Family therapists are mental health professionals trained in psychotherapy and family systems that diagnose and treat mental and emotional disorders within the context of marriage, couples, and family systems. Although it is likely that most people seeking counseling do so as individuals--including people seeking therapy at the Marriage & Family Institute’s Covenant Counseling Services program--nevertheless, the overall theoretical orientation of Covenant Counseling Services is called “family systems therapy,” or more simply, “family therapy.” Family therapy often involves the treatment of more than one member of a family in the same session. Typically family relationships, roles, processes and interactional patterns are explored as a potential cause of the mental disorder in one or more of the family members. Rather than blaming one person or issue for a particular set of circumstances, family therapists look at a multiplicity of causes and dynamics which create and sustain a dysfunctional behavior, and often involve the entire family in making changes in order to create a more functional and healthy lifestyle.
Most relationships "get stuck" at some point and they need a little help (sometimes a lot of help) to "get unstuck". Therefore, one of the best ways we can prepare for marriage is to overcome the stigma sometimes associated with seeking marital therapy. Couples who are proactive and who seek therapy early, before their relationship is falling apart, are wise.
The Eighty-Twenty Rule
Abbott's (2003) 80-20 rule was developed from a story he read several years ago called "80 percent I love you, 20 percent I hate you." From this story he concluded, "to avoid overfocusing on the spouse's negatives, you can train your mind to focus on the positives. Overlook the few small things(20 percent) that you don't like about your spouse and continually remind yourself of the 80 percent you like"(p.4).
Larson and Holman (1994) have identified three general domains of important predictors of marital quality and stability They define "marital quality" as "a subjective evaluation of a couple's relationship" and "marital stability" is "the status of the relationship as intact or nonintact (i.e., separated or divorced)." These domains are (from least predictive of marital quality and stability to most predictive): background and contextual factors, individual traits and behaviors, and couple interactional processes (i.e., traits). Larson calls these three domains the Marriage Triangle. The Marriage Triangle highlights these three domains and focuses on the interactions between them.
According to Larson (2003), most marriages go through at least three general stages of development: (1) romantic love; (2) disillusionment and distraction; and, (3) dissolution, adjustment with resignation, or adjustment with contentment.
In the first stage of marriage, couples tend to be so caught up in passion and physical attraction that issues like sacrifice, selfishness, expectations, and crises are not faced or dealt with. When the honeymoon begins to wear off, then these issues begin to influence and impact the relationship. Daily-life stressors and other crises often occur that require sacrifices to be made, selfishness to be checked and given up, and expectations to be discarded or modified. Such disillusionments and distractions can lead to less time spent together, less time spent on the relationship, a reduction in a couple's sex life, and sexual boredom. When a couple reaches the end of this second stage they often feel disappointed and unfulfilled. It is then that a couple moves into the third stage with at least three options available to them:
(1) They can dissolve the marriage relationship;
(2) They can adjust while resigning to the fact that their marriage will not improve and that they will continue to grow apart; or,
(3) They can work hard on their relationship and experience growing contentment and satisfaction as tools are gained, issues are worked through and resolved, and increased companionate and altrusitic love are developed with a little romantic love added to the mix.
One of the toughest things for men and women to sometimes understand is that as the relationship develops and moves through these stages, intense and passionate love tends to diminish as it moves more fully into these other two styles of love - companionate and altruisitic love. Every couple must make the decision whether or not they will dissolve the relationship, adjust in the relationship with resignation, or adjust in the relationship with growing contentment and satisfaction.
Our society does not need to see half of first marriages and almost three-quarters of second and subsequent marriages end in divorce. Research indicates that these troubling realities cause irreparable emotional, financial and almost every other kind of damage to men, women, families, most especially children, as well as to society as a whole. Many marriages could adjust with growing contentment and satisfaction if they would commit to recognizing their marriage needs help, become aware of strengths and weaknesses, understand the contexts that influence marital adjustment, gain the tools to improve traits that help or hurt the relationship, and commit to a plan for improving the relationship.
Contexts or Environments
Contexts and environments are the settings in which individual and couple traits are developed. These influential contexts are placed at the bottom of the Marriage Triangle because they form the foundation of the development of individual and couple interactional traits. Larson (2003) divides these contexts into two general domains - personal contexts and relationship contexts.
Personal context characteristics include family-of-origin influences, such as the degree of love and unity in the family in which you grew up, the quality of your parents' marriage, and your degree of autonomy in your family-of-origin.
Relationship context refers to the situation or environment in which your relationship currently exists. Examples of relationship context factors include support from in-laws, chronically unresolved marital problems, and stress caused by spending too much time or energy in raising children, dealing with financial problems, and so on.
Individual Traits
Individual traits that influence marital satisfaction or dissatisfaction include a person's personality, attitudes, and skills (Larson, 2003). Larson identifies difficulty coping with stress, dysfunctional beliefs, excessive impulsiveness (e.g., impulsive spending, obsessive compulsive behaviors, etc.), extreme self-consciousness, excessive anger and hostility, untreated depression, and chronic irritability as the major liabilities toward the achievement of marital satisfaction.
Conversely, Larson identifies extroversion (i.e., sociability), flexibility, good self-esteem, assertiveness, commitment, and an ability to love as the major assets toward the achievement of marital satisfaction.
Couple Traits
Couple traits that influence marital satisfaction and dissatisfaction include communication and conflict resolution skills and several other traits specifically pointed out by Larson (2003) that include the following:
Cohesion - time spent together compared with time spent apart that leads to a perception and feeling of emotional closeness.
Intimacy - the combination of self-disclosure, affection, sexual relations, and cohesion.
