A marriage vow is supposed to be an inviolate thing, a binding commitment between two people to spend the rest of their lives together. This includes through better or worse, richer or poorer and in sickness or good health; we all know the drill. Every married couple repeats the vows or variations on them and, at the time, the vast majority of these people mean what they recite and fully intend to honor those vows. The unwritten assumption is that there are always ups and downs in any marriage, but on the whole, the relationship is assumed to be strong enough to survive these bumps and should in fact become stronger for them.
Yet, its a fact of life that nearly half of all American marriages end in divorce. In Canada, its over a third of all marriages. In some European countries, divorce rates actually exceed fifty percent! For a society that generally considers marriage the pinnacle of adult relationships and the foundation for a family, these arent statistics to be proud of.
Traditional Marriage Counseling has not been particularly successful for many people and that shortcoming is reflected in the dismal marriage failure statistics. Its not necessarily a lack of commitment on the part of the spouses who are trying to work their way through a difficult time; in fact, traditional marriage counseling can become a multi-year exercise that requires a significant investment in time, money and emotion. People are enduring this in the hope of piecing their marriages back together. Still, that extraordinarily high divorce rate remains.
Many marriage counselors end up creating a dependency, where couples are afraid to make any move without first consulting their therapist. Spouses tend to be of different temperaments and therapy sessions can be overwhelming for one of the partners, creating or amplifying an existing emotional imbalance in the relationship. Sessions tend to focus on the problems, the negatives in the relationship, and that frequently means singling out one partner for their transgressions. There can be a great deal of emotional energy created in a traditional therapy session, but all too often its negative energy: resentment or anger. How can that negativity help the couple struggling to save their marriage?
If you are in a troubled marriage, instead of automatically turning to the phone book and stepping onto the therapy treadmill, perhaps you should Save Marriage Counseling as a last resort; at least traditional marriage counseling.
What is it that makes a married man or woman take the risk of engaging in an extramarital affair? While many people assume its simply boredom, money or outright sexual attraction, often the root cause can be traced back to the fact that everyone likes to feel special. Consciously or subconsciously, people get married in the first place in large part because they feel special when theyre with their partner. When that partner no longer makes them feel special, they begin to seek a bond with others in an attempt to recapture that special feeling.
There are Online Marriage Counseling services available that avoid the pitfalls of traditional marriage counseling. Instead of sitting in an office, re-opening old wounds as you are prompted to go though the litany of ways you and your spouse have hurt each other, the alternative is to listen to an expert as they walk through real-life examples and focus on the positive experiences of marriage. Its all done in the privacy of your own home (or car, or wherever you choose to listen to the CDs), on your timetable and benefits can be realized even if only one of the spouses chooses to take part. Instead of digging through the relationships dirt, the emphasis is on learning how to fulfill each others needs so that each partner once again feels special. This is a positive approach that can give a marriage a much-needed fresh start. The approach has been proven successful and leading practitioners have been featured in the media, including appearances on Oprah, The View and The Today Show, not to mention leading publications including USA Today, The New York Times and Cosmopolitan.
In the end the choice is up to you: months or years of ongoing, intensive and emotionally-charged therapy, or a short, positive re-enforcement of why you chose to get married in the first place.
Article Source: http://www.bharatbhasha.net
Article Url: http://www.bharatbhasha.net/marriage.php/80030
Article Added on Thursday, June 12, 2008
| Other Articles by Ellen Kreidman, Ph.D. | |
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