How happy are you in your marriage? Your answer could be "very" or "not very" depending on when you are asked the question. All spouses go through times in their marriage when everything seems to be going right‑ they are in love and feel terrific about their relationship. But there are other times when they may feel emotionally distant from each other and home becomes a place of misery. Some begin to think of separation and divorce. The goal of this chapter is to offer a framework for looking at problems and doing something about them. What is marriage therapy?
Marriage therapy involves a therapist working with spouses with the goal of helping them to be happier with each other. In some cases the spouses are not sure if they want to stay together, so the goal of working with the spouse or spouses is to help them decide what they want to do. This chapter assumes that you are committed to your partner and that your goal is to learn more about how to improve your relationship. In this chapter, we focus on a behavioral approach to marriage counseling.
What is a behavioral marriage therapy?
The behavioral marriage therapist believes that spouses are unhappy because each is engaging in behavior that upsets the other. The goal of therapy is to identify what each spouse wants the other to do, negotiate an exchange of those behaviors, and begin to engage in the new behaviors. For example, there is something that your partner does which upsets you and you would be happier if your partner stopped this behavior or, better still, replaced it with a behavior that you liked. One wife said that her husband's criticizing her made her upset and that she would be happier if he stopped saying bad things about her and started complimenting her.
Once the partner stops the negative behavior and starts the positive behavior, the spouse begins to feel happier. "I don't feel like I'm walking on eggs around him all the time now that he says only good things about me," she said.
Behavioral Marriage Therapy Is Scientific
Behavioral marriage therapy is scientific in that it is based on two assumptions. As just mentioned, the way you feel about your spouse is based on your spouse's behavior toward you. When your spouse compliments you, is affectionate, and tells you that he or she loves you, you feel good and are happy to be married to your partner. But when your partner criticizes you, doesn't want to touch you, and tells you that he or she hates you, you feel bad and may wish you were not married to your partner.
Second, the behavior you engage in has been learned. If you are an affectionate person and find it easy to touch and show your affection, you most likely learned this by observing your parents being affectionate with each other. If they were not affectionate and you never saw them touch each other, chances are you may not be affectionate either. This method of learning is called modeling. Having observed your parents’ behavior, you tend to do what they did. Of course, there are things your parents did that you may avoid doing. For example, if one of them was a heavy drinker, you may have reverse modeled so that you do not drink at all because of the negative consequences you saw that alcohol had for them.
In addition to modeling, there are other principles of learning that help to explain why we do what we do in marriage. Two of these principles are reward and punishment. The reward principle says that spouses tend to do things they are rewarded for. If you call your spouse when you are going to be late and your spouse thanks you for doing so, you are more likely to call your spouse in the future when you will be late. The point for all of us as spouses is to make sure that we are reinforcing the behaviors we want our spouses to engage in.
If we don't take responsibility for rewarding (“thank you for calling”) the behaviors we want our partners to engage in, it is unrealistic for us to expect them to engage in the behaviors we like. One wife complained that her husband never asked her to go anywhere with him. But the husband said that he used to ask her to go with him when they were first married but since she always made an excuse not to go (translation‑ did not reinforce him for asking her), he stopped asking.
The punishment principle is just the opposite of the reward principle. If you ask your spouse, "How was your day?" and your spouse says, "Don't ask me any questions about my day, I'm tired of talking," and walks into another room, you will soon learn not to ask that question. We don't continue to do things that we are punished for.
Behavioral Marriage Therapy Is Easy to Understand
These two principles of learning help to provide an explanation of why you and your spouse may do certain things and not others. If your spouse doesn't do something that you like, perhaps it is because your spouse has not been rewarded for doing so or has been punished for doing so.
If you don't do something your spouse wants you to do, perhaps it is because your spouse has not rewarded you for doing so or has punished you for doing so. There is nothing mystical about human behavior. In many cases it is simply a function of what has been rewarded or punished or, in other cases, learned through modeling.
And since behavior is learned, it can be changed. So if you and your partner have learned negative ways of relating to each other, you can replace these by learning more positive ways of relating.
