If You’re Afraid of Marriage Therapy, Read This First.

We Work For Your Marriage, Not Against Individuals.

Some people refuse to go to marriage therapy, and they have their reasons, most of which are made up in their heads:

I don’t believe in marriage therapy.

We should be able to figure this out on our own.

What can anyone teach me about marriage?

I don’t want to go in and pay for getting bashed and criticized.

My buddies tell me to stay clear; it’s nothing but a wiener roast.

Joe and Sue went and said it didn’t work.

The marriage therapist you chose is divorced themself. What the hell could they teach me about marriage?

Nobody knows what they’re doing until they take the time to learn.

It scares me that so many people are afraid of marriage therapy, because in my opinion, almost every couple would greatly benefit from it. The truth about marriage and relationships is that no one knows a damn thing about what it takes to be a healthy adult or what a healthy relationship is unless they have been taught. I have seen psychiatrists, therapists, self-help gurus, and other people who should know, but they do not.

I used to know absolutely zilch about being healthy myself, and I had no knowledge of relationship skills, and had three divorces by age 42 as a result. The reason I had more divorces than the average person is that I am action-oriented and was never afraid to walk away in the face of mistreatment and impossible, irreparable dysfunction, while so many will stay in their impossibly broken marriages their whole lives through. At least I had the courage to deal with my stuff and study it for the next 25 years, so I would do it right if I ever had the chance again.

Interestingly, most people I see are very high-functioning, extremely intelligent, and successful in many ways, and they may have degrees and credentials that impress, but in relationships, they function at a remedial level, many lacking the courage to face what they ought to.

Uninformed, they are winging it all the way, using basic self-created guideposts like “I should be nice and a good person,” and that’s about it, when there are so many things to know … self-esteem, authenticity, boundaries, communication, and many other aspects necessary to relationships.

A lot of people refuse to go to a marriage therapist when their spouses lobby for it, and unbeknownst to them, resistance to getting professional marriage help when your spouse asks for it is often a fatal mistake. Almost everyone who becomes disillusioned in marriage is seeking change, and they desperately seek signs of hope that better days are ahead. Suppose a spouse won’t go to a marriage therapist. In that case, the disillusioned spouse loses whatever hope they may have had and enters into a deterioration process that will eventually kill the marriage.

Only then will some resistant spouses drop their defenses and agree to come into marriage therapy, however reluctant, because it is either that or divorce.

“Choose your poison,” I imagine they think to themselves.

But wait. Are you strong enough for marriage therapy?

I always say marriage was meant for adults, and adults face their fears. For the emotionally wounded or avoidant, one of the most difficult things they will ever do is face the direct questions and conversations that a marriage therapist orchestrates.

Like cancer, the longer a person waits to deal with signs and symptoms of a faltering marriage, the more difficult it will be to bring them to a healthy, functional place. When a spouse has endured a lack of responsiveness to their needs and requests over a long period of time, they get angry and resentful, and they lose trust. Talk is meaningless. If only they had come in at the first inkling of trouble, things wouldn’t have been this hard to repair.

Although fear of marriage repair conversations in therapy is understandable, marriage therapy, done well, is not about shaming you, humiliating you, or choosing a winner.

It’s about finding truth, compassion, maturity, and growth, and making what was dysfunctional into something functional.

1. Expect Honesty, Not Harshness, Delivered with Kindness.

A good marriage therapist has unconditional positive regard for both partners and tells you the truth with kindness. They consider your family a system of parts, and they aren’t looking for one person to be wrong and one person to be right. This isn’t a novel we’re writing in therapy, with a hero and a villain, and the villain defeated at the end. Typically, both partners are doing things they don’t realize are dysfunctional, meaning they cause problems and don’t work. This does not mean that anyone is a bad person; it is a result of not knowing because our families and culture do not teach us anything about it, a continuing blight on our national system.

Therapists consider marriage a machine that isn’t working and needs repair. We take a look at the system, all its parts and players, and will soon see the dysfunctional thoughts and behaviors that are creating problems.

We must be able to point out the things each of you is doing that do not work and why, before we teach you what does work. Adults have to be able to stand firm while hearing these observations and not process them as being abused or injured. If they do feel that, they need the courage to tell their therapist so the therapist can use it to help them and create a healing and growth opportunity.

