Marriage Therapy

Problems with the exchange of feelings, the satisfaction of their needs and an adequate response to the needs and demands of others are amplified in the intimate context of marriage and family life. Because marriage and family therapy involve more than one client and are focused on interpersonal relationships, they can be considered a special kind of group therapy.
The increase in the number of divorces and the number of couples seeking help because of the difficulties that have arisen around their relationship has made marriage therapy, or couple therapy, a developing area. Studies show that joint therapy of both partners more successfully solves marital problems than individual therapy of only one partner (Baucom, 1998). Marital therapy can also be highly effective when one of the partners suffers from a mental disorder, the symptoms or consequences of which undermine family relationships.
There are many approaches to marriage therapy, but most of them are focused on helping partners exchange their feelings, developing greater understanding and sensitivity to each other’s needs and developing more productive ways to overcome their conflicts. Some couples have very different and often unrealistic expectations about the roles of husband and wife, which can sow discord in their relationship.
The therapist helps them clarify their expectations and work out a mutually acceptable compromise. Sometimes such a couple enters into a behavioral contract, agreeing on the changes in behavior desired by each party in order to create more satisfactory relationships, and determine for this the rewards and penalties that they can apply to each other to guarantee the desired changes.
Family therapy interferes with marriage, but its origins are slightly different. It came about as a reaction to the fact that many people who achieved improvement through individual therapy outside the family — and often in institutions — lose what they achieved when they return home. It became obvious that many of them came from a dysfunctional family environment, which in itself requires correction in order for a person to hold on to what has been achieved. When a person with a psychological problem is a child, it is especially important for the whole family to undergo therapy, because children are completely dependent on their parents. The main idea of ​​family therapy is that the problem manifested in a particular patient is a sign that something is wrong with the whole family: the family system does not work as it should.
The difficulty may lie in poor communication between family members or in the union of some family members against all others. For example, if a mother has an unsatisfactory relationship with her husband, she can focus entirely on her son. As a result, the husband and daughter feel that they are being neglected, and the son, frustrated by the suffocating attention of the mother, on the one hand, and outrage from the father and sister, on the other, start having problems at school. Although the boy’s school difficulties are indeed a reason to ask for help, it is clear that they are only a symptom of deeper problems in his family.