Couples counseling has to fit the clients. The partners we see at Couples on The Brink are typically desperate for marriage help, so they need us to offer approaches that satisfy their needs. They’re on the verge of divorce and they need clarity and resolution as soon as possible.
Our clients are exceptions to more familiar patrons of couples therapy. They have pressing needs that require intensive work and prolonged attention. Often they express the need to save marriage, family, and the home life they know. These are the only kind of clients we see. And when we’re done, we return them to the therapists who referred them to us.
When our sessions begin, one person’s talk is usually oriented toward ending the relationship. The other person’s talk is usually oriented toward working things out. The dance of in-and-out is often arbitrary, which means that one of the biggest mistakes therapists can make is paying attention only to this content level of conversation. It is not uncommon in the work that we do for couples to take turns upholding the leaving or staying-together position.
Both partners want change. They often have different ideas about what positive change actually means. Some people have lost hope in their current relationship for the kind of changes they are looking for. Sometimes both feel that way. And still, something keeps them hanging on to hope that marriage counseling will ensure that they won’t get divorced. These are our clients.
Most couples we see at Couples on The Brink have been two or more therapists. Often, this has created improvements but not fundamental change in their current critical need. We hear from them that previous therapists have suggested everything from getting divorced to staying married at all costs. How unfortunate that, in their desperation, they can receive any kind of generic advice when they are obviously asking for much more. What does it say about our field when our clients sometimes have more faith in their relationships than we do?
At The Brink, the decision to stay together or get divorced is too important—too much a life marker—to be steered by the input a therapist can gather once a week for an hour. What helps people clear the debris from a 10, 20, or 30 year relationship? It might take a sustained state of attention that moves them past what they think about their issues and into a view with a wider horizon. It could take working through what they think they came to therapy to say, and continue on into what they could say instead.
At The Brink, it’s important for partners to move beyond addressing issues that seem pressing at the time but prove manageable, even trivial, in the long run. In our experience, when couples begin to see past problems and rediscover what brought them together, they benefit from going even farther with minimal interruptions. They can turn the momentum of years of struggle and instead begin a journey into the renewal of possibilities.
These clients deserve the time and attention they need to answer their specific challenges. They don’t need this intensive, prolonged focus for most issues. But when they need it, they deserve our support.
- Paul Maione, Ph.D., LMFT, and Melissa Bridges, M.S., family therapists
