The Marriage Savers

By Richard Corliss and Sonja Steptoe

The cynic Ambrose Bierce defined love as "a temporary insanity, curable by marriage." It's truer to say the first blush of love is a vacation from reality; marriage is the job you return to. You may like your job, even love it. But you have to work to keep it.

In modern America, there's no shortage of professionals ready and willing to pitch in with the task. In fact, over the past 40 years, the couples-counseling business has exploded. In 1966 there were only about 1,800 experts practicing in the field, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. In 2001 the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy listed 47,111 marriage and family therapists in the U.S. and estimated that they treat 863,700 couples a year.

Yet how many were helped? The growth of the marriage-industrial complex has not done much to slow the national divorce epidemic. In 1965 the divorce rate was 2.5 per 1,000 people; it reached a high in 1979 and 1981, with 5.3 per 1,000. Today the figure hovers at about 4.0, pretty much where it has been for five years. In some quarters, the suspicion has lingered that the therapist's job is to validate a patient's complaints and act as ministers in reverse, putting couples asunder. "The idea of therapist neutrality often came down to support for breaking up," says William Doherty, director of the Marriage and Family Therapy Program at the University of Minnesota. And therapists weren't appreciated for it. In a 1995 Consumer Reports poll, couples seeking therapy gave marriage counselors low grades for competence.

Lately, however, a new breed of therapist and "marriage educator" is shaking up the profession. These therapists reject the passive, old-style therapies that emphasize personal growth over shared commitment and take a more aggressive, hands-around-the-neck approach to saving marriages. "They feel therapists have been too quick in calling an end to relationships and having people move on," says University of Chicago sociology professor Linda Waite. The new breed also advocates premarital skill training and early intervention in problems--learning the ropes before tying the knot. "It's like a vaccination," says Waite, "instead of having to do surgery when something goes wrong."

The new, pro-marriage generation "is young, far more conservative and more religious" than traditional therapists, says Doherty, author of Take Back Your Marriage. "This generation has seen the fruits of the divorce revolution. And they don't think they have to be value-neutral about it." They also tend to be pragmatists. Many of them favor short-term, low-cost interventions based on methods with a record of proved success.

These qualities have drawn the support of religious leaders and conservative politicians, including First Husband George W. Bush, who would like to make marriage education for young couples part of welfare reform. "This is a social movement," says Doherty, "that involves government, church, professional and lay people." How do these therapies and lessons in connection work? A look at some methods of the movement:

--GOING TO "PREP" SCHOOL

Prep, short for prevention and relationship Enhancement Program, aims to be the industry leader in research-based couples education. Its tenets, which emphasize structured communication, are ingredients in a variety of programs for teens, pre-marrieds and long-marrieds.

Rod Grimm Lewis and his wife Victoria paid $400 to attend a two-day PREP seminar in Los Angeles in a final attempt to save their 28-year-old marriage. "I think this will help," says Victoria, the more eager of the two. "I think of it as chemotherapy." Rod figures he's being a good sport. "I came because she asked me to," he says. "I'm about 5% of the problem, and she's 95%." Marc Sadoff, the workshop leader, says, "It's good to hear that you can acknowledge you're 5%. So many people can't see any role in the problem."

Positive communication, like Sadoff's comment, is the backbone of PREP, developed in the 1980s by psychologists Howard Markman and Scott Stanley, co-directors of the Center for Marital and Family Studies at the University of Denver. In developing it, Markham spent years taping couples having arguments and devising ways to break bad habits. The method, which relies partly on videos of other couples using the technique, is continually tweaked in light of new research, says Stanley. "The idea was to build a program for couples that was based on sound research," he says, "rather than armchair clinical speculation."

Sadoff, a clinical social worker trained in PREP, explains the method to the Lewises and a younger couple sharing the session. They are to agree to set aside a time each week to talk over their problems. These discussions must follow certain rules, which can be posted on the refrigerator door. "The word I is allowed," Sadoff says. "You is not." The partners take turns talking, without interruption. The speaker makes brief statements, which the listener must paraphrase to show he understands what was said. There are also time-outs, which allow one partner to leave the room for an emotional break. That's a scary notion for Victoria, who says that since childhood she has never felt she could leave a heated discussion without repercussions. "Where would I go?"

