How My Therapist Destroyed My Marriage

By | | 0 Comments

Email

chairs separate rooms divorceHave you ever wondered what prompts couples to give up on their marriage?

While there are certain events that can push a marriage over the edge (Related: Stuck in a Lousy Marriage), many couples are successfully able to weather a lousy marriage for a long time. Other than infidelity, I have observed that therapy is often the cause for one spouse to throw in the towel and give up. No, I am not referring to bad marriage therapy that often sounds like a screaming match behind closed doors, though that also does its share of damage. I am talking about the effect individual therapy can have on a marriage.

Here is one example I have heard over the years from more than one couple:

“We’ve been married 20 years and it has been pretty bad, but now I have no desire to work on the relationship and I am ready for divorce.” They went together for years of bad marriage counseling that didn’t help, yet they still stayed together. What changed now?

“A few years ago I started seeing an individual therapist…” she begins. The wife was told by her therapist that it would be better to work with her privately and “fix” her personal problems than it would be to work together on her marriage with the husband. The therapist even asked the husband what he would like his wife to work on.

This method was a disaster.

She became so attached to the therapist that had encouraged her to “work on herself” and concluded that it was her husband that was the problem. She was done with her marriage and there was no possible way I could even invite her to do couples work with her husband.

While individual therapy is helpful for individuals, it is often counterproductive for couples going through marital problems.

Here are three ways in which individual therapy may make your relationship issues worse:

1) Is your individual therapist advising you about your spouse?

I am amazed at how therapists can draw conclusions about the other spouse without ever meeting him or her. I am always shocked to hear that a therapist will support his or her client’s decision to divorce their spouse without first advising the couple to work together on resolving their conflict. I have heard about therapists who have convinced one spouse to leave the other without even meeting him/her or inviting him/her to join a therapy session!

Although therapists are supposed to be neutral and should take their ego and/or personal agendas out of the session, there are male therapists who have an axe to grind with verbally abusive women and there are female therapists who have a dislike for “controlling” men.

Even if a therapist does not have an agenda, there often seems to be a complete disregard for the big picture: that when you break up a marriage you are often breaking up a family. My heart is broken when I hear about young couples with little kids getting divorced. Such decisions have devastating effects on future generations. As I hear of families breaking apart, I am working with children of divorce who are trying to salvage their own marriages. They did not grow up witnessing a healthy relationship.   Even if they grow up and marry a supportive spouse, they still often suffer from their parents’ inability to repair their own marriage.

2) Placing doubts about your spouse:

I feel so strongly about this because I have heard many stories of relationships that could have been repaired had one spouse not been poisoned by his/her therapist about the other. We are not talking about cases of physical abuse or of potential threat to one’s life.  We are talking about “normal” things that most couples deal with such as yelling, criticizing, blaming, shaming and so on. While these may all be forms of verbal abuse, they can often be dealt with and couples’s behavior can change.

When both spouses are not present, you can end up like the husband whose individual therapist convinced him that his wife was abusive and that she had a personality disorder. Whether or not it was true, those words had a profund effect on the husband and it forever tarnished the way he viewed his wife. While before he had hope that the relationship could improve, he was now convinced she had a “disorder” and there was no point in trying anymore as she was the one with the problem, not him.

A relationship requires two people, and in order to change it the dynamic has to change. It is rarely only one person’s fault. We can trigger some ugly behavior in our spouse but that does not mean that our marriage needs to be trashed. With the right perspective, the desire, and the proper tools it is possible to save even the worst marriages.

3) Removing your relationship from the center:

The best way to fix a relationship is for both spouses to work on their marriage together. This involves more than solving issues or changing behavior. Couples repair their marriage by learning how to relate to each other in healthier ways. Once that occurs, the problems that arise can be dealt with effectively, since now they have the tools they lacked before.

In most marriages, both partners contribute to the conflict they are experiencing. By not dealing with each other directly, seeking individual help instead, couples shift the focus away from the relationship–where the focus needs to be.

Worse still, it is common for one spouse to feel that the therapist is able to provide the warm, understanding, and available presence he or she is looking for in the marriage. The goal of good couples work is that the spouse can become that presence, not the therapist.

Am I advising you do to fire your individual therapist? No, but I am advising you to be aware of the issues that may occur if you are seeing one. Even the most well-intentioned therapists can be harmful if they are advising you about your spouse when he or she isn’t there.