It’s sad to me how painful it is for some to be told these things; it simply reveals that they lack ego strength. Ego strength means having the ability to stand up to life’s stresses, conflicts, and pressures; it’s a resilience and the ability to coach yourself through unpleasant moments and realities. If I have ego strength, you can tell me that I am doing something that is hurting my relationship, and I may not enjoy it, but I can receive it with humility and a willingness to learn and understand. I wouldn’t allow negative feedback to ruin my therapy session; I trust that the therapist is telling me something I probably need to hear.

If you have toxic shame, marriage therapy will be difficult for you.

It is individuals hiding the secret of their toxic shame; that they don’t believe they are good enough, they believe there is something wrong with them, and they are defective, and when any flaw is pointed out, it is so emotionally painful that they revert to their scared little child inside and want to run away and never face it again. The news of their lack in any area is just proof of what they already know about themselves, deep down. Having any flaws or mistakes brought out into the light is humiliating, as if they had been caught doing something completely shameful.

This is a tragic stance, and none of it is true. Every one of us is good enough and designed perfectly for whatever our purpose is. We are all flawed and make mistakes; that is human nature and unavoidable. Part of therapy is getting a person to believe that.

People who lack a strong sense of self and ego strength don’t make good partners, because their bad relationship with themselves trickles down to every other aspect of the relationship and poisons it. It is easily seen in partners who are jealous, competitive, dependent, insecure, possessive, and controlling.

Jill, for example, doesn’t think she’s good enough for Mark. So, she feels certain he is looking to leave her for someone else, but he isn’t. Her insecurity causes her to want to know where he is at all times, and she doesn’t want him doing anything social unless she is there. She literally assumes he is always looking to get away from her and possibly find someone better, so she tries to clamp down on where he goes and what he does.

Mark and Jill will never have a healthy relationship until Jill gets right with herself, and she may not be healthy enough for marriage therapy. If I were working with her, we’d have to work on her first, before anything else, and any marriage and family therapist can do that with Mark sitting there the whole time as an observer who offers insight. Seeing your partner telling their stories and being vulnerable can strengthen bonds and replace judgment with compassion.

If Jill resists doing the work because it is too painful to face, she’ll no doubt blame the therapist. “Marriage therapy didn’t work,” they tell their friends, or “Our marriage therapist was awful.” Marriage therapists are convenient scapegoats for those who will not admit to or deal with their issues.

Clients like Jill wear their spouses down with their high-maintenance nitpicking and insecurities, often bringing about the very abandonment they so fear. Mark should not have to spend his days trying to prove to Jill that he loves and wants to be with her.

It must be said that sometimes two good and reasonable people are just not compatible, and a parting is probably for the best. Sometimes, when working with a marriage therapist, it will come down to that, but it is definitely not the norm. Most couples I work with still have a little something-something that draws them together.

The stance of a couple who will do well in marriage therapy is that those who stay the course and don’t stop coming, are humble and able to receive the therapist’s observations, understanding that even well-intentioned, usually great people, screw up.

2. Expect Both of You to Be Challenged

Marriage problems are rarely one person’s fault, though there can be more dysfunction on one side than the other. Even in situations with clear injury like affairs, withdrawal, betrayal — both partners play a role in the relationship system.

In therapy, you both explore:

• communication patterns
• conflict cycles
• emotional regulation (or lack of it)
• adaptive-child triggers
• old wounds showing up in present-day dynamics
• ways you unintentionally hurt each other

Everyone gets feedback because everyone is part of the system. I may spend the entire session primarily focusing on one person, then, at another time, the other. We address and heal the wounds we can along the way, hopefully eliminating them for good.

Unfortunately, I am often asked in session why I spend so much time on one person and not the other. Clients will make up that when I do this, it means I think one person is a bigger mess than the other, but that is not the case at all. The way I am designed, I can only work on one person at a time, and in time, I will have these conversations with each person in the system.

3. Expect Discomfort (This Means It’s Working)

Therapy often brushes up against old wounds and nerves like toxic shame, fear, or pain. Many people react in session with defensiveness:

“I feel attacked.

“Seems to me you think I’m the main problem.”

