The Marriage Savers — page 3

MAKE AN EFT TURN ON RED
Listen to enough marriage plaints, and you might 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-based 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 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."

	Discord is inevitable: Only 31% of conflicts get resolved over the course of a marriage.

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, outside Chicago. (Divorce Busting counselors have also worked over the phone with couples from Hong Kong, Singapore, India and Japan.) 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 each partner needs in certain situations and each to provide what the other 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—Roth and Meredith, 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, voilà, 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 détente 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 City, Wendy Cole/Chicago and Chaim Estulin/Hong Kong

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