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Does Marriage Counseling Work
When considering marriage counseling, it's difficult not to wonder whether seeing a marriage counselor will actually work. This article provides some objective information based on data obtained from a national survey of marriage and family counselors and their clients. Also presented are several interesting opinions provided by individuals who have actually been through marriage counseling and were asked to comment on whether or not seeing a marriage counselor proved effective in helping their relationship.
An honest marriage counselor would agree that the motivation of a couple may be the single most important factor in determining the success of marriage counseling. It's unlikely that even a brilliant counselor would be able to save a marriage where one spouse has already decided upon a divorce, and a mediocre marriage counselor can probably help a couple who are utterly committed towards making their marriage work. With this in mind, research has been made in an effort to determine, on a more scientific level, the effectiveness of couples counseling.
In an article published by Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, clients of marriage and family counselors from 15 different states reported on their experience with counseling. The findings indicated that marriage and family counselors treated a wide range of issues in relatively short-term fashion, couple and family therapy are briefer than individual therapy, and that client satisfaction and functional improvement are quite high.
(*) Specifically, of clients from 526 marriage and family counselors in 15 different states:
98.1% rated services good or excellent
97.1% got the kind of help they desired
91.2% were satisfied with the amount of help they received
93% said they were helped in dealing more effectively with problems
94.3% would return to the same therapist in the future
96.9% would recommend their therapist to a friend
97.4% were generally satisfied with the service they received
63.4% reported improved physical health
54.8% reported improvement in functioning at work
73.7% indicated improvement in childrenÂ’s behavior
58.7% showed improvement in childrenÂ’s school performance
(*) Excerpted from "Clinical Practice Patterns of Marriage and Family Therapists: A National Survey of Therapists and Their Clients", Journal of Marital and Family Therapy--Volume 22, No. 1
While the above study provides raw data that supports the effectiveness of marriage and family counseling, a very interesting discussion on the question "Does Couples Counseling Work" from a public forum devoted to this topic offers a less clinical, but still positive view. Based on what seems to be a very honest and frank discussion among couples "who've been there," the answer to the question of whether or not marriage counseling is effective is a positive one. Read these posts on the Berkley Parents Network.
Regardless of the studies and opinions which seem to support the effectiveness of marriage / couples counseling, there are those who question it's effectiveness. An article on the about.com portal, had this to say:
The science of marital counseling is being studied in great detail these days. Research is showing that it is not as effective as people think, that women seem to get more from it than men, and that it might not have a lasting effect on the couple's marriage.
What type of couple gets the most from couple therapy? The answer is young, non-sexist, still in love, open couples.
Which couples receive the least from therapy? Some factors that can make couple therapy unsuccessful include couples who wait too long before seeking help, and often one or the other is set on getting a divorce and is closed to any suggestions that may save the marriage.
Excerpted from the marriage.about.com portal
Unfortunately, the data supporting the above-mentioned research is not specifically cited in the article. The article seems to imply that couples who seek counseling because they want their relationship to work are more likely to succeed with marriage counseling than are those who enter into counseling with the (perhaps hidden) truth that they already want out.
BONUS : Doing The Stag Do The Modern Way!
In a time when football stars don alice bands to offset their fresh blonde highlights and rockers turn to macrobiotics and prune juice rather than whiskey and hookers, the stag weekend may well be the last bastion of old school masculinity. Amalia Illgner takes a look at the modern incarnation of this rite of passage and discovers there's a lot more to the modern stag weekend than just a boozy night of bonding and bristols.
Back when Michael Caine was a sex symbol, Michael Jackson still black, and Chicken Tikka was considered the height of culinary chic; the perfect stag night simply consisted of a case of beer, your best mates, a fully loaded Polaroid, and an amateur stripper named Bambi. How times have changed...
According to the office for national statistics we're now far less likely to get married in the first place and if we do get dragged down the aisle it's far later than ever before. In fact for men the average age has crept up to an all time high of 30 and a half years, so there's little wonder that it's not just a small cause for celebration when two people in this Bridget Jones world manage to step away from their work stations, microwave-meals-for-one and eBay auctions and actually commit to each another.
What this means for the stag weekend is that generally couples have more money to spend on their respective hen and stag weekends and what that means is that the stag weekends are getting more elaborate, adventurous and action packed. In other words the ante is being upped along with the expectations. Forget sitting on your rear and ordering the seafood special at your local, the typical 21st century stag weekend consists of action packed days filled with paintball army combat style, canyoning, quad biking, Munich beer halls, Estonian feasts and coasteering. For those of you who think crossing Piccadilly Circus during peak hour is about as rugged terrain as you've ever seen, coasteering is the fine art of scrambling around a coastline and leaping off cliffs into wave lapped coves below. It's about as close to becoming Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as anyone who works in an office is going to get. Ever. And the guys are loving it. In fact, coasteering - as well as the trusty faithfulls like paintball and quad biking - is fast becoming the new black when it comes to planning the ultimate stag weekend. There truly is nothing like getting a bunch of lads together adding a strong element of fear, the smell of competition and the threat of ritual humiliation to bring out the dormant Evil Knieval within.
