Treating Troubled Marital Relationships as a Mission of Marital Therapists - Term Paper Example

Relationship and Marital Therapy Introduction Maintaining a happy and healthy marriage over time demands a lot of effort, and is at times somewhat a challenging task. It is astonishing when a couple in a distressed relationship is capable of making out and mutually working out their problems and differences (Dombeck 2006). However, this process is hardly ever easy. When problems have began to become unending, each partner feels and thinks that they are deceived by the other and appeasement becomes risky. In such instances, the secured and protected refuge proffered by a therapist of marital conflict make the difference between a marriage that tries to pull through and one that fails to recover (Johnson 2004). Marital therapy is perhaps the best haven that people in distressed marital relationships can go to so as to help in the healing of their marriages. A skilled and experienced marital therapist provides support and assistance that can help doubtful detached partners to carefully deal with their problems and start the problem-solving and healing process (Parenting and Marital Advice 2009). Marriage is a continuous struggle to “relate intimately to another human being without being controlled or taken for granted” (Guerin, Fay, Burden & Kautto 1987, 3). It can be a good-humored effort that enhances both partners and cultivates their growth, or it can be a tedious effort, wherein one or both partners are persuaded that their emotional, as well as their physical, survival is threatened (Guerin et al. 1987). The objective of this study is to review and discuss concepts of marital relationship and therapy. First, the paper will discuss the notion of marital conflict and marital therapy. Then, two of the integral concepts in the conceptualization and treatment of relational and marital conflict, namely, loss and context/attachment history, will be discussed. Finally, the paper will discuss how marital therapists could integrate the concepts of attachment and separation anxiety in their treatment plans. Marital Conflict Marital conflict has been defined as “situations in which partners experience communication and problem-solving difficulties, find it difficult to work together, and have difficulty accepting each other’s differences” (Mead 2002, 299). It has been discovered that troubled couples interchange lesser gratifying behaviors and more unsympathetic behaviors than do non-troubled couples, and this is valid for verbal communications and for the interchange of other types of reinforcements (Shaddock 2000). It has also been discovered that troubled partners are more likely than non-troubled partners to respond to each other’s exercise of unresponsive stimuli and to be more responsive to their partner’s exercise of unsympathetic stimuli. It has been proposed that only some marital difficulties submit impulsively (Mead 2002). Treatment for marital conflict beset with unsympathetic stimuli, for mild to moderate, has been proved to be effective. Several explanations for marital treatment not having more long-term effects have been proposed, including permanent attachment problems and difficult interpersonal differences (Johnson et al. 2001). Similarly, as argued by the behavioral perspective, deteriorations may be an input of the return of environmental situations that are identical to the situations that originally formed and sustained the maladjusted behavior. Regardless of the cause, it appears obvious that marital therapy is nothing like a surgical treatment (Johnson et al. 2001). If the doctor removes a tonsil, s/he can quite well assure that the patient will never again have tonsillitis. But it is different in marital therapy. As a result, marital conflict seems to become more persistent than severe (Perry 2009). The probable persistent nature of marital conflict has repercussions for treatment success. If marital conflict is more persistent than severe, then it appears irrational to suppose that treatment will have long-term effects (Shaddock 2000). Hence, future studies may focus on assisting couples in mending their relations and to cope with marital conflict eventually. Furthermore, research may concentrate on treatments for enhancing success with more seriously troubled couples and matching treatments to some co-occurring difficulties, such as anxiety, depression, and others (Shaddock 2000). Marital Therapy There is already sufficient evidence to remove some of the most recognized clichés of marital therapy, such as what makes up a ‘healthy’ marriage. A good marital relationship, according to the traditional therapeutic knowledge, is initially, profoundly well-matched: the partners do not essentially have to belong to the same class, religious, and ethnic background, although it helps, but they should have the same opinion on valuable things, such as money, sex, child-rearing, and religion and should be capable of agreeing on about everything else (Mead 2002). But it does not imply that this couple does not quarrel; they do quarrel but their arguments rarely get inconsiderate and harsh. When they argue, they instinctively and without encouragement do precisely what therapists recommend less well-matched and more distressed couples to do: make out conflicts, recognize differences responsively but deal with them openly and peacefully before they deteriorate into dirty quarrels (Mead 2002). Traditional knowledge says they listen civilly and understand each other’s standpoint; they do not disrupt much and if neither can convince the other to a particular issue, they discuss a practical compromise. Unsurprisingly, these couples appear and sound much like conversing psychotherapists (Johnson 2004). Certainly, a ‘healthy’ marriage as described above and referred to as the validating form of marriage, normally works quite well. Thus, it is unsurprising that a broad array of marital therapies and theories insight-oriented, psycho-educational, behavioral are directed toward getting all distressed marital relationships to evaluate this pattern (Johnson 2004). Undoubtedly, perceiving this form of marriage as the ideal has made simpler the tasks of marital therapists; their basic objective has been to assist discontentedly married couples in returning to the bottom-line harmony in relationship they are all believed to have begin with, if the marital relationship was ever workable in the first place (Johnson 2004). Integral Concepts in the Conceptualization and Treatment of Marital Conflict: Loss and Attachment History It was discovered in a number of studies that marital conflict is linked to unhealthy mental condition, even after controlling for the quality of the marital relationship. Davila, Bradbury, Cohan and Tochluk (1997 as cited in Johnson 2004), in a prospective research, discovered that for recently married wives, stress in marriage was linked to their husbands’ lack of social support, and this was in turn linked to period of stress, indicating a cyclic bond between feelings of loss and depression among wives. Hooley and Teasdale (1989 as cited in Johnson 2004) discovered that expressed harmful emotion, marital grief, and wives’ views of disapproval from their partners predicted deterioration into feelings of loss. Evidently, marital grief is linked to symptoms of feelings of loss, particularly for wives. Aside from the feeling of loss emanating from stress and lack of social support from one spouse, there is a feeling of loss that is so powerful that it can decisively tear apart a good marriage: illness. “There is no love without loss” (Walsh & McGoldrick 1991, 30). Everyone should wrestle with the reality of their own mortality and the awareness that intimacy transpires in the face of ultimate loss. Severe situations confront both spouses with a forceful reminder of these existing problems: “When we are young and in good health, we tend to minimize and defer these issues until later” (Rolland 1994, 327). People’s cultural avoidance of these fundamental realities cultivates forms of intimacy grounded on denial of loss, unrealistically dismissing them to ‘later life’ and a ‘peaceful death’ (Rolland 1994, 327). Frequently the detection of a severe situation can reinforce feelings related with loss in such a startling manner that couples respond either by detaching themselves from one another or sticking to each other in a complicated way (Rolland 1994). Both spouses may attempt to pull away from the other if the marital relationship becomes a regular reminder of these common problems relating to loss. Being a marital therapist, receiving therapy, or witnessing the obvious indications of emotional pressure or illness can become powerful signs of loss (Rolland 1994). Nevertheless, presence of feelings of loss in a marital relationship can be partly explained by marital therapists through the application of the attachment theory. John Bowlby’s attachment theory, which is at present one of the most well-founded theories of marital relationships, highlights the tendency of people to build and sustain powerful intimate relationships to significant others. Almost every attribute of human experience is directly affected by the quality of these relationships (Johnson et al. 2001). A strong attachment bond in couples is a dynamic, intimate, mutual relationship in which spouses jointly receive and provide affection, security, and comfort. These ties are not merely grounded on ‘reciprocal altruism’ but, instead, on a “profound psychological and physiological interdependence” (Johnson, Makinen, & Millikin 2001, 145). Theorists of attachment have emphasized that, possibly due to this interdependence, episodes in which one spouse reacts or fails to react during critical need appear to affect the strength of an attachment bond disproportionately (Johnson 2004). Many couples enter marital therapy not just in misery but also with the objective of bringing finality to incidents which brought about feelings of loss or even depression, hence reviving lost trust and affection. During the process of marital therapy, though, these incidents, which have been referred to as ‘attachment injuries’, frequently resurface in a dynamic and deeply emotional way, much like a disturbing memory, and devastate the injured spouse (Johnson et al. 2001). When the other spouse fails to react in a constructive, supportive way, or when the injured partner cannot admit such encouragement, the injury becomes difficult. As the couple undergoes failure in their efforts to overcome such injuries and to amend the ties between them, their depression and disaffection intensify (Johnson et al. 2001). Hence a spouse’s detachment from his wife while she endures a miscarriage, and also his consequent reluctance to talk about this event, becomes a chronic focus of the communication of the couple and impedes the growth of new, more constructive relationships (Johnson et al. 2001). Treatment Plan: Attachment and Separation and/or Anxiety Theories in Marital Therapy Attachment theory as an idea has significant implications for researchers and marital therapists. This idea has therapeutic value in that it may assist in clarifying why a number of couples have problems responding to therapy. This kind of incidents also has to be dealt with and resolved to avoid deterioration after therapy. The explanation of such incidents also enables for the development of an organized groups of interventions for their recovery (Johnson 2004). For researchers, the explanation