If either spouse is uncomfortable with the way a counselor is handling their problems, they should find another counselor. The entire message of my newest book, He Wins, She Wins is to find ways that both spouses can be enthusiastic about the way their relationship is turning out. This counselor is not achieving that objective for you. You are becoming victimized by this counselor. I would advise you to avoid any further sessions, and read He Wins, She Wins together.

Best wishes,
Dr. Harley

(12:58)

Rohan: Another point that you kept mentioning in your book is that people go to counselors too late. Do you feel that this is restricted to marriages alone, or is it just that we don�t like seeking outside help? Do you feel people are more open to counseling today than they were ten years ago?

Dr. Harley: The problem with marriage counseling is that there are so many bad marriage counselors out there. In 1965, I read an article that said that only 25% of people who actually went to marriage counselors felt that the counseling did them any good. An equal amount, 25%, felt that counseling actually hurt their marriage. There was a 1995 consumer�s report that was done where out of all the mental health counseling that is available, marriage counseling scored the least effective. Part of the problem is that most people that actually go to a marriage counselor don�t get any help. And then they tell their friends that it really didn�t help them. Their parents went to a marriage counselor and ended up getting divorced. So when they hear the advice that they should see a marriage counselor they say that marriage counselors can do more harm than good, and they don�t know how it�s going to turn out.

Part of the reason that people don�t see marriage counselors as often as they should is that the marriage counselors aren�t very effective in helping them overcome their problems. What we do at Marriage Builders which is an extremely important service, is we provide counseling without you having to see a counselor. We do this in a variety of ways. If you go to the marriagebuilders.com website, you will see a host of articles; you�ll see two-a-day columns. You�ll see a forum where you can join in and discuss your problems. Joyce and I have a daily radio show that we do. This is all free of charge. So you can sort of tip your toe in the water and kind of see how you feel about it before you actually commit yourself to going into a waiting room and sitting there wondering what the counselor is going to be doing with you.

We have an approach to saving marriages that really doesn�t commit anyone to anything, and by doing that we�re actually reaching millions of people all over the world. We have people in Singapore calling us and writing to us on a regular basis. We have people from India, China, Africa, and all over the world who we reach because we don�t require them to do anything but learn. We want them learning, that�s it. It�s kind of like what you�re doing. You want people to learn. That�s what we�re offering. Here is a learning experience in how to have a great marriage. Use your own judgment to see whether you think it�s worthwhile and it didn�t cost you anything to find out.

As a clinical psychologist who has been in direct therapy with 50,000 individuals and supervised over 600 counselors, I have not found that resolving issues of the past does much to help people deal with issues of the present. In most cases I've witnessed, it makes matters worse because it drags the most unpleasant experiences of the past into the present. I know that my perspective is in conflict with many therapists who are trained to treat the past before they can treat the present, but I have yet to see any convincing evidence that this approach is more effective than letting the past stay in the past. My personal experience is that dredging up the past actually increases the risk of suicide and other dangerous symptoms of mental disorders. Another important reason that I am opposed to bringing up issues of the past is that it wastes time. When you could be forming an effective plan and putting the plan into motion to resolve an issue of the present, you spend months, and even years focused on the past while the problems of the present keep building up, eventually burying the client.

In your situation, I strongly recommend that you not waste your time talking about the past. And don't try analyzing your husband. I know that his affair was a terrible shock to your system, and you want to feel closure. You have been terribly disillusioned by what he did, but the best you can do under the circumstances is look to the future instead of the past. Don't discuss the past with your husband or anyone else for a while, and see if you don't agree with me that it helps improve your relationship and it also causes you to be more relaxed. Focusing on the past causes depression, while focusing on the future with an eye to making it successful causes optimism and gives you energy.
http://forum.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2413831#Post2413831

"Some counselors think it's a good idea to "resolve issues of the past" by talking about them week after week, month after month, year after year. It keeps these counselors in business, but does nothing to resolve the issue. In fact, it usually makes their poor clients chronically depressed.

My experience as a Clinical Psychologist has proven to me that dredging up unpleasant experiences of the past merely brings the unhappiness of the past into the present. The problems of the present are difficult enough to solve without spending time and energy trying to resolve issues of the past, which are essentially unresolvable. You can make your future happy, but you can't do a thing about bad experiences of the past, except think and talk about them -- and that makes the bad experiences of the past, bad experiences of the present." Dr. Willard Harley

An analysis of the wayward spouse's childhood or emotional state of mind in an effort to discover why he or she would have an affair is distracting and unnecessary. It takes precious time away from finding the real solutions. I know why people have affairs: We are all wired for it. Given certain conditions, we would all do it. Given other conditions, however, none of us would do it. So the goal of the first step is to discover the conditions that made the affair possible and eliminate them.

