When To Give Up On Marriage Counseling?

I heard a therapist talking about how often in couples therapy when she focuses on the husband the wife will be all in on the therapy. However, when it’s time to address the wife’s behavior she said a significant amount of wives outright quit and refused to return. The comment section was full of men sharing identical stories.

Part of the problem here is the framing. If more couples’ therapists were brave, they’d start the process like this: “It’s not my job to keep you two together. It’s my job to help you communicate well enough to either 1) work together for a better relationship, or 2) begin the process of an honest breakup.” The energy in the room for couples’ therapy goes way up when divorce is overtly on the table. The therapist should never try and hide this or pretend that divorce is a bad outcome.

My ex was terrible in therapy. When challenged about being an abusive narcissist, she would just get up and walk out. I worked hard to acquiesce to her demands which would then only result in more demands that never made her happy. Eventually, the therapist just said I had to accept that she was abusive. That was when I realized he was not there to make us both happy, but to make the relationship work no matter what. I filed for divorce weeks later and am so much happier for it.

Went to therapy with my wife, to a see female therapist, went about 3 times. On the last time I got into a argument with the therapist, something like “my wife is angry with the kids all the time”. The therapist call me a liar, I said “Ok lets get the kids in and have a discussion”, the therapist was not interested in that. Next day my wife said “we won’t be going back to her as she is biased against you”! Still cannot believe my wife said that, credit to her I guess.

Couple’s therapy is a bit like taking an elderly dog to the vet and expecting the vet to breathe new life into the elderly dog. Sometimes its kinder just to move on and stop letting everyone suffer. People need to have healthier and more realistic expectations of relationships. Some relationships are not meant to last forever.

Orion is referring to couples where there is high disfunctionnality, where sometimes people may have personality problems. I went twice into therapy sessions. The first sessions helped us develop ways for solving and negotiating problems in the marriage. The second were about saving the marriage. I was still committed to that marriage; she wasn’t, so it dissolved. Nevertheless, I learned more about myself and how I could unwittingly sabotage relationships. Therefore, both therapies paid out, first for the ongoing relationship and then for the one that followed. You never know how therapy will go, but my experience says that if you go into it with honesty and an open mind, it will be worth it even if it doesn’t save your couple. The future lasting a long while, you will be glad to have learned how to become a better partner in the current or the next relationship.

My mother has a personally disorder (probably a version of NPD) and is absolutely an emotional terrorist. My father fell for the whole mental health/therapy model and is also just generally an ineffectual person. As a result, my brother and I suffered an enormous amount of unnecessary abuse. I am in my early 40s, they are still married and he is still being tormented. I visit for maybe one day every year. On the one hand, I’ve done a lot of work to deal with my own issues and am the only one in my entire family that has any concept of what normal, healthy relationships might look like. But I’m also extremely cautious about them and still unmarried, which is not really where I wanted to be at this point. Any way, thank you for your article and website. These are valuable insights. It’s a shame that the people who most need to hear them probably have no interest.

The metaphysical approach that couple’s therapy base their work on is fundamentally wrong at its core. They inherently assume that men are the perpetrators most of the time due to the physical advantages that men hold over women, mostly ignoring how emotionally destructive women can be in relationships. This put the pressure on men and husbands to do most of the fixing on their end, not holding the other party accountable. This almost never works out and relationships end anyway because it takes 2 to make a relationship work.💯

Couples therapy is basically the man admitting he is too incompetent to lead and manage the relationship and is delegating to a more competent party. No woman wants to be with an incompetent man, it’s dangerous. As a man, you should be of sound mind, sufficient to be able to assess your own actions, and her actions, and determine the action necessary to correct it. It’s like managing a business. If your partnership is toxic and the other party is at fault, it’s on you to assess and terminate the relationship, not let it drag on. If you are the problem, but too dishonest with yourself, or too incompetent to realize you’re the problem, you should probably have some single time to reflect and figure yourself out. This is why I dislike drugs and alcohol, a man has to have a clear mind to make decisive and wise decisions, otherwise he’ll let himself and his loved ones down.