And it seems this chest beating machismo and daring even stretches into the cultural realm as scores of quintessential British stags are downloading Google earth, thumbing through a phrase book and heading off shore to experience far flung destinations for their weekend of freedom. The foreign office released a detailed survey at the end of last year and found that a staggering 70 per cent of young Brits "now prefer to travel abroad for hen and stag parties". That sure is a giant leap from our parents' night out in Bournemouth. And perched at the top of the destination pack is undeniable the cool of Eastern Europe. Riga. Vilnius. Tallinn. Bratislava. Moscow. They're so cool they're hot. The Iron Curtain is cool and the Eastern Bloc is rocking. This is principally from the recent expansion of the European Union making costly and irritating visas at thing of the past and the fact that flights are now cheaper than a ticket to see Rod Stewart's Greatest Hits tour at Wembley. And let's not forget the exchange rate. Ah the sweet exchange rate, where often one humble quid will be enough to buy more than one pint of quality local brew. This point is often argument enough to entice punters from expensive metro poles like London (where one quid may buy you a copy of The Sun and half a mars bar).
So 21st Century Stags unite! The options are as endless as your imagination. That really is the easy part. Now it's just a matter of convincing her to marry you...
In a time when football stars don alice bands to offset their fresh blonde highlights and rockers turn to macrobiotics and prune juice rather than whiskey and hookers, the stag weekend may well be the last bastion of old school masculinity. Amalia Illgner takes a look at the modern incarnation of this rite of passage and discovers there's a lot more to the modern stag weekend than just a boozy night of bonding and bristols.
Back when Michael Caine was a sex symbol, Michael Jackson still black, and Chicken Tikka was considered the height of culinary chic; the perfect stag night simply consisted of a case of beer, your best mates, a fully loaded Polaroid, and an amateur stripper named Bambi. How times have changed...
According to the office for national statistics we're now far less likely to get married in the first place and if we do get dragged down the aisle it's far later than ever before. In fact for men the average age has crept up to an all time high of 30 and a half years, so there's little wonder that it's not just a small cause for celebration when two people in this Bridget Jones world manage to step away from their work stations, microwave-meals-for-one and eBay auctions and actually commit to each another.
What this means for the stag weekend is that generally couples have more money to spend on their respective hen and stag weekends and what that means is that the stag weekends are getting more elaborate, adventurous and action packed. In other words the ante is being upped along with the expectations. Forget sitting on your rear and ordering the seafood special at your local, the typical 21st century stag weekend consists of action packed days filled with paintball army combat style, canyoning, quad biking, Munich beer halls, Estonian feasts and coasteering. For those of you who think crossing Piccadilly Circus during peak hour is about as rugged terrain as you've ever seen, coasteering is the fine art of scrambling around a coastline and leaping off cliffs into wave lapped coves below. It's about as close to becoming Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as anyone who works in an office is going to get. Ever. And the guys are loving it. In fact, coasteering - as well as the trusty faithfulls like paintball and quad biking - is fast becoming the new black when it comes to planning the ultimate stag weekend. There truly is nothing like getting a bunch of lads together adding a strong element of fear, the smell of competition and the threat of ritual humiliation to bring out the dormant Evil Knieval within.
And it seems this chest beating machismo and daring even stretches into the cultural realm as scores of quintessential British stags are downloading Google earth, thumbing through a phrase book and heading off shore to experience far flung destinations for their weekend of freedom. The foreign office released a detailed survey at the end of last year and found that a staggering 70 per cent of young Brits "now prefer to travel abroad for hen and stag parties". That sure is a giant leap from our parents' night out in Bournemouth. And perched at the top of the destination pack is undeniable the cool of Eastern Europe. Riga. Vilnius. Tallinn. Bratislava. Moscow. They're so cool they're hot. The Iron Curtain is cool and the Eastern Bloc is rocking. This is principally from the recent expansion of the European Union making costly and irritating visas at thing of the past and the fact that flights are now cheaper than a ticket to see Rod Stewart's Greatest Hits tour at Wembley. And let's not forget the exchange rate. Ah the sweet exchange rate, where often one humble quid will be enough to buy more than one pint of quality local brew. This point is often argument enough to entice punters from expensive metro poles like London (where one quid may buy you a copy of The Sun and half a mars bar).
So 21st Century Stags unite! The options are as endless as your imagination. That really is the easy part. Now it's just a matter of convincing her to marry you...
