Soon after her wedding Mary felt something was terribly wrong with her marriage. She and her husband Peter had moved across the country following a big church wedding in their home town. Mary was obsessed with fears that she had made a big mistake in marrying Peter. She focused on Peter’s ambivalence about the Christian faith, his avoidance of personal topics of communication, and his tendency to criticize her when she expressed her worries and fears.

Mary sought help at the university student counseling center where she and Peter were graduate students. The counselor worked with her alone for a few sessions and then invited Peter in for marital therapy. Peter, who was frustrated and angry about how distant and fretful Mary had become, was a reluctant participating in the counseling. In addition to the marital problems, Mary was suffering from clinical depression: she couldn’t sleep or concentrate, she felt sad all the time, and she felt like a failure. Medication began to relieve some of these symptoms, but she was still upset about the state of her marriage. After a highly charged session with this distressed wife and angry, reluctant husband, the counselor met with Mary separately the next week. She told Mary that she would not recover fully from her depression until she started to “trust her feelings” about the marriage. Following is how Mary later recounted the conversation with the counselor:

Mary: “What do you mean, trust my feelings?”

Counselor: “You know you are not happy in your marriage.”

Mary: “Yes, that’s true.”

Counselor: “Perhaps you need a separation in order to figure out whether you really want this marriage.”

Mary: “But I love Peter and I am committed to him.”

Counselor: “The choice is yours, but I doubt that you will begin to feel better until you start to trust your feelings and pay attention to your unhappiness.”

Mary: “Are you saying I should get a divorce?”

Counselor: “I’m just urging you to trust your feelings of unhappiness.”

A stunned Marsha decided to not return to that counselor, a decision the counselor no doubt perceived as reflecting Mary’s unwillingness to take responsibility for her own happiness.

Two aspects of Mary and Peter’s case stand out. First, the couple saw a counselor who was not well-trained in marital therapy. Any licensed mental health professional can dabble in marital therapy, but most therapists are far more comfortable working with individuals.

When marriage problems are formidable or the course of treatment difficult, these therapists pull the plug on the couples (involving both spouses) in favor of separate individual therapy sessions. Often they refer one of the spouses to a colleague for separate individual therapy, with this rationale: “You both have too many individual problems to be able to work on your relationship at this point.” Of course, they are living together in this relationship seven days per week and have no choice but to “work on it” continually!

The unspoken reason for this shift in treatment modality, especially if it occurs early in the marital therapy, is generally that the therapist feels incompetent with the case, especially in dealing with a reluctant husband who is not therapy savvy and says he is there only to salvage his marriage. This husband lacks a personal, psychological agenda. When he gets sent off to another therapist to do his “individual” work, he balks, thereby confirming to his wife and her therapist that he is unwilling to work on his own “issues,” and thereby do his part to save the marriage. The marriage is often doomed at this point, a cause effect of poor marital therapy.

The second noteworthy feature of Mary and Peter’s case is the strong individualistic and anti-commitment orientation of the therapist. Like most psychotherapists, she viewed only the individual as her client. She had no responsibilities beyond promoting this individual’s immediate needs and agenda, no obligations to other stakeholders in the client’s life. No doubt the therapist also viewed herself as “neutral” on the issue of marital commitment. But, claiming neutrality on commitment and other moral issues in American society means that the therapist likely embraces the reigning ethic of individual self-interest.

There is nothing neutral about asking a newly married, depressed woman “Are you happy in your marriage?” and urging her to trust her frightened and confused feelings. No self-respecting therapist would urge a suicidal patient to “trust your feelings about how worthless you life is,” but many well-regarded therapists play cheerleader for a divorce even when the couple has not yet made a serious effort to understand their problems and restore the health of their marriage. Therapist-assisted marital suicide has become part of the standard paradigm of contemporary psychotherapy.

Mary talked to her priest during this crisis. The priest urged her to wait to see if her depression was causing the marital problem or if the marital problem was causing the depression–a prudent bit of advice. But a few minutes later, the priest brought up the possibility of an annulment if the marriage was causing the depression. Mary was even more stunned than she had been by the therapist.

Some marriages, of course, are dead on arrival in the therapist’s office, in which case the therapist’s job is to help with the healthiest possible untangling for all involved parties, especially the children. Some marriages are emotionally and physically abusive, with little chance for recovery. Some marriages appear salvageable, but one of the parties has already made up his or her mind to leave.

This critique focuses on the practice of therapists, many of whom lack good skills in helping couples, who philosophically view marriage as a venue for personal fulfillment stripped of ethical obligation and divorce as a strictly private, self-interested choice with no important stakeholders other than the individual adult client.