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THE WORD “COUNSELING” is defined in many dictionaries as “giving advice” or “warning.” People in trouble in their marital relationships have always been the recipients of all kinds of well-meant advice, and in that “educational” sense marriage counseling is probably as old and as universal as marriage itself. It has been carried on through the centuries and in many parts of the world by interested relatives and friends, and by ministers, doctors, teachers, lawyers and others with varying degrees of professional formality.

In previous centuries any marriage counseling had as its primary purpose the helping of wives to make the best of difficult situations in male dominated “partnerships”; or possibly, in some cases, inducing husbands to be a little more understanding, sympathetic and tolerant to their wives and children. In such autocratic marriages wives were largely forced to make the best of whatever kind of marital situation they were drawn into, and marriage counseling was largely concerned with giving direct advice or even using coercion. This attitude to marriage counseling still exists in some quarters.

But the steep rise in the divorce rate, and the large but unassessable separation rate over the last half century, suggest that these traditional methods of counseling are not sufficiently effective in the face of the strains of modern marriage. And this is amply confirmed by the experience of workers in many special fields of social service who come into direct or indirect contact with marital and family conflict. This has sometimes led to the belief that the situation is not open to remedy, that the relationship between husband and wife is too private and too personal to be accessible to any community welfare project.

In recent years, however beginning in America in 1929, in Great Britain in 1938, and in Australia in 1947 there has been a gradual emergence and development of a new and much more rational approach to the whole project of helping people in serious marital and family conflict. This newer approach has been and is still being based on the practical experience of people of varying professional backgrounds, and it is being continually tested by trial and error experience rather than by theoretical ideas. It has borrowed from many basic disciplines, such as psychology, religion, medicine, sociology, education, psychiatry, and anthropology, and has been helped greatly by the technical resource of the tape recorder (in research institutes), through which interviews can be preserved with many of their emotional overtones, and from which many lessons can be learned.

The new approach differs from the older methods in many important respects.

In the first place it is conceived and carried out more as a therapeutic or healing than as an educational activity. It may, of course, still include some education; about, for example, the main principles underlying human relationships, and especially the most intimate relationships of marriage and parenthood.

This attempt at the healing of a “sick” marriage, like the healing of a sick person, rests on the conviction, confirmed more and more by experience, that the essential factor in all healing is a natural healing force with which the “healer” seeks always to cooperate.

It is found that the giving of advice, which is implied in the definitions of “counseling,” does not generally achieve the desired end, however much the partners may be anxious for it. In almost every case the troubled partners will already have had a great deal of very “good,” plausible, but often conflicting advice, which they have found to be either impossible to carry out, or ineffective when they have carried it out. Even then many of them come for counseling in the belief or hope that the “expert” will be able to hear what they have to say, and then give them better advice than any they have previously had.

On the other hand it has been abundantly confirmed that when a counselor can achieve with troubled people the kind of personal relationship in which they can progressively unburden their strained affronted and conflicting feelings, they then come to see themselves and their conflicts more clearly and objectively, and are in a much better position to make their own decisions about what they shall do.

Marital disorders are practically always dominated by emotions, and emotions are “blinding” things, “which distort people’s judgment. Until people in the grip of intense and conflicting feelings can pour them out to someone who is willing to give them a full, genuine, attentive and accepting hearing, they will generally be unable to apply “sweet reason,” either from their own thinking or from even the most “expert” advice.

The “sick” marriage can best be healed when the partners are helped to help themselves, when the counselor can sit down patiently with them and give them the chance to “see” themselves and their partners through the previously blinding mists of emotion, and then to apply “sweet reason” freed from the distortions of upset feelings, to their common task of rebuilding or, if they see fit, dissolving their partnership. Their decisions may be assisted by the offering of information when it is desired and seems appropriate, but the modern counselor feels very diffident about giving advice except in very special circumstances which will be discussed in later sections of this book.

A second difference from the older methods of marriage counseling is that modern counseling does not set out to interfere in people’s marital troubles, nor does it indulge in coercion of any kind. Help is offered, but as in all healing it is more likely to be of value when it is sought and accepted by a willing “patient.”

Marriage counselors are not in any sense “managers” or “dogooders,” and they will never “butt in,” even when requested to do so by an anxious relative. They will offer their services, and then leave it to the people to decide whether or not they will accept them.

This fact, however, needs to be considered in relation to the growing conviction that the community has a definite stake in the success or failure of marriage, that marriage is a community as well as a private affair. To the extent that this is so the community has some responsibility to many people who are in great need of help, but who, for various reasons, are unwilling to seek counseling.

There is a growing feeling in many communities that community organizations, such as the courts or possibly the Church, may have the public responsibility of putting judicial or moral pressure on some such couples to discuss their conflicts with a trained marriage counselor. Such discussions, although most appropriately conducted by a trained marriage counselor in a reasonably permissive atmosphere, are not quite the same as marriage counseling because the people come under external pressure.

