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Author Topic: Marriage Counseling - Does it Work?  (Read 471 times)
dealingwithit
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« on: November 13, 2015, 12:04:53 AM »

I was a little concerned about how the counselor would handle our session today, but it seemed o.k.

My husband mentioned to the counselor that our last counselor thought he had a personality disorder and could not be fixed. She advised him that 25% of people with a personality disorder respond to treatment. She also told him physical altercations were unacceptable and he needed to get another therapist to help him treat his anger problem since he was out of control (not sure he will). My husband is high-functioning and very intelligent, it is difficult for him to admit he is wrong.

We've been married 21 years, he agreed to go with me since physically attacking me after I told him I didn't like a text he received  I told him we were going to counseling because I knew I would leave if he keeps this up. She said we were in the "Misery" stage of our marriage. (I thought to myself - Misery stage has been most of mine. Laugh out loud (click to insert in post)) Have you heard of that before?

I was wondering what others' experiences were in regard to marital counseling?
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RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM SOLVING
This is a high level discussion board for solving ongoing, day-to-day relationship conflicts. Members are welcomed to express frustration but must seek constructive solutions to problems. This is not a place for relationship "stay" or "leave" discussions. Please read the specific guidelines for this group.

waverider
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« Reply #1 on: November 13, 2015, 06:40:29 AM »

I haven't any personal experience of MC, but from what we see on the boards often is that it often turns into a distracting mud slinging match. Mainly because pwBPD feel under attack and hence go into a deny and buck pass at all costs.

MC works on the basis both parties are open to honesty and fair negotiations. Put on the spot pwBPD struggle to attain that level of acceptance of the others needs. The result is too much smoke blown around.

A pwBPD who is fully committed to recovery and attends appropriate therapy stands a good chance of at least getting to a stage where it does not overly impair their life. However, the big issue is getting to that committed stage is that hard part.
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  Reality is shared and open to debate, feelings are individual and real
TheRealJongoBong
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« Reply #2 on: November 13, 2015, 08:54:57 AM »

Most of my experiences with marital counseling have been neutral to negative. It always seemed that the counselor's main messages were "you two would get along better if you just got along" and "if you just think happy thoughts all the time you'll be happy." They also seemed to go to great lengths to treat both of us as model human beings with just a little communication trouble.

That being said, it could very well be that my experiences were colored by my psyche, because I've always had a hard time opening up and trusting people. This last part is especially difficult because the BPD-non relationship seems to breed distrust on both sides.  The emotional abuse in my relationship and the physical abuse in yours are prime examples.

I am currently in counseling with my wife again, with a different counselor. I'm more optimistic this time because my wife is actually opening up a little more and has said that this time feels different, that it's the first time she's been able to see how she's been making up stories and blaming others for how she feels. From my point of view that is a big change because in the past she was two different people in and out of counseling sessions. I'm being more open too and have seen how my attachment style feeds into her fears of engulfment and abandonment.

One more important aspect is that our present counselor is very focused and does a much better job of keeping us on task than other counselors did. He seems to be able to dig into key issues instead of just trying to cover everything in "happy duct tape". He also recognizes and lets each of us recognize that we are not perfect, and that understanding ourselves is as important as understanding our relationship.

So the MC process is very complicated. You need to find a good counselor which isn't easy. You need to have a spouse who is actually committed to improving themselves and the marriage. You need to have yourself actually committed to improving yourself and the marriage. 
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goateeki
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« Reply #3 on: November 13, 2015, 09:23:17 AM »

I've been told that MC works very well if both parties are engaged and want to actually have a marriage, but if one or both parties are ambivalent or do not want a marriage and just don't have the guts to admit it, then it's a really stressful and pointless experience. 

My ex wife was diagnosed with BPD and Complex PTSD.  She has had a horrible life and for many years, our marriage was the bright spot in it, but she has a bias toward feelings and behaviors that just do not make for a productive marriage.  The marriage began its six month collapse when I told her that I had to be treated like she wanted me in her life and was happy and proud to me married to me, rather than behaving always like she merely tolerated me. This, to her, was a signal that I was packing my bags, when the opposite was true. I wanted a closer, happier marriage.

What followed was six months of her excoriating me every Wednesday evening, for every real and imagined slight over a 20+ year period.  Much of what she screamed at me about (and yes, it was screaming, that's not an exaggeration) were things that either did not actually happen or happened but, because I interpreted the events in a benign way, had been forgotten.  At one point she told me that she was still angry at me for driving a mutual female friend home 16 or 17 years ago, and that she believed to that day that I had slept with her.

I put a hard six month time period on MC, because in my view and that of my own therapist, six months was more than enough time for someone to get settled and start working in MC.  He pointed out that even if there were infidelity (and there was not, ever), a somewhat emotionally healthy person would be settled at no later than five months and be working if that person actually wanted the marriage.

I pulled the plug at six months and divorced her.  This wasn't easy because we have two young kids.  She was utterly shocked.  I don't see how she could have been, given her behavior in MC.  The way she behaved toward me in MC was not what I'd tolerate in anyone, much less a person who'd pledged to love and cherish me.  Even if she'd come crawling back to me on her knees after that (and she has, a few times, in her own vague, passive aggressive way), I'd never again run the risk of being in an intimate relationship with her.  My belief is that even if she'd gone through ten years of successful therapy, the minute she hit some kind of setback, she would turn on me.  And there are many setbacks ahead: our daughter will be a teenager in a few years, our son is not the healthiest kid on the planet, and my ex wife will be entering menopause in less than five years.  I do not want to be in striking distance, plain and simple.

