– Acknowledging the Small Moments in Marriage Therapy

RECOGNIZING THE STRENGTH OF MARRIAGES IN EVERYDAY MATTERS THROUGH MARRIAGE COUNSELING IN NASHVILLE TN

References “The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.” By John M. Gottman, Ph.D.

Marriage counseling is expectedly fraught with all kinds of tension and conflict and frustrations.  If you are searching for marriage therapy in Nashville, TN, you will find similar patterns here in middle Tennessee.  Most people enter marriage counseling due to dissatisfaction and distance with their spouse.   But one of the foremost experts on marriage satisfaction also has thoughts on helping solidify and encourage couples through their current, everyday interactions.  Dr. John Gottman, in his book, “The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work,” makes an important statement early on in his New York Times bestseller.  Dr. Gottman writes, “None of the footage taped in our Love Lab would win anybody an Oscar.  Our archives are filled with scenes in which the husband looks out the picture window and says, “Wow, look at that boat,” and the wife peers over her magazine and says, “Yeah, it looks like that big schooner we saw last summer, remember? and the husband grunts.” (p. 79)  On the outside, this seems like an incredibly drab and unimportant example.  Dr. Gottman, however, goes on to write, “When couples engage in lots of chitchat like this, I can be pretty sure that they will stay happily married.”(p. 79)  This appears to be a very dramatic statement attached to such an innocuous situation.  And most people would be correct in dismissing Dr. Gottman’s conclusion, except that Dr. Gottman and his team have assembled some of the most extensive research on marriages throughout his career.  Dr. Gottman goes on to state, “Hollywood has dramatically distorted our notions of romance and what makes passion burn….real-life romance is fueled by a far more humdrum approach to staying connected.  It is kept alive each time you let your spouse know he or she is valued during the grind of everyday life.”(p. 80)

Sometimes, marriage counseling can be more about helping a couple come to more realistic terms of what a happy and healthy relationship looks life.  This is by no means an indictment on current marriage therapy treatments, nor a dismissal of the pain and heartache that occur everyday in most marriages.  The assertion by Dr. Gottman and the point of this article is to elucidate an additional mode of understanding the possible therapeutic opportunities afforded through marriage therapy.  Dr. Gottman further writes, “Comical as it may sound, romance actually grows when a couple are in a supermarket and the wife says, “Are we out of bleach?” and the husband says, “I don’t know.  Let me go get some just in case,” instead of shrugging apathetically.”(p. 80)  The emphasis of this last point is that the alternative is highly indicative of a struggling and flailing marriage.  When one spouse apathetically shrugs at the question of the other, a system of perpetual harm and dismissal is instituted and entrenched.  Dr. Gottman is getting at the heart of patterns and interactions.

Sometimes the best work in marriage counseling in Nashville can be a simple nod to the good and healthy things marital partners are already doing.  As such, each person in the marriage can be affirmed at the love and care they are already giving to the other.  Pointing out the connection between lovers can be an extremely motivating method to instill further actions of this kind.

Any marriage counseling session in Nashville will ultimately come with its tension and stress, but it can also be infused with the hope of the effort each is currently imparting.  Most marriages that are in conflict still have some flickers of the love that once brought them together.  A great marriage therapist will be able to point this out as much as they point out the disfunction.