Rod and Victoria give it a try. While Victoria is speaking, Rod interjects to ask a question. That's not allowed, he's told. Later he doesn't correctly paraphrase what she said. Rod tries again. When he gets it right, Victoria smiles and says, "Yes! That's good." For a moment they have connected. But Rod is struggling to remember his role, and Victoria still feels unnatural: "Does anyone really talk like this?'' Sadoff assures her she will get better with practice. He explains that, although artificial, the technique provides a safe way for couples to talk about thorny issues. "We're after progress, not perfection," he says.

Six months after the first session--and despite follow-up therapy with Sadoff--problems linger. "We tried, but the techniques just don't take care of the deeper issues," says Rod, who is thinking of ending the marriage. "The future of our relationship doesn't look good."

But many evaluators award PREP high marks. While two studies did not find it more effective than other methods, two others, involving a total of 210 couples, found that those who take PREP, either before marriage or after, have lower rates of breakup and divorce than couples who took a different training class or did nothing. Also, seven studies involving about 500 couples concluded that PREP participants had less negative communication for up to five years after the course. Men are particularly partial to the method.

Such results have made PREP popular around the world and in a wide range of settings, including U.S. military bases and churches. Oklahoma has embraced it as part of a $10 million government initiative to reduce divorce. That's how Shelitha and John Coleman Jr. came to PREP in November, in a Christianized version offered free at their church, G.A.P. [God's Apostolic Prophetic] Restoration Tabernacle in Oklahoma City. The Colemans' marriage of nearly two years was doing fine, but John's parents didn't seem to think so and were interfering. "They wanted me to have the same kind of marriage they had, where I'm the man and I run the whole show," explains John, 28. He and Shelitha, 29, needed a way to declare their independence without sounding rebellious.

PREP techniques helped them do that while improving their own communication. John's parents, says Shelitha, "were having trouble letting go. Our talk revealed some things about how they feel about seeing their children grow up and live on their own. Now all four of us are using PREP methods." The religious aspect of the program was important to the couple. "We make the word of God part of the foundation of our marriage," says John. "In terms of communicating, it shows up in principles about being honest with your partner about everything. When a difficult problem comes up, you shouldn't hide."

--LESSONS FROM THE LOVE LAB

Heinrich Heine called marriage "the high sea for which no compass has yet been invented." John Gottman figures he has found the compass. At the Gottman Institute in Seattle, a husband and wife sit in sensor-loaded chairs with wires strapped across their chests, taped to their fingertips, clipped to their earlobes. The wires are connected to an array of computerized measuring devices that will track physiological data about them. As the couple discuss a glitch in their marriage, a technician in the next room monitors the data: heart rate, sweaty palms, the speed of blood flow. Another technician watches them on a video screen, recording facial expressions, calibrating emotional vital signs of couples during actual marital conflict. Survivor, Fear Factor--that's kid stuff. This is true reality TV.

Gottman, a clinical psychologist, has essentially distilled the art of love and war--a.k.a. marriage--into a kind of science. After 30 years of such studies inside his physiology lab, nicknamed the Love Lab, Gottman's group has developed a model that he claims can assess whether a couple are on a path to dysfunction. Now when Gottman wires up therapy clients and videotapes them, "in the first three minutes of the conflict discussion," he says, "we can predict if a couple is going to divorce." He and research partner Robert Levenson of the University of California, Berkeley, found that during arguments, couples in stable relationships have five times as many positive factors present as negative ones. "In relationships that were working, even during conflict, there was a rich climate of positive things, such as love, affection, interest in one another, humor and support. Couples in unstable unions had slightly more negative factors than positive."

Conflict is endemic in a relationship, Gottman says, but adds--with peculiar precision--that "only 31% of conflicts get resolved over the course of a marriage. The other 69% are perpetual, unsolvable problems." His insight: don't bother trying to fix the unfixable. Spend your energy on selecting a mate with whom you can manage those inevitable annoyances, then learn how to manage them. To admit some problems can't be solved is the first step toward finding a larger solution. Says Gottman: "We try to build up the couple's friendship, their ability to repair conflict and to deal with their gridlock."