of particular issues and undertakings in therapy allows investigation of fundamental aspects in the change process. When the injury resolution process has been worked out, research can resort to explaining the aspects that expect a spouse’s becoming trapped in such injuries and achieving therapy resolution (Johnson 2004). Furthermore, it is important for marital therapists to understand and appreciate the use of attachment theory and separation and/or anxiety theory in marital therapy. Relational aspects, such as the inflexibility of unconstructive interactional cycles and the presence of several form of secured emotional commitment, could be determinants of marital therapy success. Individual factors could be particular experiences of deception, for instance sexual harassment in childhood has a tendency to make problems of dependency and trust especially difficult and the quality of working frameworks of self and other in most cases (Shaddock 2000). Increasingly, the most excellent psychological theories of marital conflict apply attachment theory or separation and/or anxiety concepts. A developmental theory that regards divorce to be a major threat to spouse’s personal growth and development is, hence, more and more relevant for knowledge of the growing clinical and actuarial evidence with regard to marital relationship and therapy (Shaddock 2000). Meanwhile, if attachment behaviors fall short in stirring up encouraging responsiveness and relationship from attachment figures, a typical expression of angry disapproval, dependency, despair, and depression takes place, resulting eventually in indifference or detachment. A natural response to such loss of attachment is depression (Johnson 2004). Bowlby argued that anger in intimate relationships is usually an effort to make contact or interact with a remote attachment figure and differentiated between the ‘anger of hope and the anger of despair’ (Johnson 2004, 27), which becomes the distressed and oppressive. A marital therapist should view the essential tragedies of depression such as demand-withdraw, as deviations on the premise of separation anxiety (Johnson 2004, 27). Attachment theory and separation and/or anxiety theory suggests that marital therapy does not always bring about the formation of a more intimate and attached relationship (Johnson et al. 2001). Infrequently, the process of explaining the interaction cycles and the core emotions encourages couples to separate, or to live together in a similar and somewhat separate way. Afterwards the situation at the end of the therapy appears quite different. The depressing cycle has been adjusted and the couple does not blame each other anymore or caught in painful standoffs, where one attempts to gratify while the other maintains his/her distance (Johnson et al. 2001). However, in these instances, the positive cycles are much more limited and lead to peaceful effective compromises, rather than an attached relationship (Johnson et al. 2001). For instance, the married couple may have the same opinion that they are not fit as spouses, but they still wish to live together for several years to fulfill their responsibility as parents. They know that at that time they will be free to fulfill their own objectives and pursue other relationships. If separation stirs up severe anxiety in one or both of the spouses, the marital therapist should make use of suggestive responding to assist such spouses in confronting their fears and guide them to talk about these anxieties with each other and ask for each other’s support in coping with them in a regular basis. In general, if the therapy process has been successful, the spouses confront the end of the therapy sessions with anxiety, but they also become confident and in control of their intimate relationship. They are ready to depart from the sheltered haven of therapy and try on their own. Conclusion Treating troubled marital relationships is a constant struggle, and it also can be either good-natured and heartening or fatal and strenuous. Therapists usually whine about the predicament of listening to the marital problems of couples and the despair in seeing them trapped in the same place every day. But the appeal of helping marital partners sort out their problems is complemented by the intellectual pleasure of verifying and appraising the diverse marital therapy interventions that have developed throughout time. The beliefs, values, and attitudes that people hold about marital relationship and the family are important in sharing people’s view of the situations they confront. Some understanding or awareness of their validity and historical background is important of marital therapy approaches toward marital conflicts is to be successful. Even though people are concerned with marital conflicts, these are usually directly entwined with the foundation of family institution and of society. Undoubtedly, several marital conflicts come to the attention of marital therapists merely as an outcome of family problems, and marital therapy has been concerned with families and their difficulties since it originally surfaced out of the drastic economic and social changes of the twentieth century. The next mission of marital therapists is to examine the problems that a number of the most vital of these changes have produced for marital relationship and the family. References Dombeck, Mark. (2006). Marital Therapy in Perspective. Retrieved August 20, 2009, from http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=9460&cn=289 Guerin, P. Jr., Leo Fay, Susan Burden & Gilbert Kautto. The Evaluation and Treatment of Marital Conflict: A Four-Stage Approach. New York: Basic Books, 1987. Johnson, S., J.A. Makinen & J.W. Millikin. 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