I went through couples therapy once with my then fiancé, and of course I paid for it. It was an absolutely miserable experience. I certainly am not and was not perfect and I made a number of concessions to try to meet her half way at the counselor’s request right off the bat. In the end, my fiance met her points with massive resistance and resentment, so the counselor came back to me for more concessions. Then again. And again. And again. Even when I brought up among my issues that I was never allowed to voice anything at home (we lived together and her family lived with us) and any time there was an argument I got kicked out of the house I was paying for, the counselor defaulted back to asking for more concessions from me. Neither of them seemed to understand when I threw up my hands and said I was done with the therapy. I’ll never do it again. Absolutely horrible.

One thing I had to learn the hard way myself is that the only thing you can control is yourself. Making others responsible for your reactions is in fact just a lack of responsibility. You cannot control how the world operates or what and how others say something to you but you can control your inner processing and your reaction to it. Shifting the blame onto the other person is immature.

Great analysis. You bring up some things I’ve considered and several I haven’t. My personal experience with couple’s therapy is that it’s a joke. The narrative from the counselor is often predicated on the man acceding to a woman’s demands and to her world view. Holding the woman accountable is near impossible a lot of the time.

I did couples therapy with my ex. She just sat there and didn’t say anything so I started talking about what I wanted to change and the whole therapy routine started to be about ME compromising to get what I want and she didn’t have to make any concessions. I was young and dumb and will never to that again. I’m glad I know why now. As was said in this article if it isn’t right it isn’t right and move her out and you on.

The main thesis of this article is true and well put. One detail I wonder about, though, is the suggestion that each person act in their own self interest, and that they should find someone who tolerates their selfishness and whose selfishness they tolerate. This might be a good idea in the beginning stages of a relationship in order to figure out if it should continue, but for many people the idea is for a relationship to develop into something more that two people getting what they want; the idea is to form a family. Once kids are involved, it seems the relationship itself may need its own advocate to prevent the parents acting selfishly, often at the expense of the child’s psyche and financial future. All that said, I still don’t know how much help couple’s therapy is in these situations.

Here is an insight into couples therapy that I’ve had while going through it. The best a couples counselor can do, and the most effective they can be, is when they take on the role of “the bad guy”. Chances are, one person in the relationship is acting like crap. Maybe more, but at least one. A therapist that takes the ideas and thoughts of that person and throws them at the other will do one of two things. Either make the non crappy person decide it’s over, OR make the person who refused to see their behavior come to the defense of their partner. We excuse behavior in ourselves to our partner that we would never allow another to do, and it’s often only after seeing someone else parrot our words at them that we realize how we’ve acted. Telling my wife how she was acting did nothing, but our therapist doing the same thing made my wife super protective and aghast that she had behaved that way. Not saying it will always work, but if the people still care about each other, nothing bonds like a common enemy.

Brilliant Dr.Orion! Simply Brilliant. i love the part between 7.50′ and 8.25′ and 8.27′ to 9.00′ ‘ Certain things dont need be to understood. They just need to change. And understanding does not by itself inevitably lead to change.’ What a fascinating and tremendous insight. Thank you Dr.Orion. i think by just sharing this insight you have immensely helped a lot of couples grappling with relationship issues in todays world. Intriguingly fascinating because you get clarity without pressing the need for absolute clarity why temper tantrums or other relationship issues happen. Wonderful. Thank you so much.

In order to maintain a strong, true, healthy relationship, it is essential for each partner to have an individual counselor who understands them and can help them present themselves better within the relationship. Furthermore, having a meeting with a couple’s counsel to actually address couple’s issues rather than individual issues.