Behavioral Marriage Therapy Is Easy to Apply
Later in this chapter we will discuss behavior contracts and how to use them in your relationship. Behavior contracts are useful ways of helping to ensure that you and your partner do what makes the other happy. The other recommendations made throughout the book are also practical and easy to apply. Too much has been made of the word "therapy" so that people have become afraid of it. It is simply a word which suggests help and, in many cases, we can help ourselves.
What marriage therapists do (that you can do for yourself)
The going rate for private marital therapy is $125. What do you get for your money?. There is often a mystery about what happens behind the closed doors of a therapy session in progress. Some of what happens you can do yourself.
- Reaffirm Commitment to Your Relationship
One of the first items a therapist establishes is the goal of the couple seeking therapy. Although some are ambivalent about whether to remain in the marriage, most have already decided that they want to find a way through their current impasse. Commitment to the relationship is important if the relationship is to improve. If the couple does not want the relationship to improve, it won't. - Confront Issues
After confirming that improving your relationship is the goal, the therapist asks, "What would you like to talk about? What are you concerned about today?" and encourages you to talk about what is troubling you and your partner. The goal during this stage of therapy is to identify the source of the bad feelings you are experiencing and to find out if you want to confront the issue.
For example, one woman was trembling with frustration, anger, and emotional pain as a result of having discovered that her husband had been having an affair. She had been married for nine years and had a 2-and-a-half-year-old son. She knew that she was upset about what she had discovered but didn't know if she should look the other way and act as though she was unaware that he was seeing another woman. Although the therapist did not make up her mind for her, he pointed out the consequences of keeping her head in the sand. If she did not confront him, she was giving him the green light to continue. Not only would he be likely to escalate the relationship with the other woman, but he could easily establish a pattern of having other women in his life. If she did not confront the issue now, she might have a larger issue later.
Not all marital problems involve affairs. Other problems include sex, work, money, and a long list of other issues. In making your decision about whether to confront an issue, keep in mind that if you don't resolve a problem, you keep it and that hoping that it will go away is usually just that‑ hope.
On the other hand, it would be foolish to assume that every problem must be confronted. Indeed there are times to ride out the storm. For example, one husband was upset because his wife's invalid mother had moved in with them. He felt that their home had become a nursing home and that his wife was always tied up with the care of her mother. But rather than confront his wife and force her to make choices between him and her mother, he said nothing. And within a year, the mother died. Although his wife's difficulty in adjusting to her mother's death was another problem, in retrospect, he was glad he hadn’t made an issue over her invalid mother’s being in the home with them.
In deciding to confront an issue, you might ask yourself these questions:
a. How much does this problem upset me? Is this a major issue or is this something I can adjust to?
b. How long is this problem likely to go on? When is too long?
c. If I don't confront this problem, how will I feel?
d. How will my partner react if I bring this issue up?
e. What will be the outcome if I do bring this problem up? Will we work it out so that we both feel better about it or will discussing this push us farther apart? f. Am I willing to get divorced over this issue if I bring it up and my partner won't help resolve it?
g. What behavior or behaviors do I want my partner to engage in?
Assuming that you decide to confront an issue, think of what you want to happen as a result of the discussion. And to focus your thinking even more, begin to ask yourself exactly what you want your partner to do differently to help resolve the problem. For example, if an affair is the problem, the behavior you want your partner to engage is to stop all contact with the other person. If your partner is too absorbed in her work, you might want her to allocate more time to be with you and to stop sending text messages when you are trying to have a conversation. Rather than having in mind some vague outcome of your discussion, identify exactly what behaviors you would like your partner to engage in.
Being your own marriage therapist means not only identifying what's wrong in your relationship, but what you want to be different. And this is true for both you and your partner. Just as you have your own list of what your partner does that upsets you and what you want him or her to do differently, your partner will also have a list (ask and you'll see). There are things that you do which upset him or her and which he or she would like you to change.