“Can’t we talk about them and their problems for a while and give me a break?”

As I said previously, people make up that I mean them harm or think they are the biggest part of the problem. Still, I much prefer that people speak out during the session when they’re uncomfortable rather than act like everything’s fine and then call later to let me know they aren’t coming back.

“Becky, we need to cancel our next appointment because Bobby refuses to come back. He got so mad at some of the things you said and thinks you’re against him.”

This isn’t an example of therapy going wrong — it’s therapy revealing the exact wounds and patterns that need healing. Bobby could have told me about this in the next session, so we could break it down and see where his rage is coming from and why. It’s a missed insight and healing opportunity, and it makes me sad when it happens. Who knows if Bobby will ever try therapy again, but as Sheryl Crowe said in a song, “Are you strong enough to be my man?” I would write, “Are you strong enough to stick out the tough days in marriage therapy?”

In the end, adults stay; emotional children run.

4. Expect the Therapist to Work for the Marriage, Not Against Either Partner

My client is the marriage, the health of the family system, and whatever will promote connection, truth, responsibility, and repair.

But being “for the marriage” sometimes means naming a difficult reality:

Sometimes, there is a Relationship Problem Child in the room.

Like cars, some people are more high-maintenance than others. Signs that we may be dealing with a relationship problem child are a person who is wounded on the inside, is prickly, needy, critical, nit-picky, defensive, rigid, and emotionally dysregulated on the outside.

These are the ones who angrily walk out of sessions, snap at the therapist, sink into a depression after a difficult session, and sometimes throw “everyone would be better off if I weren’t here” pity parties.

Many successful adults are emotional children in relationships: needy, clingy, thumb-sucking, immature tantrum throwers. Many of these people also have Axis 2 personality disorders that cannot be treated or cured. Whether someone has a personality disorder or is just immature will be discovered in whether they can gain insight into what they are doing, take responsibility for it, and learn to change by controlling themselves and quit blaming. The Axis 2 folks are hopeless blamers and victims. Nothing is ever their fault; they’re the most intelligent person in the room, and everyone is an idiot because they can’t see the truth about that.

The point is, sometimes the problems in marriage aren’t a 50/50 proposition or even close to that, and it’s best anyway if each person comes in with the humility to be willing to hear it’s 100 percent their fault, even though it likely isn’t. When there is a relationship problem child, we may be dealing with a 90/10 or 80/20 situation, and whether a person like that can change that much becomes a primary focus, because if they can’t, well, as I said, they probably have a severe mental disorder. The long-suffering partner may have an important decision to make.

5. Expect Immaturity to Be Called Out — Because It’s Usually What’s Destroying the Relationship

Marriage is meant for adults, not emotional children.
When one or both partners operate from:

• ego
• pride
• reactivity
• entitlement
• defensiveness
• shutting down
• righteousness
• impulsivity

…the relationship cannot thrive.

All of us struggle with three parts of our personality, and two of them are immature and dysfunctional: The Wounded Child, the emotional and feelings part, the Adaptive Child (Pia Mellody): the reactive, wounded part that takes over during conflict and acts like an ass; I often refer to it as the rebellious teenager. Then there is the only part we need, the Functional Adult. Marriage therapy helps both partners by teaching them to heal the wounded child, and when feeling injured or slighted, to bypass the Adaptive Child and step into their Functional Adult to respond, where accountability, empathy, and repair become possible.

Immaturity and the adaptive child are what reliably destroy marriages.

6. Expect to Learn More Than You Expected

Marriage therapy is not a courtroom debate — it is an education in:

• emotional regulation
• empathy and listening skills
• attachment dynamics
• communication
• boundaries
• accountability
• repair processes
• family-of-origin patterns
• What makes marriages thrive

The couples who succeed come in curious, humble, and teachable. They say:

“Help us. We didn’t learn this growing up.”
“Teach us how relationships actually work.”

This humility is the #1 predictor of transformation. If your pride, ego, and need to be right come into the session, you probably won’t have what it takes to be successful.