I went to therapy for myself … once. My wife at the time said “you’ll be talking about me, and it feels like triangulation” So we did couples therapy… except she insisted on seeing the therapist alone a few times (but said I couldn’t do the same, because “triangulation”. When I finally left her, I left town, but saw the therapist one more time, alone. He didn’t try to stop me. His silence said all I needed to know.

Talking to my ex never worked because she had very unrealistic expectations like she wanted me to be a millionaire, to ditch all my friends and disconnect from my parents among many other things. There was no amount of reasoning or compromise with her because even if I met one of her demands it was never enough and the goalpost was constantly moving. Many attempts to resolve issues with her only made her madder and more unhinged until I was forced to give up and just avoid her with minimal communication and then she would be all fine after a week or two.\r I eventually figured out silence was the best recipe to get along with her for the duration of the relationship.

I had a bad relationship a while back, and have been recovering from it, and while skimming through epochs of psychology material written by female psychologists, it’s beautiful to find a person like you. I’m not completely convinced that you have a PhD, mainly due to the no-fap article, but I respect your perspective and how you poke holes in modern day psychology, which has been watered down and devalued to the point of not being a real science

So glad to hear from Dr. Taraban that though I persisted in an emotionally terroristic relationship for a pretty long time, I’d made a lot of the wise, recommended actions to get us out of it so that we could both heal and improve ourselves. The one regret I had (and not anymore) was not pursuing couples counseling, because it had been held over my head many, many times.

1:20 … This is so weird but there was a guy in the comments section of one of your previous articles, who said this exact scenario happened to him. In his case the therapist after seeing them both, and observing the flare up of anger and the eay the woman spoke to him, asked to speak to them individually and he told the guy to leave her and find someone else and therapy from him will not solve anything. Wish I could remember what article the comment was on, I clearly remember seeing it and thinking how rare it must be for a therapist to do this and noble of them not to milk the couple for money.

Hi Dr. Orion. Thank you so much for the insight. I was impressed by the term “emotional terrorist” which perfectly described my current partner. English is not my first language whereas it is hers. I think she‘s taking advantage of that plus women tend to be more expressive with words，making it worse. She throws tantrums at me being very fussy and irritable. I self reflected on myself and agreed with what you said. I chose her and have been almost the one to compromise even though I was at the upperhand at the very beginning. She said several times that never been anyone that treated her well like me not even her family；I was out of her league；etc. She is a beautiful sweet girl but somehow turned into bitter angry woman who picks on me. I guess I “spoiled” her too much because I was trying to overcompensate it from my last long-term relationship. Sorry to expand so much but my question is that how do you deal with the “EMOTIONAL TERRORIST” instead of going to couple therapy that apparently doesnt work？Just stop reaching out to them to the point that they come back and if not，move on？

Like you mentioned toward the end – I, too, believe that couples therapy may work for some couples regarding certain scenarios… but just in general I am not in support of it. My feeling is – if we can’t get along naturally on our own without the mediating of a third/outside party, then that right in itself is a sign that we are not meant to be together. Some therapists can offer helpful tools, but it takes both parties in the relationship to apply them and truly operate in them – and if not done consistently and effectively, I think the relationship is bound for chaos and ultimately failure.

I connected very much with this. On the one hand, it must of course be recognized that couples therapy is not associated with a high rate of success because the couples that do end up going into couples therapy are already in a tough place. It’s like saying a last-ditch, experimental surgery has a low success rate on a usually-fatal illness. At that point, it’s a desperate attempt, so it’s not necessarily the “fault” of the therapy itself. That being said, I definitely recognize all the points made in this article. The therapist is also very hesitant to outright call out any of the two individuals on the spot, because, as you say, the client is the “relationship”, so there’s this sense of passive, non-accusational behavior from the therapist, because they don’t want to risk offending either of the two partners. But sometimes, one partner is doing something outright bad and unacceptable, and there’s nothing that would benefit that person, and the relationship, more than if the therapist were to call them out on it.