Exchange Behaviors
It is helpful to think of marriage as a relationship in which you exchange behaviors with your partner. You do what your partner wants and vice versa. But two things are important in making the exchange. The first is that the behavior you give is exactly the one that your partner wants, not what you think your partner wants. For example, one husband said that he was a good provider because he took the family on a vacation to the Bahamas. But his wife said that her husband spent the vacation fishing and didn't spend any time with her or their children. "I want him to spend time with me and with us as a family," she said. Second, the frequency with which you do the things that your partner wants is also important. Only to spend a few minutes once a week when your partner wants time every day is too great a gap between the expectation and the reality. Or to go on a nice vacation together but to do so once in ten years when your partner wants it annually is not enough. So not only is it important that you and your partner do things for each other but that you do them as frequently as each of you want.
Partners are sometimes anxious about actually talking with the partner about making a behavioral exchange. "How do I bring it up?" they ask. You might consider saying something like the following to your partner.
You know that I love you and care about you. And we both know that lately neither of us has been as happy as we have been in the past. I've been reading some information how to improve a relationship and would like to suggest that we simply tell each other what we want each other to do and begin doing those things for each other. Sometimes you get upset with me and wish I wouldn't do certain things. Please tell me what you would like me to do so that I can begin to engage in these behaviors and you can avoid these negative feelings about me. And, of course, there are things that you do that upset me. I'll suggest things that I would like for you to do so that I can avoid getting upset. We can each begin to do what the other has asked and that should help us to avoid some of these unpleasant feelings we have been having. Okay?
Although most partners are willing to talk about their relationship with each other, some will not. Some are defensive (deny that there is a problem or blame you for it) or are completely noncommunicative (shut you out, won't talk). If this is the case in your relationship, there are several options. One is to drop the issue and hope that your partner will feel different about discussing the issue in a few days. All spouses go through different moods and sometimes we just don't want to deal with an issue. But at other times we are more open. Sometimes it is best to just give the partner some time.
Another alternative is to change your behavior even though your partner is unwilling to discuss changing his or hers. One wife said that even though her husband spent four week nights at the office each week and wouldn't discuss changing his schedule, she was going to stop nagging him about it. Not surprisingly, after she stopped nagging him, he began to spend more nights at home.
What marriage therapists do (that you can’t do for yourself)
Although identifying and trading behaviors is something that you can do as your own marriage therapist, there are some aspects of the marriage relationship which you should not try to treat yourself. These include severe depression, suicide thoughts, and alcoholism.
Don’t try to treat severe depression yourself
Severe depression (not just a headache and going to bed early) is characterized by withdrawal, loss of appetite, and difficulty in sleeping. Although we all have periods in which we do not want to interact with others, or aren't hungry, or can't sleep, when these three occur together and over a long period of time (month), depression has set in. Part of being your own marriage therapist is to know when you need to refer yourself or your partner to outside help. And this is one of those times. See a psychiatrist who will most likely recommend medication will is often very helpful.
Don’t try to treat suicide thoughts yourself
Related to severe depression are suicide thoughts. The severely depressed person will sometimes want to die as a way of escaping the sad feelings she or he is experiencing. Should you have suicide thoughts or your partner says “I just want to die"-call a local psychiatrist immediately. While for some people, suicide thoughts are usually temporary and the person counters such thoughts with "I couldn't do that" or "Who would take care of my children?" or "I'll get over these feelings," as one therapist said, "When you're dead, you're dead a long time." Suicide is an issue which requires professional help. A psychiatrist is the professional of choice because he or she can prescribe medication if necessary.
Don’t try to treat alcoholism by yourself
Get professional help (psychologist or psychiatrist) if alcohol is a problem for either spouse.
Don’t try to treat spouse abuse yourself
Spouse abuse is another concern that is beyond the scope of this website and requires professional help. In a recent study, one third of the spouses reported violence in their relationship. This was defined as pushing, grabbing, shoving, and hitting the partner with something, throwing something at the partner, slapping, or beating the partner up. Or, relentless denigration/criticizing the partner is abuse.
To summarize this section, the way you feel about your partner (and the way your partner feels about you) is based on your behavior toward each other. By identifying the behaviors that each of you wants the other to engage in and exchanging these behaviors, you can set the context of an improved relationship.
