Can my marriage be saved? This is the reason couples come to see me, a discernment counselor. In one to four sessions, we aim to have the answer, and to have both partners on the same page. Although every couple has a unique story and situation, there are certain things that go on and statements made by the couple in discernment counseling that help answer that question.
Before I get into what those things are, I want to ask you, are you old enough to remember the long-running column in the Ladies Home Journal, “Can this Marriage be Saved?” The magazine was a staple in many homes, and the column itself was a readers’ favorite for three decades after its inception in 1953. Given this era, it is not surprising to learn that the message of the column was focused on women as the source of marital strife. For a marriage to work, a wife needed to do such things as 1) master the art of guessing and meeting her husband’s needs, 2) give plenty of attention to avoid his desire to cheat, and 3) never allow her own success to trump that of her husband.
It’s a little scary to think that so many young girls (me included) peaked into that magazine to read the column and absorb lessons for our future relationships! Lucky for me, I was raised in a reasonably feminist home: my mother was one of the first women to graduate from a prestigious university with a major in mechanical engineering and my professor father sent me to first grade wearing a bracelet emblazoned with “E.R.A.” So, I was raised to be skeptical when reading such things as: “She practically drove her husband to find, in the company of another woman, a little of the praise and credit he was not receiving at home.”
Having survived the childhood influence of the Ladies Home Journal, I now work with couples struggling to determine a path for their marriages. Society has largely shifted away from simplistically blaming women for the struggles of a marriage (although many of us would argue the pendulum has now swung to an almost equally unfair emphasis of blame on men). Couples and therapists now have endless information at our fingertips: articles, books, podcasts, websites – all focused on the same question of the 1950s: “can this marriage be saved?”
Perhaps the most widely known work in predicting marriage success comes from the Gottman Institute. Wildly successful in attracting both couples seeking happy marriages and the professionals who treat them, the Gottmans provide a myriad of insights, products, and treatment modalities. The widespread acceptance of Gottman’s work received a boost from Malcolm Gladwell in his 2005 book, Blink, where Gladwell marveled at Gottman’s ability to predict divorce with 90% accuracy by watching a couple interact for a mere 15 minutes. Gottman contended that a marriage was in serious trouble when there were signs of what he called the Four Horsemen: criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, and (worst of all) contempt.
While Gottman’s work has been revolutionary for the field of marital therapy, it has nonetheless received ample criticism. The mathematical processes used to calculate Gottman’s “accuracy rates” are not those typically used in scientific research and almost certainly overstate the ability to predict marital outcome. This, taken with the observation that the couples used in Gottman studies are in many ways not representative of real-world couples in crisis, we need to take his assertions with the proverbial grain of salt.
Maybe, just maybe, we cannot really predict which marriages will be saved and which ones won’t!
But as a stated above, there are some signs that offer a clue as to where the couple is headed.
In my role, I work with couples on the brink of divorce and our goal is straightforward: help these couples decide a path for their marriage. Couples choose to stay married with no change, proceed to divorce, or commit to an all-out effort at reconciliation. My job is not to make the decision for the couple or even to make direct recommendations. Rather, my job is to help each spouse gain a deeper understanding of what happened in the marriage and their unique contributions to the problems so that they can decide whether they will commit to an effort at reconciliation.
The couples we see in discernment counseling are typically what we call mixed-agenda couples. One person has a foot out the door while the other person is desperately hoping to save the marriage. With divorce already solidly on the table, the level of marital distress is such that these couples would be excluded from any research on either predicting marital outcome or determining therapeutic success. They are in crisis.
I am often asked what I see or hear in discernment counseling sessions that would lead me to predict what path a couple will choose. The work is not without surprises, but there are a few “tell-tale” signs I look for:
- The marriage is in trouble when the leaning out spouse is not able or willing to verbalize any personal contributions to the marital problems. They may offer a cursory, “I know I’m not perfect,” but they do not offer any substantial insight into their part in the dysfunctional patterns that have developed during the marriage. In this case, there are a couple of explanations, both of which do not bode well for reconciliation. First, the spouse may truly believe that they have no meaningful role in the problems. Second, they may understand their contributions but not want to acknowledge them to their spouse. Either way, when a leaning out spouse refuses to be openly accountable, it is quite possible (even likely) that they have already decided to end the marriage.
2. Sometimes the leaning in spouse acknowledges their contributions to the problems and they make grand gestures and promises for behavioral change. Sounds good, but there’s a catch. For a marriage in crisis to take a positive turn, it is critical that the leaning in spouse clearly acknowledge their spouse’s concerns and his/her emotional experience. For these couples in crisis, continued promises of behavior change can undermine that message. I’ll offer an example:
Jim was an active alcoholic for ten years. Despite Sarah’s repeated pleas to get help, Jim continued to drink and, as a result, he missed important family events, “ruined” holidays, and left Sarah feeling isolated and neglected. Sarah had enough and called a divorce attorney. Immediately, Jim stopped drinking and agreed to attend AA meetings. Now in discernment counseling, he repeatedly promises to continue his sobriety, and he’s devastated that Sarah is still unsure about the marriage despite his drastic change in behavior. What Sarah needs most … more than a promise of sobriety … is for Jim to verbally acknowledge the pain she has suffered. He needs to be able to demonstrate true empathy for her experience of the past decade. Without that, his promise of sobriety will be ineffective.
3. An unfinished affair means reconciliation is doubtful. We see both leaning in and leaning out spouses who are in an affair that has not ended, even while the couple is deciding a future for their marriage. Our hope is that discernment counseling can influence the person to recognize the reasons why an ongoing affair will undermine any attempt at reconciliation. Yet, many spouses will continue to say, “I don’t want to give up the [affair] relationship in case my marriage doesn’t work out.” In these situations, hope for reconciliation is low.
Despite its reliance on outdated gender stereotypes, the Ladies Home Journal was not entirely wrong with its suggestion that one must pay attention to the needs of his/her spouse for a marriage to thrive. Likewise, there is no doubt that the Four Horsemen of contempt, criticism, defensiveness and stonewalling are damaging to marital success.
Although prediction is far from absolute, we do indeed know marital traits that correspond to more positive or negative outcomes. For couples in serious divorce crisis, however, when considering possible outcomes, we must look not only at the descriptors of the marriage as it is, but also the actions both spouses are willing to take in an effort to save an already damaged marriage. It is not, “Can this marriage be saved?” but rather “Will we do the work to save it?”
Like this article? Check out “Talking to Your Spouse About Discernment Counseling”