One of the reasons I'm not so keen on dredging up the past as a part of therapy is that it brings up memories that carry resentment along with them. If I'm not careful, a single counseling session can open up such a can of worms that the presenting problem gets lost in a flood of new and painful memories. If the goal of therapy is to "resolve" every past issue, that seems to me to be a good way to keep people coming for therapy for the rest of their lives. That's because it's an insurmountable goal. We simply cannot resolve everything that's ever bothered us.

Instead, I tend to focus my attention on the present and the future, because they are what we can all do something about. The past is over and done with. Why waste our effort on the past when the future is upon us. Granted, it's useful to learn lessons from the past, but if we dwell on the past, we take our eyes off the future which can lead to disaster.

I personally believe that therapy should focus most attention, not on the past, but on ways to make the future sensational.

I am adding an article about the success rate of Marriage Builders.

Effective Marriage Counseling:

When I found that the model I've developed had helped over 90% of those I was counseling, I gave up my career as a college professor and started counseling full-time. At the time, I didn't assume that it would save all of the marriages it seemed to help, because I felt there were factors beyond a couple's control. But after 35 years of experience with this model, I'm not convinced that it works with 100% of couples who follow it. I've yet to witness one couple out of the tens of thousands I've seen, that did not experience a healthy and happy marriage by following this model. Personally, I feel it's the only answer to the question, how can a couple have a great marriage for life?

But it's very difficult to prove that one model of marital satisfaction is superior to another. The ultimate test is to randomly assign couples to various models and to measure their marital satisfaction after the provisions of each model have been implemented.

The training of therapists is a huge problem: How can we be sure that the therapist assigned to each model was properly trained? And there's also the problem of representation and random assignment: Does the group of volunteer couples represent the population at large? And is the assignment to treatment groups really random? There's also the ethical problem of assigning couples to a control group where they receive no effective treatment. When they divorce, does the researcher bear any responsibility? Finally, if someone who has a stake in the outcome does the research, it usually shows that their approach is best. Shouldn't studies of alternative models of marital satisfaction be conducted by those neutral to the outcome?

My own personal experience led me to the model I've been using for the past 35 years. But that's not proof of it's superiority over other models. What I need is objective studies conducted by those who have no bias that compare this model to others. That's hard to find even among those who have published hundreds of articles on martial therapy.

But I can direct you to three studies that support my enthusiasm. They all deal with my book, His Needs, Her Needs, the popular application of my model, and the effect it has on couples that read it.

The readers of Marriage Partnership Magazine were asked which self-help book on marriage helped their marriages the most. In that survey, His Needs, Her Needs came out on top. I didn't know that the survey was even being conducted, so when I called the editor after the results came in, I was curious to know more. He told me that it not only was the top choice, but it was far ahead of second place (Ron R. Lee. Best Books for a Better Marriage: Reader's Survey . Marriage Partnership Magazine, Spring 1998).

In a national survey that I sponsored, people were asked if any self-help book on marriage solved their marital problems. Out of 57 books that were read, only three were reported to have actually solved marital problems. The three were the Bible, James Dobson's Love for a Lifetime, and His Needs, Her Needs (Lynn Hanacek Gravel. Americans and Marriage: National Survey of US Adults. Barna Research Group, 2001).

Finally, five out of six couples that read His Needs Her Needs were found to experience significant improvement in marital satisfaction (Julie D. Braswell. The Impact of Reading a Self-Help Book on the Topic of Gender Differences on One's Perceived Quality of Marriage. Doctoral Dissertation, 1998, Azusa Pacific University.

Granted, these findings are not conclusive evidence that the model I use is superior to every other model of marital satisfaction. But when you find one that works for every couple that actually follows it, you have to be impressed. And coming as I did from almost zero effectiveness to almost complete success, I can't begin to tell you how convinced I am that it's the solution to a very difficult problem we face in our society.

When a couple gives a coach the right to direct them toward recovery, and are willing to follow the coach�s orders, the couple will see rapid improvement�if the coach�s plan actually works.
When I coach a couple, I let them know from the beginning that I expect them to follow my assignments. If they fail to follow them, I focus on their failure rather than on the marital problems themselves, until they comply.