03/02/2018
What Is Couple’s Therapy?
When I was studying to be a counselor, I took the required class in couple’s counseling. My instructor, Don, a cigar-smoking, good ol’ boy, introduced the class by sharing a startling statistic: the success rate of couple’s therapy was forty percent!
I sat back in my cheap plastic seat. That meant that sixty percent of couples who tried counseling failed! I immediately began to wonder why.
As the class proceeded, I found out. Success in this traditional model involved keeping the couple together, at all costs. Divorce equaled failure.
In the Integrative work I do, I have discovered that it’s more complicated. There are more layers, and success is measured less by resuscitating a marriage no-matter-what than by the quality of the communication each individual practices. Couple’s counseling is about teaching both members of a union to speak the highest truth, to themselves, and each other.
When a couple begins a relationship - and it usually commences with the “I agree to be faithful to you” conversation - they meet at the doorway to the union dragging two enormous metaphorical suitcases. These suitcases contain all the so-called “truth” they carry about what it means to be coupled. Much of this information was modeled by their parents, for better or worse. Much of it came from our culture, with all the attendant illusion and confusion.
As they begin settling in with each other, each opens the suitcases, and begins unpacking. They hold up to themselves those ideas about connection they brought with them:
“Honey, does this still fit me?” He hopefully raises the nylon, paisley shirt with the huge lapels, a throw-back from the sixties.
She replies carefully, “Umm, maybe that style is out of fashion now?” His face falls, and he regretfully puts it aside.
It’s her turn next. She holds up the fringed leather halter top. “Whataya think?” It’s his turn to be careful…
Thus does the couple begin to empty the suitcases of their perceptions. Though lots of what they bring is valuable and worthy of keeping, much is based on unskillful parental and societal modeling, unrealistic “Hollywood” ideals, and old, tired beliefs. After a period of time - and it’s not uncommon for this unpacking phase to last five to seven years - our erstwhile couple finds the relationship unburdened. What would they now like to carry with them: tolerance, compassion, understanding, joy?
The way I structure counseling for partners is two-tiered. Every relationship is composed of two individuals, both who bring wonderful - and sometimes not-so-wonderful - things to the table. If each is willing to work on his or her stuff, the relationship magically improves!
I first meet with them together, to assess the relationship, a relational diagnosis, thumb on the pulse. The next week, I see them individually. Then, I see them together again. This is a cycle, and we do as many cycles as are needed.
In the individual sessions, I encourage my clients to leave their beloved in the metaphorical waiting room, and allow the session to be completely about their experience. We focus on recurring patterns, unskillful behaviors, and the inaccurate meanings inevitably ascribed to life. Clients begin to see how this unskillful life-style is usually directly related to unfinished business from the past, which centers around unreleased trauma. I teach each trauma-release techniques, and as they begin to heal, they see more clearly that the things that were “wrong” in the relationship - the arguments, the resentments, the bitterness, even the contempt - were all powerful opportunities to grow and evolve. They learn to view each interaction as an opportunity to learn something about themselves.
In the couple’s sessions, we focus on the relationship itself, the third entity created when these two powerful people came together. Here we concentrate on communication skill-building - especially listening - graceful conflict management, the fine art of agreements, and forgiveness. As the couple builds skill, the trust begins to grow anew. As the trust builds, so does the intimacy, the ultimate destination.
If done skillfully, relationship is a port in the storm, a sanctuary from the pain and violence of the world. It is a place where we can be safe and authentic, a charging dock that powers our batteries, and supports perseverance and courage so we once again have the strength to face our lives.
My “success rate,” as defined by Professor Don, is a bit higher than forty percent. I would estimate it at closer to seventy-five percent. It still means that twenty-five percent of the couples that come to see me end up divorcing. Is that failure?
Perhaps they made the fatal error of waiting too long, and the resentments that were building up turned the corrosive corner to contempt. This is when negativity morphs from “what-she does,” to “who-she-is.” In my experience, once that bulkhead is broached, it is extremely difficult to right the ship again. The list is mortal; abandon ship.
Or, perhaps the couple has learned all they can from each other. Relationship itself is a vehicle for evolution. People are drawn together for a number of reasons: physical attraction, companionship, procreation. But there is another, rarely-acknowledged force at work here: we are compelled and drawn toward that perfect person who embodies the exact right combination of quirks, warts, and beauty designed to teach us what we need to learn about ourselves. There are few accidents in the selection of a partner; the part of us that chooses is too smart.
Couples come together, strain and stress, fight and fume, argue and bicker, putting each other through a forging process, where rough ore becomes pure steel. If a couple exits this formative process, and find that the love has also been burned away along with the slag, perhaps it’s time to end the relationship. They can finish amicably, grateful for the lessons learned.
Perhaps, one or both simply isn’t ready for the lessons relationship has for them. People, it seems, have to figure out who they are not before they can begin to learn who they are. This painful, often destructive path is the amendment of the rocky soil of our gardens, the careful addition of lots of f***l matter, the digging, the turning over of buried old beliefs, exposing them to the warming sunlight of truth. This is the careful, albeit unconscious cultivation of connection, trust, safety, and, ultimately, joy! After all, we are all becoming.
Perhaps the best couple’s counseling is about alchemy. Where the sages and philosophers of old attempted fruitlessly to turn lead into gold, we who work with struggling couples are teaching them to turn blame and criticism into feedback, conflict into possibility, despair into hope, and fear into love.