The Gottman technique usually involves a $495 two-day workshop, followed by nine private therapy sessions costing $1,260, which Gottman recommends as a supplement. These attempt to conquer the four most common, corrosive negative factors in unstable unions: criticism (You never ... You always ... ), defensiveness (Who me? I'm not defensive), contempt (You're too stupid to realize how defensive you are) and stonewalling (I'll just let it blow over). Gottman says 85% of stonewallers are men.

Gottman fiercely protects the privacy of his patients and does not provide names of couples to be interviewed. He says his five-year follow-up study shows that after one year, about 75% of the treated couples are happier, "[though] we haven't been able to help the other 25% calm down. They stay irritable, cranky and contemptuous."

--LET'S GET SCHNARCHED!

That cranky quarter of the peace-seeking married contingent may find a sympathetic soul in David Schnarch, author of the book Passionate Marriage and creator of the Crucible Approach to marital therapy, which upends nearly all the conventional tenets of couples counseling. He says he is the therapist of last resort for many couples who go to his Marriage and Family Health Center in Evergreen, Colo., for an intensive four-day session: "The worse shape your marriage is in, the more this is the approach of choice." Nor does he recommend that a warring couple break up--that's just "one way therapists can bury their errors."

Schnarch argues that the main issue for most troubled couples "isn't their lack of communication skills. If spouses aren't talking to each other, they are still communicating. They each know they don't want to hear what the other has to say. But communication is no virtue if you can't stand the message. We help people to stand the message." He says couples don't get that from conventional therapy, which tends to pathologize relationships rather than work with their strengths. In the Crucible system, "we don't treat people like they're sick. We speak to the best in people, not their weaknesses. We're about developing resilience and standing up for yourself." People in a troubled marriage say they have grown apart. Schnarch says it's the opposite. "They're usually locked together, emotionally fused. More attachment doesn't make people happier, and it kills sex."

Schnarch uses the word crucible in two senses: metallurgical (a strong cauldron) and metaphorical (a test or trial). Both definitions can aptly describe the state of marriage. So in his therapy it's out with the elevator-music approach to saving marriages, in with the hard rock and harsh truths. Dare to tear apart the fuzzy, flabby, ego-suppressing dual personality that is your marriage and find your inner you. That effort will create a stronger individual, one who can deal with a partner with more integrity and authenticity.

Ken Wapman, 45, manager at a Bay Area software firm, and Margee, 45, a therapist, had been married 18 years when they signed up for Schnarch's program in 2001. Busy with their jobs and three kids, their marriage was somewhere between O.K. and icky. "The relationship was sustainable but not very satisfying," says Ken. And their sex life, he says, "was like your commute. You could practically do it with your eyes closed"--er, don't a lot of people do it that way?--"but you don't really look forward to it."

The Schnarch approach immediately appealed to Ken. "I liked that he didn't pull any punches," says Ken, who used to disagree with his wife and others just for the sake of it. "I used to use more imperative-type language. Schnarch helped me to think about developing more collaborative alliances." Working with Schnarch after trying other therapists, says Ken, was like "jumping into a Ferrari compared to driving a Toyota Celica."

At first the Crucible was a bit searing for Margee. "He forces you to see things in yourself that you haven't wanted to see. I used to think Ken's job was to take care of me by knowing how I felt. That's an idea embedded in the culture." Now, Margee says, she has learned to take care of herself. "I'm not dumping anything on him; I have worked my side of the issue. There is less unresolved tension. As a result, I feel love and want to move toward him."

The benefits of the weekend (cost: $925) inspired Margee to want to follow up with the Schnarch nine-day retreat ($2,400). Ken, less enthusiastic, offered a counterproposal. "I cut a deal with her. I said I would go with her to the retreat if I could go on a two-week bike trip in the French Alps." Sounds like Schnarchian self-differentiation in action.