For me, MC helped me see my ex wife in action in a way I hadn't before, and helped me to realize that we were engaged in a fruitless effort.  My only advice would be to place a time limit on your efforts, as, as my T said to me, "a reasonably intelligent person can play the MC game forever."
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Icthelight
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« Reply #4 on: November 13, 2015, 10:06:55 AM »

Most of my experiences with marital counseling have been neutral to negative.

My experience has been similar. My experience is that my wife agrees to go thinking that I will get "fixed." The moment the counselor implies that she has some fixing as well, she drops out. This has happened with me and when she attended a few sessions with my teenage daughter. She will not accept that she contributes heavily to our issues.


I'm more optimistic this time because my wife is actually opening up a little more and has said that this time feels different, that it's the first time she's been able to see how she's been making up stories and blaming others for how she feels.

This is encouraging. What do you believe prompted the change in her thinking?
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TheRealJongoBong
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« Reply #5 on: November 13, 2015, 12:43:39 PM »

This is encouraging. What do you believe prompted the change in her thinking?

I think the break point was when she got herself locked up for mental evaluation and they put her on low dose antipsychotics. It was the first time ever that I heard her say that she recognized some of her thinking was wrong.
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NotThatGuy

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« Reply #6 on: November 27, 2015, 05:00:03 PM »

I haven't heard of the "misery" stage, but I do think marital counselling can be valuable, if both people are willing to work hard, and the therapist doesn't whitewash the problems.  

We've been doing counselling together for a couple of months with the therapist who'd previously been seeing me.  We've both got considerable "narrative burden" in telling the whole sordid story of how we got here, I knew my therapist was willing to push me and call me on my BS when needed, and my wife had already met her for a couple of "this is what we're dealing with" sessions which she had found helpful.  My wife was also very engaged with the need for therapy, though she still pulls back sometimes from whats required.  "You're expecting me to be the one to make all the changes!  You say everything is all my fault!" is still where she goes when she's feeling insecure. But our therapist is very good at challenging my wife's distorted beliefs without arguing with her as well as keeping me accountable for my part in things.  

Sounds like your husband is pretty engaged, which is great.  He might have scared himself by attacking you and, if so, that's a good thing.  Lots of guys who'll get violent with their partners don't really have it in them to back down-- once the pattern is established, it tends to get worse.  (If you haven't read "Why does he do that?", it's worth a go.)  But if your partner really gets that he did something beyond the pale, then he might have the incentive he needs to follow through on therapy.  
<br/>:)on't hold yourself back too much, though.  Therapy isn't going to work if it doesn't work for *both* of you, and if he's going to blow up when you communicate your feelings, then that's something you should probably know, and he should probably work on.  

Hope it keeps going well!
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. . . and though scary is exciting, nice is different than good.
joel6242
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« Reply #7 on: November 29, 2015, 10:46:37 AM »

I think that couples counseling was the start of my salvation. My exBPD only went twice, I read your post and can identify. I did go back to the therapist several times after this. He went through my last recycle. My therapist told me my exBPD had BPD but I still did not get it and let him back in my life. That decision to let him back in my life was the beginning of the end. My therapist called him the Tasmanian Devil, I never got what he was saying. To make a long story short, we both need individual help.
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maxsterling
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« Reply #8 on: December 02, 2015, 12:25:58 PM »

My wife and I started MC before we were married.  Originally, it was the only way she could see a T in any capacity due to her lack of insurance.

W insisted we see a woman counselor, and that I do the work of finding one.  After 3 sessions, W declared the counselor had a crush on me and always too my side, so I instructed W to find a different counselor. 

With the new counselor, I would say that 10% of our sessions have been constructive, 20% destructive, and the rest basically a neutral - mainly a forum for W to have a place to vent.  The MC is well aware of Ws mental illness, and spends most of every session gently talking with W about ways she can help herself.  I'm okay with this, because I understand (and I think the MC does, too) that we really can't work on couples issues so long as W is having here severe depression and suicide ideation.  In a few sessions, W outright abused me, called me names, insulted me, and threatened me.  On a few occasions, I walked out.

My feeling here is that with a highly trained and patient MC, and the pwBPD having an individual T, some progress can be made.  If you expect MC to be a forum for constructive resolution of issues, I can almost guarantee you will be disappointed.
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BorisAcusio
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« Reply #9 on: July 25, 2016, 08:50:27 AM »

... .a relationship can be repaired with counseling and a lot of work.

To summarize, after taking a hard look at relapse rates, our current best estimate is that for about 35% of couples, marital therapy is effective in terms of clinically significant, immediate changes, but that after year about 30 to 50% of lucky couples who made the initial games relapse. This means that we all can claim is that in the best studies, conducted in universities with careful supervision, only between 11-18% of couples maintain clinically meaningful initial gains when treated with our best marital therapies.
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« Reply #10 on: July 25, 2016, 09:04:24 AM »

Those are staggering (bad) numbers. Wow. Gottmann is certainly a credible source.

My take home is to choose your therapist carefully. I haven't read the book but I'd assume there have been advances since 1999 considering all the work that Gottmann has done. I'd also assume that there are a lot of "old school" therapists out there.

This is interesting - that behavioral intervention was more effective than active listening (not that anyone has to pick one). While written for professionals, this looks like a good read... .thanks.

There is a superbly conducted study by the Munich group, Hahlweg, Schindler, Ravensdorf, and Brengelmann (1984). They followed gurneys method precisely, comparing his active listening with the behavioral treatment that combined behavior exchange plus problem solving training. To their credit they also used observational methods, and they had follow-ups at six months and a year. They reported that in the short term:

  • Active listening show decreases negative interactions with no increases in positive interactions

  • Behavioral intervention showed both decreases negativity and increases in positivity.

... .the typical couple in the behavior group scored within the “happy” ranges of marital quality whereas a typical couple in the active listening group was within the “unhappy” range.
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