Should Couples Counselors Recommend Divorce?
Most couples who start couples counseling want to stay together. Even in discernment counseling, ambivalent partners continue fighting for their marriage. Divorce is the worst-case scenario and has dramatic consequences for all involved. When couples contact a couples counselor, they seek professional help to avert the crisis in their relationship and secure a stable future for their family.
The last thing couples want to hear is that the relationship is doomed and divorce is the only path to happiness. Couples tell me they felt abandoned and let down when their previous couples counselor mentioned divorce during counseling. Anger, confusion, and hopelessness set in. However, divorce was and is not an option for them, so they find another therapist who might have a different perspective on their relationship.
During the initial phone call, some couples ask me directly about my recommendations when there is no progress in couples counseling. They want to know whether I would suggest divorce if things do not improve. I never mention divorce in couples counseling and address it only when it is brought up to me by one of the partners.
Reasons Why Some Couples Counselors Recommend Divorce
The therapist feels stuck.
Distressed relationships are emotionally charged. Conflict and disengagement are rooted in years of hurt and betrayal. Helping couples change requires a wide range of strategies, the ability to remain neutral during arguments, and a thorough understanding of all the complexities of a relationship.
Every trained couples therapist relies on a framework and uses a set of interventions to guide couples to change. When they run out of strategies, they get stuck and might not know how to help. Therapists also have their own blind spots and might miss certain aspects of the relationship that do not fit into their framework.
The limitations of any framework can add to the therapist's blind spots, causing frustration and discouragement. In this context, some counselors might see the relationship as doomed.
The therapist lacks skills and training.
Without skill and training, a counselor might experience the following challenges:
siding with one partner
losing control of the session when conflict escalates
overlooking ambivalence about the relationship in one or both partners
dismissing mental health issues and substance abuse
overfocusing only on patterns over emotions and personal challenges
overfocusing on emotions over unhelpful patterns and dynamics
These challenges will interfere with progress. Couples might find themselves in a cycle of unhelpful conversations that lead nowhere. In this context, a beginning therapist or an unskilled couples therapist might assume that partners cannot change and that their relationship cannot be saved.
The therapist makes a judgment call about the quality of the relationship and the partners' ability to change.
Everyone, including couples counselors, holds a set of beliefs about what a happy/healthy relationship is, what defines a good partner, or what is acceptable in a healthy relationship.
When couples counselors are unaware of their own personal beliefs, these beliefs might interfere with their non-judgmental stance. A non-judgmental stance helps couples counselors stay in tune with the partners' needs and guide the process towards the couple's goals.
When a couple's counselor makes a judgment about a relationship, it often changes the focus of couples counseling. The couple's counselor's personal agenda overshadows the couple's needs, leading to discouragement and a lack of progress. The couples counselor might consider certain aspects of a couple's relationship as signs of a doomed marriage and recommend divorce.
Reasons Why Recommending Divorce is Unhelpful and Counter-Productive
Couples want to make it work.
All couples start couples counseling anxious about the future of their marriage. All want to fix issues and improve their relationship. Even when one partner wants out, the decision to divorce is delayed again and again. Most couples want to stay together. Divorce is a difficult step for anyone. And the consequences on children, finances, community, respective families, and lifestyle are difficult to dismiss.
In the midst of crisis and unhappiness, couples view couples counseling as a source of support and guidance to maintain stability and shield the marriage from divorce. When a couple's counselor recommends divorce, it shatters partners' hope and leaves them in a painful and powerless situation.
The goal of couples counseling is to help couples find a path to a better relationship within the boundaries of their own definition of happiness and satisfaction, not to fit their marriage into someone else's vision.
Divorce is rarely a solution.
Experienced couples counselors understand the nature of relationship problems, how people build connections, and emotionally attach. There are often personal vulnerabilities, mental health issues, and challenging background histories that influence the trajectory of an intimate relationship.
People act out relationship models that include unhelpful patterns and coping mechanisms. These are often blind spots for partners. Divorce, however, will not fix those problems because partners will bring the same mix of blind spots and vulnerabilities into their next relationship. They will continue building the same type of relationships over and over again, which explains why the divorce rate increases with each subsequent marriage.
For this reason, couples counseling is an opportunity for partners to become more aware of themselves, shift their unhelpful coping strategies, and improve their most significant relationship.
Couples counseling models have limitations, as do therapists.
No matter how much I believe in the Gottman Method and its efficacy, some couples need a different angle. No matter how committed I am to helping couples, I might not be the right fit for everyone.
When a couple's counselor recommends divorce, it assumes that their model is the most effective and their style is the most impactful. And even though there are degrees of experience and expertise that increase a couple's chances of succeeding, there is no such thing as a perfect approach.
There are always options.
Mental health might be the problem.
Partners' mental health affects their relationship. Mental health is one of the vulnerabilities couples cannot dismiss. Individual support and couples counseling are often needed to maintain stability in the relationship.
With unmanaged mental health, partners experience more irritability, more negativity, and less tolerance for conflict. The relationship suffers first and becomes the explanation for the worsening of the partner's mental health.
An inexperienced couples counselor might dismiss the effects of symptoms on the relationship and feel stuck due to a lack of progress, leading the counselor to believe the relationship is irreconcilable. The risk here is to overlook the actual reasons for distress and recommend divorce.
Divorce is a highly emotionally and psychologically complicated decision.
All partners who consider divorce contemplate the decision for years before committing. They finally decide because they are emotionally and psychologically ready to own the consequences, not because someone else advised them.
When couples start couples counseling, they are committed to the marriage and want to give it every chance of success. Some couples hop from therapist to therapist for years while threatening divorce, filing for divorce, and ultimately recommitting to their marriage.
Recommending divorce in this context is unhelpful and irrelevant because it discounts the partners' desire to stay together and the phase in their decision-making.
Conclusion
To sum it up, some couples counselors might recommend divorce because of their limitations and a lack of understanding of the complexity of this decision. Couples must continue their search for the support they need. And couples counseling must remain a safe place for couples to stabilize their relationship and strengthen their commitment.
Do you have any questions about couples counseling or the Gottman Method? Please email me at tmatyukhin@tmatmcs.com
