Dr Kieran McKeown summarises the results of a major Irish study on the effectiveness of counselling for men and women in unhappy marriages
Leo Tolstoy, the Russian writer and father of 13 children, believed that "All happy families are alike but an unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion". Such generalisations are usually only half-true. The half that is not true is that unhappy families and unhappy marriages, in particular, have much in common.
That is one of the key findings to emerge from a major study of over 1,000 couples and 1,500 individuals who came to ACCORD seeking counselling because of difficulties in their relationships between 2000 and 2002. ACCORD is Ireland's Catholic marriage care service. It initiated the study jointly with the Department of Social and Family Affairs.
The study found that the road to unhappiness in marriage is generally paved with a series of negative behaviours and associated emotions involving criticism, insulting, not listening and sometimes using physical force.
All unhappy couples engage in some of these behaviours and men and women engage in them equally. However, it is the partner's behaviour rather than one's own which is seen and experienced as the main source of distress in marriage.
The men and women who come for counselling typically feel powerless and hurt and seem to be less aware that their own behaviour is also affecting their partner. These couples seem passionately connected to each other as both cause and cure of their unhappiness.
It is sometimes suggested that marriage is under pressure and that marital distress is strongly influenced by socio-economic factors. The ACCORD research indicates these factors are much less important than what happens within the relationship itself. It is true that financial difficulties contribute to unhappiness in marriage but social class or the working hours of men and women, including the amount of unsocial hours, have little or no influence on marital quality.
Men and women take different and complementary sides of the road on the way to unhappiness in marriage. For women, the main source of distress is that their partner does not listen, while for men the distress comes from being criticised by their partner. Gradually, a negative cycle takes shape where criticism is met with criticism, insult with insult and, in some instances, physical force with physical force.
Negative perceptions of the partner spread to other areas of the relationship, including dissatisfaction with the partner's share in housework and childcare, with women feeling particularly dissatisfied. Both partners end up in a stalemate of distress and unhappiness, having lost faith and hope in their ability to resolve their difficulties as a couple.
The key question at the heart of this research was: does counselling help unhappy marriages? The answer is yes. Counselling helps people in unhappy marriages because about half of all clients in this study moved from being stressed to being stress-free.
More significantly, counselling helped about four in 10 clients to improve their relationship with the result that, in the six months after counselling, five in 10 men and three in 20 women were satisfied with their relationship.
THE fact that counselling works equally well for men and women is encouraging and is probably a reflection of the quality of counselling offered by ACCORD through the creation of a safe, empathetic space where each hears, and is heard by, the other and where the counsellor regards both partners with respect and positive regard.
It is encouraging also that counselling works equally well for all social classes. Counselling is slightly less effective with older people but its effectiveness is not affected by the length of the relationship, excessive drinking, unfaithfulness, or the use of physical force.
These findings raise the question - how does counselling help unhappy marriages? The answer is that counselling helps by changing the negative behaviours of criticising, insulting and not listening and by helping men and women to become more satisfied with the partner's share in housework and childcare. Both sets of changes bring about an improvement in the relationship.
In turn, each of these elements is linked so that a change in one can bring about change in the other: less criticism and insulting can lead to more listening and more satisfaction with the sharing of housework and childcare, as the partner comes to be seen in a more positive light.
The precise way in which counselling triggers these changes seems to lie in the provision of a safe, accepting space where the emotions generated in distressed relationships - including disappointment, loneliness, anger, sadness, hate, rejection, etc - can be given expression and where one sees and experiences the partner in a different light.
One of the powerful images of counselling and psychotherapy is listening and some have even described listening as the centre of gravity of love itself.
"Unhappy Marriages: Does Counselling Help?" by Kieran McKeown, Pauline Lehane, Rosemary Rock, Trutz Haase and Jonathan Pratschke, is published by ACCORD and is available free of charge from the Department of Social and Family Affairs, Áras Mhic Dhiarmada, Dublin 1 and from ACCORD Central Office, Columba Centre, Maynooth, Co Kildare. It is also available at www.welfare.ie and www.accord.ie