--MAKE AN EFT TURN ON RED

Listen to enough marriage plaints, and you may conclude that Tolstoy was wrong: unhappy families really are all alike. They argue over sex, money, the kids, the lack of free time. After five years of marriage, Tom, 39, and Suzanne, 35, sparred with increasing frequency and rancor over the usual "spending" issues. He thought she was spending too much money; she thought he wasn't spending enough time with her and their two children. The counseling they tried didn't help. "It just made the situation artificial," says Suzanne. She's the verbal one; Tom, from a military family, is the strong, silent type. "So when we would argue, he gets sort of blasted out of the water by me, and he shuts down and shuts me out. It escalated to the point where he was, like, 'I'm out of here.'"

Hoping to break the pattern, they went last May to see Douglas Tilley, a Maryland clinical social worker who uses EFT--Emotionally Focused Therapy--a procedure that, in direct opposition to Schnarch's Crucible, focuses on the emotional need for connection and closeness with your spouse. EFT was devised about 20 years ago by Sue Johnson, a professor of psychology at Ottawa University, and Les Greenberg, now a professor at York University in Canada. "In our culture, we have this funny thing where we see maturity as being independent, not needing other people," says Johnson. "But when the Twin Towers came down in New York, what did people around the world do? They held on to the people they were with, they phoned the person they depend upon the most."

Modern life has overloaded marriage, says Johnson. "Our sister no longer lives next door, our mother phones us once a month, we're too busy at work to create lasting bonds there. So we're even more dependent on our spouses than ever before." In a distressed relationship, that bond is fraying. Typically, one person criticizes and complains, while the other falls into a pattern of defending and withdrawing. "The amazingly sad thing," says Johnson, speaking of the typical pattern in couples, "is they love each other. The man loves his wife so desperately that he has put up this huge wall because he's so terrified he's going to hear that she's disappointed in him. Unless they can find a way into a more secure bond, they'll split."

To re-create a sense of connection between the couple, the EFT therapist creates an environment in which both spouses feel safe talking about their feelings, needs and fears. Like Suzanne and Tom, most couples are pleasantly surprised to hear that the feelings behind apparently hostile behavior are not rejection but a need to connect with their partner. Without that emotional security, Johnson says, all the communication skills in the world won't rebuild a relationship. "You can teach people communication skills up the wazoo," she says, "but if they're afraid of losing the person they depend on, they don't use them."

EFT is one of three approaches that the Society of Clinical Psychology, a division of the American Psychological Association, has found to be backed up by empirical research. Yet it hasn't become a mass therapy in the U.S. One reason may be that no one has yet written a best seller about EFT. And Johnson says EFT is not for abusive marriages. She once turned away a couple in which the husband was so verbally abusive that Johnson decided she shouldn't force the wife to reveal her deepest emotions. "I'm not going to encourage one person to do that when the other is standing there with a machine gun in hand," she says.

EFT seems to have disarmed Suzanne and Tom. Suzanne knows little about its theoretical bases--she calls it "EFT, EMF, whatever"--but she likes the results. "Since we have been going to therapy, Tom says a huge burden has been lifted off him. He's never talked about this kind of stuff before in his life." He now spends much more time with Suzanne and the children and less time with his buddies at the sports bar. Twice a month the couple put the children to bed and have a date--either at home, over a delicious dinner, or out at a restaurant. "We're at the point where if we're having hard times," Suzanne says, "it brings us together rather than apart."

--BRING ON THE DIVORCE BUSTERS

In a studio session to record a CD, David Roth, 39, a Chicago-area sculptor turned singer-songwriter, was having trouble with the part-time bass player--his wife Heidi Meredith. Both had grown up in broken homes and hoped to avoid separation. But after more than a decade together, they had devolved into chronic arguers: how to make the bed, how to make music. "We were in this decaying orbit that was going to crash and burn," says Roth. Says Meredith, 39: "It was never a question of our not loving each other. We would just completely butt heads, and then we would analyze it to death. That just got us in deeper."

Roth suggested they get help. Meredith, who in her day job is a psychiatrist, was skeptical. "I can't tell you how many patients I have seen who have also been in marital therapy for a year or more," she says, "and all they do is scream at each other."

