Can Counseling Save A Marriage?

In the study "Does Divorce Make People Happy?," University of Chicago researcher Linda Waite and colleagues talked to 55 couples who saved their previously unhappy marriages. One surprise? Counseling didn't play a significant role in turning their marriages around.

Only about 1/3 sought counseling, either individually or as a couple, and most didn't think it helped. And today's value-neutral counseling was seen as especially unhelpful.

The study of 55 couples, "Does Divorce Make People Happy? Findings from a Study of Unhappy Marriages" (summary web page here; full pdf here) was led by sociologist Linda Waite of the University of Chicago.

The overall goal was to find out how people saved their once-unhappy marriages. One or both of the people in each couple had said their marriage was "unhappy" five years previously -- yet now both agreed their marriage was "happy."

These weren't people who had a bad day five years ago: "Many ... (now) happily married spouses have experienced extended periods (typically two years or more) of marital unhappiness, often for quite serious reasons, including alcoholism, infidelity, verbal abuse, emotional neglect, depression, illness, and work reversals. Many of the spouses in these marriages contemplated or threatened divorce ..."

The researchers found that "few participants described marriage counseling, particularly secular marriage counseling, as having played a primary, instrumental role in preventing divorce or rebuilding marital happiness. ... (of those who went to counseling) most reported it was helpful, but relatively few saw it as the key to turning their marriages around or avoiding divorce."

Men in particular disliked the very idea of seeking paid outside help, but went if their wives insisted. They much preferred counseling from their minister or priest, who they felt would work to make the marriage succeed, and wasn't "listening to their intimate problems for money."

Women had greater initial confidence in outside professionals, although in one scenario none reported that value-neutral counseling was any help. That was the all too common "husband behaving badly" archetype. Rather, what worked for those wives was seeking third parties -- family, clergy, even divorce attorneys -- who had a point of view about the husband's behavior. Their advice was seen as a "key role" in turning those marriages around.

Men and women both agreed that they wanted help from someone actively working to keep them together. The researchers noted that "Marriage neutrality — often seen by counselors and attorneys as ethical — was not what unhappy spouses seeking help told us they wanted."

What did work? As we reported in our earlier article, these marriages survived due to stubbornness and the passage of time. Counseling had minimal impact.

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We wrote in more detail about Waite's study here.