7 Reasons Why Marriage Counseling May Not Be Working

 By: Brian Murray, LMHC, NCC

Couples go to relationship or marriage counseling to resolve problems to improve their relationship with each other. A host of problems can arise during a marriage anywhere from poor communication to infidelity. Marriage and a committed relationship require dedication and at times can be hard work for the relationship to feel good.

However, sometimes relationships can be painful leading to a sense of dissatisfaction. Counseling can be helpful for clients who are facing divorce. But helpful does not always equal success. If the counseling office is the last-ditch effort to save the marriage, then counseling can feel like it’s already at a loss before it even begins. This can put a lot of pressure on the counselor who is faced with a difficult position to help save a failing marriage. If counseling does not work, then it’s divorce.  

Couples who went to counseling on the way to divorce court frequently feel like counseling was a failure because it didn’t save their marriage. Another common outcome is that the couple decided to give up on trying and have a sub-satisfactory marriage. Ongoing unmet needs often lead to resentment, anger, chronic anxiety, and depression. This can be especially problematic with Christian couples as the thought of divorce is worse than staying unhappily married.

So, what happened and what went wrong when it came to counseling? How did it fail, or did it? Many couples basically wait until it’s too late to get the help they need. If you are married and think counseling is the last hope you have before the divorce attorney, you may want to rethink your approach and reasons for counseling. Getting help soon before it’s too late is a very wise statement.

Waiting too long to get counseling can like asking a counselor to perform a marriage saving trick. It’s nearly impossible. Many couples seek counseling expecting a miracle that will somehow pop them out of their miserable experience. There is an enormous number of complex dynamics that has led anyone to a therapist’s office, even more with couples, often going back to childhood, integration of family systems, conflict types, attachment types, love languages and the list goes on. Then we have how all these things play out and get communicated as needs within the marriage dynamic. This is not quick fix stuff.

Unfolding this complex information and finding the dysfunctional dynamics of how two people are negatively interacting with each other is a daunting task. It can take multiple sessions just to figure out exactly what is going on. By this time, the couple has lost their patience and decide to move on one way or the other.

The couple leaves therapy dissatisfied or worse headed for the divorce attorney. What is next? Deconstructing therapy failure can be helpful for the counselor to go back and review what happened to a client who suddenly dropped out of therapy. It can also be helpful for the client to review the process as well. Was it the counselor? Was it the couple? What happened? Below is a list of reasons why sometimes marriage and relationship counseling doesn’t work.

1.      Trying to change your spouse: This is the biggest one on the list. Couples report for marriage counseling and try to get the other person to change. Just like physics that follows a set of laws and properties, relationally you cannot change another person. Only a person can change themselves. What happens is a spouse says “I’ll only be happy if.” What effectively just happened is the unhappy spouse just made themselves a slave their spouse’s willingness to change. What we are challenged to do is change ourselves to adjust to what we are faced with.

2.     You are the problem: Sometimes a partner in a relationship tries to label the other as the problem and doesn't bother to look at themselves. Ask yourself this, who in the relationship is the change agent? A change agent is the person who owns the problem and responsible for change. Yes, sometimes it is the other person, and they need to realize that but it could also be you. Find out your part in the dysfunction and work on getting it solved.

3.     Playing the victim: A person who plays victim plays the rescuer and fixer first. What happens is a drama triangle by a spouse trying to rescue, fix or control the other. When these efforts fail then the fixer/rescuer/controller spouse plays victim blaming the other for why things aren’t working.

4.    Unwilling to do the homework: Strategies and interventions are provided by the therapist in session to help the couple make improvements. It’s up to the couple to actually use them. Often what happens is the couple will leave the session with a few strategies and never use them. There are varying reasons for this with the most common feeling is resentment toward the other and unwilling to make things work.

5.     Working on the wrong problem: This can be equally blamed on the therapist. A couple comes in for counseling and are afraid to talk about what is really going on. Also, a therapist is not a mind reader and doesn’t identify a deeper issue or gets off track with the couple. For example, it’s really easy for an inexperienced counselor to get deceived by a high functioning narcissist. Regardless, the real problem isn’t introduced which results in the entire counseling process being manipulated.

6.   Waited too long to get therapy: This is another big issue. Many couples wait until divorce is imminent before getting help. Problems rarely happen overnight, and problems rarely get solved overnight. Problems can be years in the making and a pit-stop to the counselor’s office before the divorce attorney’s office isn’t going to produce much. Usually this is an act of desperation for the couple. And while most therapists will dive right in trying to save the marriage, it is quite possible the gravity of the problem is too large to be solved in a short amount of time.

7.    Unmet expectations in counseling: Simply put, the client went to counseling expecting one thing, got another and then left the counseling experience dissatisfied. It’s very important that the client/therapist work together in the first session to establish expectations and goals in order to identify what obstacles to work on. This collaboration is a profession standard and considered to be one of the hallmark traits of success in counseling. Otherwise, the client can feel like they are drifting through counseling and going nowhere.

Success in couples counseling is time sensitive and needs to be focused. It needs to be the right time, in the right place, working on the right problem while being given the appropriate amount of time for problems to get resolved. This is a blanket description of which all other problems will fall such as asking for what you want, need and desire from each other. When these things are asked, it’s important to give the other person enough time to respond which sometimes take months. Not everyone moves at the same speed and it takes some time to figure out how to change a habit and provide for the request. Be patient and understand the expectation of your time frames won’t always match. 

Most importantly is to remember this, you cannot change another person. It is quite possible this is the biggest single thing that can save your marriage. You can ask for what you want, but it’s up to them to give it. Hopefully, they love you enough and want to provide you with what you need. And hopefully they provide what you need from internal desire not from a position of obligation or guilt. Love is an action verb and requires movement. Communicate and provide needs for each other. The end game in couples counseling is to have mutual satisfaction with each other. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but good enough can go a long way to have a good and happy marriage. 

 

To schedule an appointment with Brian Murray,
Please call our office at 407-647-7005.
www.lifeworksgroup.org