Part 1. Marriage Therapy

As my marriage started to head south in 2004, I did what many people try to do and sought a marriage therapist.  All in all I think I went through about five or six different therapists, a bunch of books, online sites and forums.

 At the end of all this, do I think therapy is a waste of time and money? My answer is no, but …

In some cases (mine included) the other party has such a serious problem that therapy has a very low success rate in curing the underlying situation causing friction in the marriage. These problems include drug and alcohol addiction, physical violence, and various mental disorders. At the end of the day, both parties must want to change and be capable of change.

 OK, so what did I get from the different therapies - which were useful and which were not?

My central problem was that it was impossible to negotiate anything in good faith with my ex-wife. Every substantive agreement we made, she broke. In the events leading up to the divorce, there were two major financial commitments that she had broken and I had reached the end of my tether.

 My initial approach was to take the low cost route and use the Employee Assistance Program provided by my employer to see a therapist (the first four sessions were free). This therapist took a behavioral approach - which means reward desired behavior and punish undesired behavior. Her analysis was very superficial in my opinion - trying to solve the problem as quickly as possible or refer us to someone else.  We only attended one session.

After some further reading, I discovered Imago Relationship Therapy. This therapy is based on a theory of several stages of childhood development and the notion that we may get wounded or stuck at a certain stage. This, in turn, creates a patterned response to certain stimuli that trigger these childhood wounds. The goal of therapy is to identify the stages, discover where you are stuck, and teach your partner communication skills so that the wounds are not irritated (imagine if you stuck your fingers in someone’s real wound and you get the idea of the response you provoke when you disturb a psychological wound).

As we got more into Imago, we attended a nice two-day seminar held in Ojai, CA. Here I discovered I had no problem talking about my feelings but that my ex-wife was completely unable to talk about hers. On the way home she described the workshop as the most traumatizing therapy she had ever encountered (and she had barely scraped the surface). The problem was that Imago did not have a stage for people who didn’t keep their promises. Moreover, if she was unable to talk about her childhood wounds then no progress could be made.

One of the reasons it was so hard to live with my ex-wife was that I constantly felt that I was a giver and she was a taker. Reading more about how to deal with this problem led me to Marriage Builders (MB). MB is a wonderful system that is rooted in the Principle of Joint Agreement.  Couples should only do things that make them both enthusiastically happy. The theory is that by negotiating win-wins that gives both sides positive feelings then love grows rather than dies (and vice versa). Thus, we give to our partner’s taker at the same time they are giving to ours. We tried a single telephone counseling session of MB but the therapist did not seem as skilled in the ideas. My ex had a hard time reaching a win-win compromise but, as usual, an even harder time sticking to an agreement.

By this stage, I was feeling a lot of anger towards my ex-wifes inability to follow through. She suggested the problem might have been mine and recommended anger management. I went to a single session where the therapist said something profound - he asked if I was angry anywhere other than inside the relationship - to which I answered no. In a typical behavioralist fashion, he said, “Then you should remove the stimulus causing the anger” and end the relationship.

Around this time I decided that the relationship had to be brought to an end. In a last ditch effort to save our marriage, my ex suggested we see a catholic priest. After explaining my frustrations for about ten minutes (this was the fifth therapist so I was getting pretty good at it), he turned to my wife for her side. Her answer, “I don’t know why he is so upset”. To my surprise, the priest suggested we get a divorce!

Later, my wife contacted him for the name of a marriage-friendly therapist. After a few couple sessions with the new church recommended therapist, she asked to see me alone. She explained that she had begun her career with a borderline personality disorder patient and that my wife displayed all the symptoms of this disorder. She said that they were almost impossible to work with because they have no insight into their condition - blaming everyone else around them for their problems. She said that she could continue to work with me but no longer wanted to see us as a couple.  While you can read about BPD here and here, I did my homework and realized (after 20 years with this woman) what had eluded me for so long - the diagnosis was spot on - my wife was a high functioning borderline and I was her codependent partner.  To me, BPD is victim addiction - the afflicted is always playing the victim to garner resources and attention. The psychologist warned me that the forthcoming divorce was likely to be hell…

  TOTAL BILL $2000-$3000

Lessons Learned

 1. Not all therapists are created equal. There are a variety of schools of thought and differing levels of experience (and attitudes) among therapists.

2. Not all situations can be helped by therapy (conversely some situations can be improved with therapy).

3. Therapists are cheaper than lawyers.

P.S. A nation wide Directory of Marriage and Family Therapists can be found here