Control or power sharing - "the ability to influence another person to go in the direction you want" When there is give-and-take and the power and control is equitable and shared, then a feeling of satisfaction generally occurs. When one spouse tends to "exercise too much power or control in decision making" then dissatisfaction can occur.
Consensus - "the degree of agreement you and your partner experience on a variety of marital issues such as proper behavior in public, religious matters, decision making, and displays of affection". Similarly, Larson states that "consensus can be realized in one of three ways in marriage:
(1) you accept and appreciate that you are already similar,
(2) you accept your differences without resentment or despair, or
(3) you reach consensus through healthy conflict resolution"(p. 25).
10 Strengths To Make A Happy Marriage
Dozens of books are written every year about the things that go wrong in marriage. Now one of America’s foremost marriage researchers has evaluated the things that go right in marriage. David H. Olson, founder of Life Innovations and one of the creators of the Prepare/Enrich marriage enrichment tools, has surveyed 21,501 married couples in all 50 states to identify the top ten strengths of happy marriages.
Top Ten Strengths of Happy Marriages
1. Partners are satisfied with communication
2. Partners handle their differences creatively
3. They feel very close to each other
4. Spouses are not controlling
5. Partners discuss their problems well
6. They are satisfied with the affection they show and receive in the marriage
7. There is a good balance of time alone and together
8. Family and friends rarely interfere
9. Partners agree on how to spend money
10. Partners agree on spiritual beliefs
Olson says the research has found the strongest couples are those who have strong communication skills, a clear sense of closeness as a couple, flexibility, personal compatibility, and good conflict resolution skills.
“In strong marriages, there is a balance between separateness and togetherness,” Olson said. “These couples make togetherness a top priority, ask each other for help, like doing things together, and spend most of their free time together.” Olson’s research identified some common factors in the relationship roles in strong marriages. “Both were equally willing to make adjustments in their roles as needed, both were satisfied with the division of housework, both work hard to have an equal relationship, and they make most decisions jointly,” he said.
Partners in strong marriages have strong communication skills, Olson found. The happiest couples said they were satisfied with the way they communicate, find it easy to express their feelings, and find their partner to be a good listener. They note that their partner doesn’t use put-downs.
Conflict resolution skills are crucial. In strong marriages, both partners say that their partner understands their positions, that they feel free to share their feelings and ideas, that they take disagreements seriously, and that they work cooperatively to resolve conflicts.
On the other hand, some common stumbling blocks are when one person feels most responsible for the problem, when the partners go out of their way to avoid conflict, and when serious disputes erupt over minor issues. Olson says that relationships in which differences are never resolved can get into trouble.
The top ten problems in marriage identified in Olson’s research are interesting as well:
1. Problems sharing leadership
2. One partner is too stubborn
3. Stress created by child-rearing differences
4. One partner is too negative or critical
5. One partner wishes the other had more time
6. One partner wishes the other was more willing to share their feelings
7. Feeling responsible for issues
8. Avoiding conflict with partner
9. Difficulty completing tasks
10. Differences never get resolved
“Building a healthy marriage means that you have learned to turn your stumbling blocks into stepping stones,” Olson says. “Build on your strengths, while creatively addressing your differences
Change Yourself First
Douglas A. Abbott (2003) describes three principles that can lead toward greater marital satisfaction:
(1) Change your behavior: Change first;
(2) Change your attitude; and,
(3) Change your heart.
He also includes three ways to change ourselves first as follows:
1. Exercise patience with your partner's faults and annoying habits.
2. Drop the insistence that he or she must change
3. Take responsibility to change yourself and improve the relationship.
The focus becomes you not your partner. You change first. Assuming there is good will and love between you and your spouse, your partner may then desire to also change. As you act in loving, forgiving, and benevolent ways, your spouse may reciprocate. (p. 3)
Change Your Heart:
C. Terry Warner suggests that we need to change our hearts in our relationships:
A Change of Heart - "Without a change of heart whatever we do will carry the smell of manipulative, selfish, or fearful intent, and other people will readily discern it....The self-help movement that began in the latter half of the twentieth century suffers particularly from this flaw, for the personal and interpersonal skills it seeks to cultivate are almost always designed to get us more of what we think we want, rather than to bring about a change of heart" (p. 13).
"To the extent that we can come to see others differently, we can undergo a fundamental change, a change in our being, a change of our emotions and attitudes, a change of heart" (p. 46).
"We do not control the timing of a change of heart. We make ourselves available for it by faithfully doing the right things for the right reasons; that much does lie within our control" (p. 225).
"There is no better means of promoting another person's change of heart than allowing our own heart to change" (P. 176).
Abbott, D.A. (2003). Change yourself and change your marriage. Marriage and Families, 1, 2-8.
Larson, J.H. (2003). The great marriage tune-up book. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Larson, J.H. & Holman, T.B. (1994). Premarital predictors of marital quality and stability. Family Relations, 43, 228-237.
Warner, C.T. (2001). Bonds that make us free: Healing our relationships, coming to ourselves. Salt Lake City, Utah: Shadow Mountain
Marriage Myths
"Never go to bed angry at your spouse" or, "If my partner and I have a disagreement, our relationship is doomed!" are just two of the many myths that we can dispel before we ever get married. Sometimes, because we are tired and stressed, the best practice is to settle down and to get some needed rest before we deal with the issue the next morning. Other myths, according to Jeffry Larson (2003), include the following:
"If my spouse loves me, he should instinctively know what I want and need to be happy,"
"No matter how I behave, my spouse should love me simply because she is my spouse."
"I can change my spouse by pointing out his inadequacies, errors, and other flaws."
"I must feel better about my partner before I can change my behavior toward him."
"Maintaining romantic love is the key to marital happiness over the life-span for most couples."