Honestly this viewpoint that the relationship is the patient is different from whats practices here in my country ( Romania). I have talked with therapists who point blank work on the relationship but if they see that their clients are better off by breaking up they advocate this with no hesitation.( compromises or acceptable sacrifices are one thing but bleeding yourself out to keep a relationship afloat is not acceptable here). The priority of practice here is that you don’t just sacrifice yourself to make a relationship work no matter how miserable you are or how abusive the relationship is. The priority in couples therapy here is the partners AND the relationship as all 3 are seen as 3 different elements to work on and prioritize but ultimately if the relationship does harm to the partners and nothing can be changed then they are advised of this and to break up. (obviously no one can force them to break up). I heard these notions from multiple women therapists (I`m a guy). Its strange how wacky things are in the Western world nowadays honestly…

5:38 Toying witj the other person’s desire is a dangerous game. It’s such a delicate balancing act that you’re likely to break the relationship playing it. Stretch it too thin and it snaps, don’t stretch it at all and it doesnt grow. Turns out you have to find a way to talk to the other person so they will consciously and conscientiously choose to want you and you them. And this requires you and the other person giving up core parts of yourself for the relationship. And this takes incredible sacrifice and time and patience, and few people will do it without some belief in a higher calling/power/morality/God. Even with that belief, its incredibly hard and few people will be successful.

My experience: being dragged over hot coals to “face up” to incidents such as smashing a glass in anger 4 years ago. Meanwhile when I raised stuff my ex was doing to antagonize me at present (literally that day) was met with the therapist (older woman) empathically siding with my ex and telling her “well that’s your emotions coming out!”

Couples Counsellor here. Whilst I agree with some of Orion’s points, I disagree with a number of other points. Statistically speaking many couples do improve their relationship through couples counselling. There are many approaches to couples counselling just as there are many approaches to anything else. Some are more effective than others. It is possible to be the advocate for the happiness and health of the relationship, as well as the happiness of both people. I have on a number of occasions counselled people to leave relationships when it’s clear that the partner was incapable or unwilling to do what is needed in order to make the relationship work. I make self responsibility the primary factor in the work I do and that is what makes my work go very quickly. Compromise is an essential part of every relationship but I don’t like talking about it to much because normally it’s only one person do it. A relationship that’s healthy has both peoples needs being met. I’m happy to have a conversation with Orion about my approach that appears to work. I have a website with 100 articles if anyone would like to view them.

I have been to couple’s therapy, or marriage counseling, with the same person to two different therapists. (One session each.)\r One was a guy who did this out of an office, but he had no degrees.\r The other was a lady who had all the degrees from a respectable university posted on the wall.\r Long story short > my experience followed what you detail here.

A couples therapist aims to support relationships by helping the partners work through their issues and improve their connection. It often only takes one session for a couple to decide to break up, but it typically requires multiple sessions to effectively address challenges and strengthen the relationship. In terms of the therapeutic business, therapists may need to conduct several sessions in order to sustain their practice and generate income.

Sometimes therapy is a complete waste of time and money. During my parents’ divorce, they tried couples therapy. However, they first spent weeks debating which therapist to go to 🤦🏻‍♂️. After finally deciding, they tried a few sessions only to achieve zero progress. Apparently my mom would spend the entire session trying to get the therapist to tell my dad to change. One might say that I wasn’t there, so how would I know. However, towards the end of the divorce process, my mom pressured me to go to therapy sessions with her. During those sessions, she tried the same thing with me! Even the therapist at one point said that it’s only her job to mediate, she can’t change anyone or tell them what to believe. We even locked eyes briefly at one point during one my mom’s rants, and I swear I got the “I’m sorry” eyes. Of course after a few sessions (which my mom made me pay for), I had to put a stop to them. It was clear she was never going to learn, short of something catastrophic happening in her life, and maybe not even then. I don’t talk to my mom anymore. I have no idea what happened to her, and I frankly don’t care.

