WHEN WILL AND WHEN WON'T COUNSELING SAVE A TROUBLED MARRIAGE?

Over my years doing marriage counseling I've noticed a trend that tells me relatively soon when working with a couple is going to be trouble, if not futile. One of the partners makes an initial phone call, as if completely innocent and victimized, and starts telling me about how the other spouse is mean, terrible or disturbed. I say that I cannot take one side of the story alone and that I would need to have both parties come in for counseling. The couple comes in and the initiating party essentially says, "Fix the other messed-up spouse and then we'll be fine." What repeatedly comes out is that the initiating party in such a scenario is trying to manipulate and control me so that I should manipulate and control the other spouse into operating according to the first spouse's "wiring." Usually, the party who calls complaining about the "warped other spouse" (instead of asking for help for "us" or "the marriage") is the one who is the more troubled, rigid, cruel or evil.

People mistakenly think that marriage counselors fix marriages. We do not live those marriages so we cannot fix them. WE HELP PEOPLE WHO WANT TO FIX THEIR OWN MARRIAGES. Marriage counseling will not help people who want things on their terms. Marriage counseling will help people who can muster the will to do the work they have to, make commitment to working steadily and trustworthily at what they have to, persevere even when a mistake or backslide occurs, be supportive of and allies to each other (even if this requires a leap of faith and sufficient loyalty to the instruction and supportiveness of the counselor to permit that faith) and a commitment to behavior standards and changes which will be difficult and will seem strange until they are adapted and assimilated.

I tell counseling clients, especially those who have problems with temper, contempt, selfishness or volatile emotions that it is hard to be wrong when you are gentle, respectful, two-sided, controlled, compromising and you respond to provocations with a fact-seeking and communication-evoking question about the action; rather than frustration, attack, condemnation, judgement or escalation.

Often, one or both members of couples, especially when immature or neurotic, come expecting me to transform the other, while they remain "perfect, OK and justified." Any counselor will tell you that this is a profession of ratios: a certain number of people come once, others come for a few sessions, some come a bit longer and some stay for sustained long-term work so they can achieve their goals comprehensively. The ones who come hoping to "re-program" the other (self-servingly) tend to be in the second category (come for a few sessions and quit). They are too intense, driven and desperate for control to come only once, but when they are confronted with the truth THAT THEY HAVE TO LOOK INSIDE, FACE TRUTH AND FIX THEMSELVES, they disappear. With so many products and packagings today of the "use and then throw-away" variety designed for pleasure or convenience; people have become so influenced, callous and inhuman that they apply the "use for pleasure and convenience and then throw-away" concept to human relationships today, even marriage.

Even though our generation is weak, the old truths remain. Rabbi Elimelech of Lizinsk, the Chasidish master, says that the only reason we are born is to change our nature. The Vilna Gaon says that the full-time job of human life is conquest of midos. The Torah says to go in G-d's ways and to obey His laws - including the interpersonal - of your own free will choice and with a good attitude. Rabbi Chayim Veetal, the sixteenth century Kabalist, says that Hashem primarily looks at how you treat your spouse. One who is a tzadik in the street and a brute at home is fooling himself - and NO TZADIK! Hashem's punishment to him overweighs all reward. The Yerushalmi tells us that "Love your fellow Jew as yourself" is the major principle of the Torah. Masechta Kidushin makes clear to us that "Love your fellow Jew as yourself" applies to the person you marry!