point out how their own flaws, not just their spouse’s, have contributed to the marriage’s decline, or he might talk about divorce’s impact on children, if the couple has them. Using techniques like these, he tries to keep the couple coming back.       

Doherty said he tries to help couples achieve a marriage that, by their own standards, is good enough. Sometimes people must make compromises to stay married, such as maintaining an affectionate relationship with the spouse but turning to a friend for heart-to-heart communication.      

 “We can either make that (compromise) a tragedy, a settling for less than all you could have in life, or you can approach it with: This can be a reasonable decision that people make,” he said. “It’s not necessarily selling yourself out to accept some limitations and weaknesses in your marriage, as long as they are not the kinds of things that really diminish you as a person.”      

There are certainly reasons to divorce, Doherty said. Domestic violence, chronic infidelity, or drug or alcohol abuse are all reasons to leave a marriage. Also, sometimes one partner simply wants a divorce and cannot be persuaded to stay.