Couples’ therapy was actually quite good for me. I learned, that my request for a home that suits my taste in exchange for commitment and fathering a child I wasn’t keen on having (I love my son to bits, but I wouldn’t have had him, if his mother had not wanted him so dearly) was not unreasonable. And that the dissolution of said relationship is actually a good thing. I really think that she has quite a few issues to solve, but she’ll better do that without me.

My buddy went to couples therapy before his inevitable divorce. I was there for him during and after, but I did tell him that I think it’s a waste of time. I said this not because I thought trying to fix the relationship was a waste of time, but because I believe getting a third party involved is like trying to ride a dead horse. Marriage is supposed to be a life tackled by you and your spouse. You vow this in front of witnesses when being wed by a priest and in front of God (if you are religious). If you two cannot workout any issue between yourselves then in my mind that is a failed marriage. Obvious I put this more delicately at the time, but the meaning is still the same. Personally I believe that is why so many of these couple therapy sessions end badly, because marriage is between two people and was never meant to have a third party involved to fix the problem of you being bad at your marriage. You either work it out together AS A COUPLE or you don’t work it out and you end up separated. Just my thought, but I truly believe this whole heartedly.

What Percentage of Marriages Work After Counseling? According to the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, the success rate of marriage counseling is around 70%. Another statistic from the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists states 90% of couples who complete therapy with a highly trained couples therapist report an increase in their emotional well-being. Generally the results vary depending on the therapist, but between 70-90% of couples find couples therapy beneficial. Beyond that, approximately two-thirds report an improvement in their general physical well-being as well.

All the 3 marital counselors I went to did was drag out a bad marriage. The subtle looks the last counselor gave me when my wife was talking gave me the first clue maybe it wasn’t all me like my wife kept insisting. But he never really came out and said this can’t be fixed or you need to leave for your own safety or sanity.

Dr. Taraban, interesting when you said that the therapist won’t tell you to leave your wife and to go find someone else as quickly as you can. WRONG, that’s exactly what he said to me during our 3rd session, out loud! to my face with my wife sitting next to me. So it does happen, haha, but you had to be there to hear the questions( and her answers) he asked her leading up to him saying that to me. My ex was/still is a Chartered(=PhD in Alberta) Psychologist, problem with the therapy was she thought she knew more than the therapist, yes she was also a certified narcissist too. I took his advice and got D’d from her ASAP.

Couples therapy is valuable only prior to the entry into a marriage, sort of like the Catholic Churchs’ requirement that couples go through a series of exerecises to determine if their upcoming marriage will stand the test of the time as a vow. In other cases, after the cheating transpires, after the physical abuse occurs, NO – it doesn’t work.

Couples therapy would work if the therapist would tell both parties from the getgo that nothing is going to change and the therapy is designed to help both parties to deal with the other person’s shortcomings on an individual level.And that helps.If I don’t stand a chance to leave and work with what I have, then there’s the possibility to figure out how I can live with what I have.Everybody wants their own needs to be met, but nobody is willing to come up with : that’s what it is. Or: were’re not here in wonderland, welcome to reality.😊

I was dragged into this once. My wife was acting like the “emotional terrorist”. The therapist spoke to my wife at length first. She never spoke to me alone. After 5 minutes it was clear to me that my “working too much” to pay for everything was the cause of all of my problems. I walked out and gave my wife the ultimatum. Get out or not. She stayed. That was 25 years ago. But it totally changed the way I approached the relationship. Since then it’s always been “if you don’t like it, hit the road. If she thinks she’s in control she will abuse and control you.

Just anecdotal but seems most in the west overrate how effective all therapy is. Most school shooters I hear about been to therapy. Also I’m in the military and these soldiers that go to behavior health seem to get worse. If physical therapy was just as ineffective as mental therapy, it would be like hundreds of people that broke their leg many years ago are still hoping going to physical therapy will heal them. Strong social network, friends > therapy