They are distinguished from counseling by being described as “conciliation.” To conciliate is defined as “to gain, or win over; to gain the love or good will of such as have been indifferent or hostile; to pacify” When two people are persuaded to come for marriage conciliation, for example, by a divorce court judge, the first task of the counselor is to try to win their confidence if possible to such a degree that they come to desire counseling. Then the conciliation gives place to counseling in its best sense.

This winning of confidence of two previously unwilling or indifferent people requires more general skill, experience and patience, and other good qualities of personality than are even required for counseling.

A third difference between modern counseling and the older traditional methods is that the modern counselor does not feel competent or in any way disposed to judge either of the partners in conflict, or to impose his own moral values on them.

He may ask them what they think the possible consequences of any attitude or action may be, and why they would want to do what they are doing, but in general the counselor sees his function as that of looking with each of them at the problem and the whole relationship, and accepting their feelings and their attitudes, and their conduct within the law. In this way their ultimate attitudes are dictated by their own consciences and by their views about the total situation.

Modern counseling then seeks to offer a service of such a nature that people are helped to help themselves; to provide an accepting relationship of a kind that will encourage each person to express his feelings in a permissive atmosphere, and progressively to achieve better insight into many aspects of the marital relationship. In this way each of them has the opportunity to make his own decisions as to what to do about it in an atmosphere of realism rather than of distorted emotion.

Such counseling has proved itself by far the best approach to people in marital conflict, as long as it is carried out by adequately trained people of suitable maturity and emotional stability. But it is not regarded as the only solution to marital problems. It is obvious that in this field as in others “prevention is better than cure,” and modern marriage counseling is conceived as one important part of a comprehensive project for promotion of better marriage and family living.

This project includes first class universal comprehensive education and preparation for marriage and parenthood, which is so far in the earliest stages of its development, and also continuing research into marriage and family relationships, and into human relationships in general.

With this general background the question “What is marriage counseling?” might best be answered by giving a brief and rather summarized account of an actual case of a type sufficiently common to represent many cases which come to marriage counselors.

Actally this case is built up from more than one, and is sufficiently disguised as to be unrecognizable.

LET US assume you have come bouncing into the world, a brand new human male, complete with all your equipment. It may seem, even to the casual observer, that you are well fitted out, and that you have obvious attributes that your sister does not. Chances are, too, that you will be larger and heavier, which may lead you to believe that you are also stronger and more durable.This, unfortunately, is not the case.

As a human male you are the weaker of the two sexes, until now doomed to poorer health and to an earlier death. The figures are clear and convincing. In the United States the life expectancy of women is 71 years, of men 65 Vi. Women recover from diseases more easily and frequently, are physically superior to men in almost every way. They are sixteen times less likely to have color blindness, seven times less likely to have hysteria, eight times less likely to stutter, immune to hemophilia, far less subject to epilepsy and many other diseases.

Mentally, too, women are much more stable. You have Without the real power of reproduction only to take a swing through our mental hospitals to see that male patients far outnumber females. WHY?

Why is this true? You will find the answer in your chromosomes. The “Y,” or male producing sperm were pitifully neglected by nature. They contain only a niggardly portion of the rich chromosomatic load the “X” chromosomes f the female producing sperm. Briefly, in the male something has been left out.

Some have tried to shrug this off, as though a chromosome or two made little difference. They have only to look around them every day and see how tragically wrong they are. Look about you. Note with a smile, if you dare, this tatterdemalion band of human males going bravely on, its hair thinning, its whiskers growing, its paunches expanding, its nerves twitching, its arches falling, without the real power of reproduction, or the solace of motherhood. Note how bravely they stride forward, head erect, eyes or the solace of motherhood clear, and courage firm even though barren, sickly, mentally confused, and doomed to an early grave.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

Is there any way we can save these tragic figures, any way to ease their pain, calm their nerves, save their strength, or settle their stomachs?

His answer is a ringing YES!

We can help the human male and though the path is not an easy one, we can follow it, each of us, by reading and putting into effect a number of tested rules.

BEGIN NOW
It is never too early in life nor too late to begin this study. If you are a lad of five or six, having this read to you at your mother’s knee, good! Like the ballet, the violin, and the tightrope, really fine maleness should begin early. On the other hand, if you are crowding seventy, it is still not too late to add happy years to your life.

Regardless of your age, after the first few pages you will feel your load begin to lighten, your shoulders straighten, and a new look of courage come into your eyes. A paragraph or two more and you will flex your muscles quietly, still more and you may have to smother a quiet chuckle, or suppress a confident grin. These will come, we must warn you, not from amusement, but from a new assurance, and an anticipation of triumphs to come.

Our purpose, of course, is to instruct, not to amuse. Momentary laughter is of small value weighed against a happier and more abundant life.

The scraps of talk must be taken with this in mind. They are intended, like the many simple diagrams, only to illustrate difficult points. It may seem to you that they are all taken from a single real life story and so most of them are but not every incident occurred to our central character. Several have been contributed by our researchers working from Maine to California.

The author would like to make it particularly clear that the material is not autobiographical. A natural modesty prevents him from delving into the labyrinths of his own checkered career.