“Does marriage counseling function? My wife and I have attempted seeing a marriage counselor for the past handful of weeks, but it doesn’t appear like it’s undertaking something… What am I performing wrong?”

If you happen to be like a lot of of the lost and confused husbands in the 21st century, then you have currently attempted the most generally prescribed answer to any marriage challenge, i.e. marriage counseling.

I don’t know when it became such prevalent practice, but somehow the go-to answer for any and all problems that could plague a marriage (separation, loss of passion, divorce, infidelity, lack of communication, and so forth.), the most prominent and extensively guidance that you happen to be going to get is “have you tried marriage counseling?”

You would believe that such a booming and reputable sector would be so highly advised due to the fact of its high results price, correct? In other words, marriage counseling is so popular simply because it has a history of legitimately fixing the marriage difficulties that plague so many relationships these days, right?

Wrong!

Did you know that…
Marriage Counseling has the Highest Failure Price of Any Therapy

Yup, marriage counseling and marriage counselors have the lowest accomplishment price of any other counseling or therapy related field.

So, does marriage counseling operate? I would say ‘not even close’.

* Drug addicts in rehab have a larger achievement rate than marriage counselors

* Alcoholics in AA have a larger results rate than marriage counselors

* Anger management therapy has a larger achievement rate than marriage counselors

* Even the prison counseling applications for murderers, rapists and other criminals have a higher success rate than marriage counseling

You would consider that for up to $200 per hour there’d be some sort of assure that you’d see final results in your marriage, but this is absolutely not the case. Marriage counseling DOES NOT Perform for most couples, and marriage counseling success prices are surprisingly low (significantly less than 25%).

There is a variety of couple that can benefit from marriage and family counseling, but it is the exception, not the rule. Most marriage counselors do not correctly address the true challenges that are leaving you and your wife ‘unfulfilled in our marriage’.

Does Marriage Counseling Function? Do relationship counseling near me Have the Highest Divorce Prices, Ever?

Admittedly, according to recent statistics, the divorce price in America has finally come to somewhat of a plateau in the past couple years due to the fact less people are receiving married, so there are significantly less couples to divorce.

But still, in the past 10 – 25 years divorce prices have sky rocketed, and I want you to seriously feel about this for a minute… Does not it seem strange that the rise in divorce rates correlates virtually straight with the thriving marriage counseling business? Some could possibly argue that this makes sense mainly because more divorces need to have much more marriage counseling, but what if the true source of the problem wasn’t basically divorce, but the total ineffectiveness, even counter-productivity, of marriage counseling?

I’ll tell you an example of this – My personal parents are divorced. They were married for over 20 years, and they tried all the things in the book to save their marriage. They tried not 1, not two, not three, not four, but 5 various marriage counselors over the course of 10 YEARS, and not a single one particular of them did something to save their marriage.

In reality, the marriage only ever got worse mainly because my parents became frustrated with their lack of progress, and that aggravation led to even additional troubles in the marriage.

In other words, marriage counseling added fuel to the fire, and it poisoned my parents’ marriage.

Now, I am not saying that all marriage counselors are full quacks, but a surprising quantity of them are. Their marriage counseling procedures and tactics are primarily based on theory, conjecture and textbooks, not actual romantic or human expertise or even on productive marriages.

Several Marriage Therapists Lack Confirmed or Relevant Knowledge

This could possibly be stated about lots of therapy related fields, but I feel that it is particularly accurate in marriage counseling. I know of numerous marriage counselors who have actually gone via a divorce, but continue to teach other folks how to repair their marriage. Clearly these men and women have no concept what basically performs if they cannot even save their personal marriage, so why would you trust them to save yours?

Once more, I don’t want to make any overly broad generalizations right here, but I do really feel like the marriage counseling field has develop into equivalent with divorce attorneys… It really is just one particular more cog in the machine leading to the simultaneous degradation and capitalization of marriage in America. I mean, from a value standpoint they are each high-priced… It will run you about $400 for an hour to talk on the phone with a divorce lawyer, and a single marriage counseling session will usually expense you at least $one hundred, and much more for a ‘good’ one particular.

These are people that know you are desperate and are prepared to take benefit of that are their own gain.

Believe about it, if you have been definitely passionate about helping folks and saving marriages, would you demand $300 per session for a thing that you haven’t even noticed consistently yield final results? I am not saying it’s morally incorrect to charge a lot of cash for your solutions, but when there’s so much revenue involved it really is only organic to query accurate motives, specifically without the need of benefits to justify a high price.

Feel about it, most marriage counselors advise at least ten sessions to see final results in your marriage, which suggests you happen to be dropping $1,000 to $2,000 on entirely unproven strategies and approaches.

Which brings me to the implied second aspect of our original question… Does marriage counseling work, and why or why not?

And to me, this is what appears to be the cause most marriage counselors fail:

Most Marriage Counselors Have Been Educated To Analyze Complications, Not Build Options

This is what I really feel it comes down to… All the things that your typical marriage counselor has learned, and in turn everything they teach you, was very probably written by a psychologist.

All these factors that your marriage counselor tells you…

* “Just maintain operating at it”…

* “Communication is the essential”…

* “Be a lot more open with every single other”…

* “Start possessing intimacy time”…

* “Date nights are the answer”…

* “Make her feel loved”…
All of those things are written in some text book somewhere and that textbook was written by a psychologist. These are items that females consider they want, and they do when anything is already perfect, but they will NOT save your marriage.

These are all factors you should be doing when your marriage is thriving, extra like characteristics of a prosperous marriage than actual tactics to repair a broken 1.

But You Can Clearly See Their Train of Believed…

A superior marriage has open communication, appropriate? So it ‘makes sense’ that to repair a broken marriage you need to create open communication, suitable?

A excellent marriage has spouses who delight in intimacy time with each and every other, proper? So, it ‘makes sense’ to say that if you force intimacy time you’ll repair your marriage, right?

But marriage isn’t backwards compatible like that… It doesn’t function since these logical options are NOT going to work when there is no feelings of attraction or emotional fondness behind them. So even if you are going through the motions appropriately, there is no assure that you will actually fix your marriage.

In fact, if something you happen to be pretty much guaranteed to make it worse, because you will remind your wife how undesirable points have to be that she can’t feel Anything even when you are apparently attempting so hard.

Don’t forget, attraction is the ONLY issue that will save your marriage. Without having attraction there is no emotional incentive driving your wife to come back to you… Logic, cause, counseling, courses, books, rational strategies and perseverance will not save your marriage. Feelings, emotion and passion will.

So, does couples counseling work? Does marriage counseling perform? I suppose I really should let your own experiences give you the definitive answer, but from all of my own expertise I would say that you’re better off attempting to repair factors on your own than with a counselor.