7. Expect Old Beliefs to Be Challenged — and Updated

Many people arrive with outdated or unhelpful beliefs or perspectives that are either inaccurate or no longer work for them or anyone else. One of my favorite activities is listening to people talk about what someone should or should not do, or telling me they feel guilty about doing something that is absolutely the healthiest thing to do, and then I can immediately spot the belief that needs to be questioned. Some of the most common ones I see are:

• “If you loved me, you’d know what I need.”
• “You should not feel that way.”
• “You always overreact when I say or do something you don’t like.”
• “I don’t want to have to ask you to do things; I need you to notice it and do it yourself.”
• “Healthy couples spend all their time together.”
• “None of my friends have this problem.”
• “I don’t need therapy, you do.”
• “You don’t know how to be happy.”
• “Only alcoholics drink alone.”
• “I think doing things for myself is selfish.”
• “When I am talking about their lack of a good diet and exercise, I am only trying to help your health.”
• “Good parents call their grown children every day.”
• “You have to be there for your parents/siblings/family no matter what.”

When a person feels guilt, for example, it’s because they are doing something they think is wrong, so when you look deeper, and ask, “Sharon, why do you feel guilty about not visiting your mother more than you do?”

“Because I believe a good daughter should visit her mother often, and I don’t.”

This conversation provides an opportunity to discuss whether what she is telling herself is true, or whether she has the right, as an adult, to decide whether or how often she visits her mom. Outdated beliefs often have us working against ourselves and relationships, and we don’t even realize it.

8. Expect the Therapist to Focus on Patterns of behavior and bottom-line meanings, Not Who’s Right or Wrong

I don’t need to hear every detail of your story to understand what’s going on in your marriage. I can home in on patterns and the bottom-line result or outcome of those patterns quickly and easily. From a marriage therapist’s point of view, and in marriage, by the way, there is no point in listening to judge, only to understand.

Instead of who is right or wrong, we think in terms of what is and isn’t working.

I listen for patterns, most of which are common …all of these don’t work.

• pursuing vs. withdrawing
• blaming vs. defending
• shutting down vs. protesting
• pleasing vs. controlling
• stonewalling vs. exploding
• telling a person what you think they want to hear rather than what is true for you.’
• martyring yourself for the family

These common patterns are what destroy marriages, and we will educate you about these if you are doing them, illuminate what’s going on and why they don’t work, and what to do instead. A therapist can see things that the untrained person cannot. That is why we are there.

The beauty of calling out the patterns and understanding them is that, when couples become aware of the old habits, they often weaken and are on their way to extinction.

9. Expect Structure, Tools, and a (Fairly) Clear Roadmap

You should not leave therapy confused about what to do next.

You can expect:

• A clear assessment of the patterns that are taking you down.
• Emotional-regulation tools
• Childhood trauma, and functional adult healing and coaching
• Communication skills
• Learning to repair past and future hurts and disappointments.
• Homework if it is called for.
• Step-by-step guidance

Marriage therapy is not unstructured venting.
It is a structured, guided transformation.

10. Expect Nonlinear Progress

Therapy is not like piano lessons, and couples don’t typically get better each week and have a recital in the spring. As we dig into your family system, you will likely have breakthroughs, setbacks, regressions, and successes. This is normal. What matters is your willingness to keep showing up, even when it’s hard.

I recently began selling two- to six-month non-refundable therapy packages designed to help couples stick with the process. Included in this is a daily, ongoing coaching and oversight with yours truly to keep individuals and couples on the right path. After years of one-session-at-a-time therapy, I realized that I needed to offer more to clients by offering more of myself, and it’s working.

The Bottom Line

Marriage therapy is not about blame.
It’s not about choosing a side.
It’s not about deciding who’s right.

Marriage therapy is about:

• truth
• emotional maturity
• learning
• pattern recognition
• accountability
• repair
• humility
• growth

The couples who thrive are not the ones who come in perfect — they’re the ones who come in teachable.

If you’re willing to trade ego for curiosity and pride for humility, marriage therapy can absolutely change everything.

Becky Whetstone is a marriage and family therapist with 25 years of experience helping individuals and couples. Although she is a fully licensed therapist, she works as a consultant and life coach, created the concept of marriage crisis management, the radically positive, amicable divorce plan, and the positive co-parenting plan, and seeks to take the nastiness out of anything to do with relationships. For more information, click here, or visit her website at www.marriagecrisismanager.com.