When I first started learning how to counsel couples in the late 1980’s, I took a class from a famous psychiatrist named Richard Fisch, who commented that most couples counseling was “Make my husband a mensch therapy”. In other words, he said, most couples came to therapy to shift a power imbalance in the couple. He felt that in most couples the husband had more power and more control, so in order to make changes, the wife needed a third party to leverage change. In this model the therapist often ended up as the advocate for the wife in her attempt to balance out the power dynamics of the relationship. He believed that this is one of the reasons that women seem much more willing to engage in therapy than men.
I think that this is a true reflection of traditional therapy as far as it goes. In first stage relationships women often do have less overt power than men, and they are often more motivated to encourage the evolution of the relationship upward into second or third stages (for more on the stages of relationship download our free 40 page book on relationships). In most cases though, they are not doing this out of a desire for more power but for a greater sharing of love and intimacy.
On the other hand, this perceived alignment between the therapist and the woman in the relationship has cost the field of couple’s therapy a good deal. Therapists should not be advocates for one member of a couple; they should be advocates for the whole couple.
When Pam or I work with a couple the focus is not on realigning power between the members of the couple, it is on uncovering and releasing each member’s own blocks to loving. Some people think this approach seems backwards, but it is not, it’s magical. If you are angry at your husband because he seems withdrawn or grumpy then your job is to release your judgment and negative feelings related to his behavior. If he is angry because he thinks you are nagging him or don’t think he is doing something well enough, then his job is to release his judgment and negative feelings about that.
Our approach to couple’s therapy isn’t about negotiating or changing how the partners relate, it is about helping each member of a couple find and release his or her blocks to loving. Working in this way transforms relationships quickly and painlessly because it gets at the source of the problem (our trauma and judgments about ourselves and our partners).