Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 20, 1992 TAG: 9201200018
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
BACK TO BLISS
Though the divorce rate in the United States hovers around 50 percent, many marriage and family experts say the trend is slowly reversing itself."Couples are now working a lot harder to save their relationships," said a therapist at Woodbridge Counseling Services, Sharon Levine Alpert. " . . . Family has become very important to people."
Alpert, the author of "From Boredom to Bliss, How to Put the Honeymoon Back in Your Marriage" (Price, Stern & Sloan, Los Angeles), is researching a new book on family life. She frequently conducts workshops entitled "Making a Good Relationship Even Better."
In a recent interview, Alpert, who celebrated her 30th wedding anniversary last summer, talked about how counseling can help all marriages, not just the troubled ones. Here are some excerpts:
Q: How would you describe a good marriage?
A: A really good relationship is one where a couple is getting a large percentage of their needs met. There should be, let's say, 60 percent compatibility of meeting each other's needs, but then the other 40 percent has to be a successful solving of those areas of incompatibility.
Q: What are the warning signs of trouble in a marriage?
A: When a couple is constantly bickering, fighting over little things, little issues, they find themselves feeling lonely in the relationship.
Q: What types of problems do couples most often bring to you?
A: One basic issue is, who has the power and control in the relationship. People don't recognize that as the problem. It may be presented in different ways - maybe sexual problems, money issues, disagreements about child rearing or division of labor in the household. . . . What they are really saying is, who makes the decisions, who has the control in the relationship?
The other big problem area for couples is the battle between intimacy and autonomy, the struggle to maintain a proper balance between being separate and autonomous and yet being part of this unit. . . . In many cases we tend to unconsciously choose mates who make us feel whole instead of having the real feelings of completeness come from within ourselves.
Q: How does counseling help to resolve these issues?
A: The deeper issues in a relationship often come out of the couple's childhoods. The first step for them is to go back and look at the patterns in their families and try to understand why they behave the way they do.
What therapy is about is helping the couple . . . divorce the old dysfunctional patterns and create new patterns of interaction that are more healthy.
Q: And how do they do that?
A: I ask them if they're willing to work at least 10 weeks on developing some very important basic skills, to be able to learn how to communicate more effectively, but also to be able to tolerate the intimacy that a good relationship needs.
Q: What do they do to develop those skills?
A: One [task] is to spend at least one night a week with each other just talking and listening. For instance, for the wife to talk for half an hour or 20 minutes about anything that is on her mind, and for the husband to listen, and not interrupt. One important thing is not to talk about dissatisfaction with the marriage or anything to do with hot issues.
The wife can talk about her own thoughts, dreams, desires, anything that isn't a hot issue, and then the husband, for the next half-hour, to do the same. It gives them the time to hear what's on the other person's mind, to experience that person's separateness and yet be together, so that helps with the intimacy and autonomy issue as well.
Another task is to focus less on the negative and more on the positive. It can change your whole outlook, but it really takes practice to do that. I ask couples to do a positive affirmation each day, to look at their partner and tell them something that they've done that pleases them, even if it's as small as walking the dog or taking out the garbage without being asked. Tell them that you noticed that, and that it was helpful to you and that you appreciated it.
I also ask couples to do a non-verbal positive affirmation each day. It could be just to give a pat on the face, a gentle little hug, a touching of the hand at breakfast, whatever.
Q: Can a marriage survive the trauma of infidelity?
A: I think affairs are very destructive to a relationship, because it erodes a very important element, which is trust. In order to be really giving and caring in a relationship, you have to feel that you trust that person, that that person is going to be there for you. But marriages do survive affairs. What has to happen is that the trust has to be rebuilt. It's a slow process for the other partner to feel that it's safe to be vulnerable again in a relationship with someone who has hurt you so very deeply.
Q: How can a couple make a good relationship even better?
A: What I try to do with couples is have them get in touch with the thing about their partner which they found so attractive in the first place. I think we tend to forget that when we get caught up with the everyday problems of living.
I think there's not enough fun in relationships. People are so burdened, especially with the economic conditions today, that you have to take time to put the spark back in the relationship. You can do little things, like save a special night for just the two of you and make a date to go out.
Q: Do you see the depressed economy creating either new or increased problems for couples?
A: Of course, marriages do suffer from this extra stress of financial problems people are having now. With extra stresses, your defenses go down, and whatever problems you have seem to exacerbate. It's important for couples to realize that these are difficult times for everybody, and for people not to feel that it's a personal failure.
Q: What is your advice to couples contemplating marriage?
A: Don't go into it thinking that this is going to be a perfect union. Understand that marriage takes work, but it can be work that is very pleasurable, that helps you grow individually as well as together. Make sure your expectations are realistic. It's a wonderful thing when a marriage works well, but I think you have to understand that it just doesn't happen automatically.