Dear Dr. Yael,
This is a long-in-coming and well-deserved thank you letter.
You may not remember me, but my husband and I came to you after seeing a therapist who told us to get divorced. Baruch Hashem, we left her. It took a year of marital therapy with you,
you, but we made our marriage work.
I remember our first session, with my husband screaming and me crying. For the first few months you saw us separately; it wasn’t until close to the end that you saw us together. This was brilliant as we both had issues to work on. You never let us hurt each other in therapy.
Marriage is hard work. My husband and I both had to change the way in which we behaved. My husband learned anger management techniques and I had to work on my passive-aggressive behavior which I knew aggravated my husband. I don’t think we wanted to hurt each other; however, we were great at hitting below the belt.
We had two children then; Baruch Hashem we have more now and just recently made a wedding for our eldest. I look at my beautiful family and the great shidduch we made for our child and I know all this would not have happened had we gotten divorced.
Today’s divorce rate is soaring. I am writing because I hope it will inspire readers to work on their marriages. Your help changed our lives, the lives of our children and all our future generations.
I thank you again.
Anonymous
Dear Anonymous,
Thank you so much for your beautiful letter. It is always so nice and heartfelt to hear about a success story!
I often tell clients: “Marriages may be made in Heaven, but we must work hard here on Earth to make them last.”
When it comes to therapy, I believe that people must look inward and discover why they are treating their spouse a certain way. They must also learn to understand why that treatment may be hurtful. It is also important to focus on the positive characteristics one has – and that exist in a person’s spouse.
People often find it hard to be positive, partially because they were given little positive reinforcement when they were younger. That is something that causes poor self-esteem, which has a great effect on how one relates to a spouse. Couples with negative behavior may feel terrible about their childhoods and yet may copy the manner in which their parents treated each other.
Therapy can help break this negative cycle in which spouses are hurting each other and help them learn how to treat each other with respect and emit positive feelings.
I always say if your car were broken, you would go to the mechanic to try to fix it. If the mechanic fixed a certain part and it still did not work, you would return and fix another part. However, when it comes to our marriages, how often do we continue using the same destructive manner even though we know it is not helpful? How often do we hear ourselves having the same fight?
A great therapeutic goals is for a person to train him or herself to respond differently to the same situation so that the outcome is different – a countermove. For example, if your husband gets upset by what one of your children is doing and starts yelling at you, your gut reaction may be to yell back that it’s not your fault. While what you are yelling may be correct, it is not a response that will defuse the situation – in fact, it may be adding fuel to the fire. An effective countermove may be to keep quiet and remove you and your child from the situation until your spouse calms down. Once your husband is calm, you may want to say something like, “I’m sorry that Shmuel was not listening to you, but it’s hard for me to help you when you yell at me. Maybe next time we can come up with a better solution so you do not feel so frustrated.” This may help you and your husband actually communicate about the problem.
Instead of this blowing up into a fight, you are giving your husband time to cool down and then sharing your feelings in a calm manner. We all have our moments, but it is up to the other spouse to remain calm and not blow things up.
Countermoves can be a very simple, yet effective tool that can help many couples avoid numerous fights. This combined with a more positive attitude (i.e., giving each other more compliments throughout the day) will make a big difference in any marriage! However, if there are already underlying negative feelings in either spouse, I would urge the couple to seek counseling as there is still hope to turn things around!
Thank you again for sharing your success story and showing our readers that marriages can be worked on and saved in many situations. Hatzlocha and much nachas!