If you are seeing an individual therapist for your marriage, the best thing you can do is focus on your personal issues. Ask the therapist not to make any suggestions about your spouse. Unless there is physical abuse or potential threat to one’s life, it is irresponsible for a therapist to encourage divorce without hearing both sides of the story.

Even if divorce is not encouraged, it is not helpful when a therapist speaks poorly about your spouse or gives you advice.  It leads to insecurity and second-guessing. If you come home disagreeing with your spouse saying, “Well, my therapist said…” then you need to become a little more aware of the influence your individual therapy is having on your marriage.

Ultimately, you and your spouse need to discuss and decide together what is best for your relationship, as you will be the ones to live with whatever decision you make. Although your therapist may be well-meaning, a therapist is a human being and does not always have all the answers, especially if he or she has only heard half of the story. Trust in the potential that your relationship has to heal, and focus your energy on your marriage. Whatever you do, don’t let your therapist destroy your marriage!

 

Check out Rabbi Slatkin’s new book: Is My Marriage Over?: The Five Step Action Plan to Saving Your Marriage, available for download at www.theRelationshipRabbi.com/is-my-marriage-over.

 

Rabbi Shlomo Slatkin, MS, LCPC, “The Relationship Rabbi,” is an internationally renowned Imago relationship therapist, author, and lecturer. He works with couples in person and worldwide via Skype. To contact Rabbi Slatkin, please visit www.TheRelationshipRabbi.com.

RELATED STORIES FROM DIVORCE
COMMENTS
  • http://twitter.com/FrumCounselor Raffi B.

    While your concerns are worth noting, I still think that on balance individual therapy is highly advisable for people struggling with couples issues. Good marriages come not only from working on your relationship but from working on yourself. The cautions mentioned here about poor therapists doing damage in in individual therapy could equally be said about poor therapists working with couples.

    Rabbi Raffi Bilek, LSW

  • Judy

    I completely disagree with this article. As someone who was in a destructive marriage for 23 years, I can tell you that it is horrible for everyone, especially the children, to be in a marriage where blaming, shaming, yelling and disrespect is a part of life. People say they can and will change but when push comes to shove it is unlikely and everyone suffers. It is much better to start out by knowing yourself – and then finding someone you can respect and love – even when you disagree with them sometimes. Someone that helps you grow and whom you can grow with. Sometimes an individual therapist is just what the doctor ordered to help you leave when you should have left years ago.

  • Shoshi

    Rabbi Slatkin, I believe you made many excellent points. However, I think they are primarily valid when you are dealing with two healthy individuals who are in an unhealthy relationship dynamic. If one (or both) spouses are are dealing with mental illness, it is often primary to manage the mental illness. This can be done individually or (at times) as part of couples’ work. Mental illness can have a profound effect on the couples’ relationship.
    It is unethical for a therapist to advise a couple to divorce without treating the couple. Even when treating the couple, this is not the therapist’s decision to make. It can sometimes be the therapist’s role to help clarify the client’s decision making. Ultimately, as you had noted, the clients should be the ones making the decisions because they are the ones living with the decisions. They are adults and have capacity to make these choices for themselves.

  • Pnina

    It is true that there are therapists that forget the essence of their task and begin to advice you what to do. They actually decide instead of you how to act in a relationship. When you feel like during the sessions, it is time to consider changing a therapist.

    I am quite disappointed by the Rabbi’s underestimation of verbal abuse. It is widely known that it is precisely this type of abuse that is so much dangerous as it is so difficult to point at. As the Rabbi said – the individual feels that he/she gets at the therapist what he/she lacks in a marriage – respect. Respect is the prerequisite of any relationship and where there is no respect, there is no relationship.

    I believe there should be made also a clear distinction between two situations: 1. One of the partners refuses to use the possibility of a marriage counselling altogether. He/she seems to be disinterested in working things out. 2. The couple went through a bad marriage counselling and they decided to continue with an individual counselling. Then, one of the partners decides to give up the counselling and solve the problems alone.

    In the first case, it is clear that a this person has a full right to refuse to go to a marriage counselor. But it is very hard for the other party to see it as a full cooperation and a fulfillment of the promise, that ‘we will work things together’. It many times only means, that ‘we will work out things together – my way’.

    In the second case, it is up to each one of them to decide where they want to look for advice. But they both seem to be cooperating with each other.

