how to have a happy marriage without marriage counseling | the idiot experts are at it again | Marriage Counseling News

how to have a happy marriage without marriage counseling | Marriage Counseling News

Well once again the experts got it wrong.

Cart before the horse.  They need to wipe the pizza sauce off their lab coats and go outside into a few neighborhoods and see reality.

Here are a bunch of over-credentialed people of my profession who think they have ANOTHER behavioral cure for an unhappy marriage.

Hey, it’s not communicating, it’s not active listening… it’s BEING NICE!  WOO HOO! NOT!(My comment after the citation)

Want a Happy Marriage? Be Nice, Don’t Nitpick (you can read the whole useless article here)

True Compatibility Doesn’t Exist, so Shrug off Little Conflicts 

Thermostat settings. Dirty socks. Toothpaste caps. Our little habits make our spouses crazy. But no two people are ever truly compatible, so quit nitpicking each other, relationship experts advise. Save the battles for the big issues — and you’ll have a happy marriage.

Susan Boon, PhD, a social psychologist at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, teaches classes in interpersonal relationships. A few years ago, she picked up the book, Seven Principles for Making Marriages Work, by John Gottman, MD, psychologist, relationship researcher for 30 years, and founder of The Gottman Institute in Seattle. Ever since discovering the book, Boon has recommended it to her students.

Secrets of a Happy Marriage

 Long-lasting, happy marriages have more than great communication, Boon says. “Dr. Gottman brings up something no one ever talks about — that irreconcilable differences are normal, that you just have to come to terms with them, not try to resolve the unresolvable. On some level, that should have been obvious, but it hasn’t been,” she tells WebMD.

Most marriage therapists focus on “active listening,” which involves paraphrasing, validating, affirming your spouse’s feedback, says Boon. “That’s all well and good and may help you get through some conflicts in a less destructive way. But, as Dr. Gottman puts it, ‘you’re asking people to do Olympic-style gymnastics when they can hardly crawl.’ Many people will fail at those techniques. Research indicates that most people are dissatisfied with the outcome of marital therapy, that the problems come back.”

 In happy marriages, Boon points out, couples don’t do any of that!

 Instead, you must be nice to your partner, research shows. Make small gestures, but make them often. “The little things matter,” says Boon. “What a happy marriage is based on is deep friendship, knowing each other well, having mutual respect, knowing when it makes sense to try to work out an issue, when it is not solvable. Many kinds of issues simply aren’t solvable.”

Well, isn’t that “special?”

There’s only one eency, teency problem.  And that is, if you have this big hairy history of pain, suffering and misunderstanding, how the hell are you supposed to all of a sudden “make nice?”

This lady doesn’t understand anything.

What you really really, really need is something that creates a radical transformation in your thoughts, feelings, attitudes, physical experience and internal conversation.

And it had better be really really fast, effective, and almost magic.

That’s where my Magical Marriage Cure comes in.

If you get it and use it, anything you do in marriage counseling or making nice will work… if you don’t, nothing will help you.  NOTHING.

I’m 100% serious.

- Dr. Max

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