They booked sessions with Michele Weiner-Davis, author of Divorce Busting and The Sex-Starved Marriage, who practices in Woodstock, Ill., outside Chicago. While many marriage therapies last months or years, Weiner-Davis says, her patients were usually out in half a dozen visits. Her technique favors action, not introspection.

"Traditional approaches ask people to look at the past and figure out why they're stuck," says Weiner-Davis, whose graduate degree is in social work. "But that insight generally leads people only to be experts in why they're having a problem--and novices in what to do about it. People on the brink of divorce do not have the luxury of time to take this journey backward. They need an instant injection of hope." Weiner-Davis encourages a dose of what she calls "real giving"--asking couples to realize what their partner needs in certain situations and provide what he needs regardless of whether the giver understands it. For example, if your spouse prefers to be alone when he's upset, allow him quiet time, even if you prefer to talk when you're upset.

Weiner-Davis' action-oriented scheme suited Roth and Meredith. "It's really freeing to just focus on the solution and clear out all the muck," says Meredith. Weiner-Davis encourages couples to identify what they want the marriage to look like, then list actions they can take--dinner out once a week, playing tennis or golf together, help with the housework--to achieve those goals. "The concept of real giving is so simple, but it really gets at the heart of how to make a relationship work," says Meredith.

The approach appeals equally to both sexes. If a guy can be convinced that his marriage is like a rusty carburetor or a clogged kitchen sink, he may be stirred to fix it. "I think men are hesitant to go into therapy because they feel they're going to be targeted," Roth says. "Michele's approach is pragmatic and practical. That's refreshing for a lot of men."

Some of Weiner-Davis' recipes earn hoots from others in the fractious fraternity of couples therapists. Of her advice that troubled couples should "just do it!"--have sex to jump-start a passionless marriage--Schnarch retorts, "Telling low-desire spouses to just do something just pisses them off. Most couples seeking help are angry, and angry sex isn't very generous. These people would rather poke each other's eyes out than stroke each other's genitals."

But she has plenty of satisfied customers--the Roth-Merediths, for two. They work (at their marriage) and play (she's now his band's official bass player). And their son, 4, has noticed the difference. When his parents fought, he used to throw things and scream. Now he sees his parents hugging and delights in squishing himself in to share the love. "I think it has improved the quality of his life," says Roth. "There's a lot more laughter in our house."

--CAN GOOD MARRIAGE BE TAUGHT?

What if you could go to school instead of to a shrink? That's the idea behind Marriage Education. "It's less expensive and more effective than therapy," says Diane Sollee, 59, who gave up her marriage-therapy career to create the Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education. "The therapy model is 'I'll treat you, and, voila, your marriage will work.' The education model is much more respectful. It assumes there's nothing wrong with you--you're not sick. You just need better information, and it assumes you can apply it to your situation. It's also not a long-term process."

Every system sounds great--until you ask other marriage specialists about it. "To say therapy isn't working is absolutely wrong," Gottman insists. "These psycho-education interventions are powerful; you have to be careful about applying them. Currently, people in the marriage movement aren't being careful. They go ahead with tremendous optimism and convince people that this is key to family stability. I worry that it will all collapse when couples see that it can't be done that way. This isn't like driver ed." No, but when experts start comparing claims and stats, you hear the cacophony of rival used-car salesmen.

Is it the therapists who need educating? Or is it the Marriage Ed folks who need therapy? Somewhere there has to be detente between the clinical remoteness of one group and the evangelical salesmanship of the other--a middle ground, perhaps even a common ground. "A lot of therapy is education," says Gottman, "and a lot of education is therapy." At a time when America's marrieds and soon-to-bes are eager for mediation, the bickering of the two sides is unhelpful. Maybe both sides should consider this advice--both priceless and free--from that sage counselor Ogden Nash:

To keep your marriage brimming,

With love in the loving cup,

Whenever you're wrong admit it;

Whenever you're right shut up.

--Reported by Amanda Bower and Deirdre van Dyk/New York and Wendy Cole/Chicago

With reporting by Amanda Bower and Deirdre van Dyk/New York and Wendy Cole/Chicago