    All in all, a therapist can never destroy a relationship, unless the client wants so. It is either that this individual lived in an abusive relationship and it is only good for him/her that a therapy helped him/her to cope with it in dignity, or, the individual lived in a non-abusive relationship, but decided he/she want to walk out anyway, and does so. Then, the therapy might be just a self-excuse.

  • http://www.facebook.com/rach.neuman Rachel NeuFryman

    Honestly, I am really disappointed that the OU would publish this article, especially with such a ridiculous title. This article only reinforces the stigma that therapy is harmful. This article confuses going to an incompetent therapist such as the one described in this article, with receiving competent care which can be marriage saving. There are times when marriage counseling is not an option if one or both partners need to work on understanding their own individual mental health or psycho-social issues. Even in this individual treatment, there is room for collateral sessions to prevent alienating the other spouse.
    Rabbi Slatkin, with all due respect, you neglect to take into consideration that the vast majority of individuals in therapy do benefit and can lead happier and healthier lives and marriages as a result of their treatment. When looking for a therapist, individuals have a responsibility to be savvy consumers. Consult with a rav, physician or friends. Taking referrals from people you respect will minimize the risk of therapist malpractice.

  • Zalman Lachman, LCSW-R

    Sensationalist title guaranteed to titillate. Utter nonsense sells magazines and newspapers but this title belongs on a supermarket tabloid, not in a supposedly responsible publication.

    As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker I have worked with couples for 13 years. I have never recommended divorce nor separation. Yes, clients have chosen to divorce, but that is their considered decision and never prompted. Interestingly, many of the couples consider divorce to save their children from the parenting of their spouse. My experience is that it is nearly always worse for the children and the choice to divorce has more to say about the internal emotional makeup of the uncomfortable spouse than the child’s need to be saved. Guess what: sometimes it is the emotional makeup of the therapist who cannot stand the pain of the relationship, and these are the ones who encourage divorce. I encourage everyone to run the other way fast. Clients come to us at their most vulnerable, but even so, adults must be responsible and discerning consumers. To that extent psychotherapy is a service like any other.

    On occasion I see members of a couple separately to help them work on the individual issues they bring to the relationship. Frankly, I am less concerned about the objective “craziness” of my client and more concerned with the relationship-as-patient. We all work together on that patient. Yes, sometimes someone stops being able to work on things constructively. That doesn’t necessitate divorce. I urge them to check back in 3 months and sometimes we can pick up the work from there.

    The Gottman Method pioneered by Drs. John and Julie Gottman was the result of 20 years of solid research and works well for most couples. I recommend that anyone who wants to improve their marriage pick up a copy of The Relationship Cure. This is not the venue for greater detail, but any marriage can be improved if people are willing and able to use the techniques outlined there.

    • Michoel

      so what do you disagree with? You are saying the same thing he is

  • dov ribner

    This article is so true. My therapist urged me to get rid of my wife. I did not listen and saved my marriage and family by working to make things better.

  • Rabbi Shlomo Slatkin MS, LCPC

    Although a more lengthy response will be forthcoming. I feel it is important to reply to some of the misinterpretations of this article including that I condone emotional abuse. I have an entire chapter in my book devoted to emotional and verbal abuse. Of course it should not be condoned. What I said is that an individual therapist should not encourage divorce in case of verbal abuse unless he/she actually meets with the other partner.

    As I wrote, “Unless there is physical abuse or potential threat to one’s life, it is
    irresponsible for a therapist to encourage divorce without hearing both
    sides of the story.”

    When I wrote that yelling, blaming,etc was “normal” I wrote it in quotations to prove a point. Of course it is unacceptable, but it is changeable behavior and the marriage can be repaired.

    Please read what was written and not draw conclusions.I am not against individual therapy. As I wrote in the beginning of the article, “While individual therapy is helpful for individuals, it is often counterproductive for couples going through marital problems.”

    I still feel this way. Individual therapy is often counterproductive for couples going through marital problems for the reasons discussed in this article. If both partners are willing, the goal should be to work it out in the context of couples work. Perhaps my article seemed a little “over the top.” I write this out of pain and concern for the many couples who experienced exactly what I wrote about in this article. This is further validated by the numerous private calls and emails I have received by both fellow therapists as well as laymen who have concurred with what I wrote. Yes, there are competent and wonderful individual therapists who can help someone with their marriage in the case where their spouse is unwilling. However, it is important to be aware of the issues I raised.