Archive for November, 2005

By setting themselves up in private practice or accepting salaried positions in institutions and public services, doctors undertake to help those who come under their care in general or limited fields to the extent of at least reasonable competence. Apart from their actual medical responsibilities they are expected as educated, trained and respected citizens to exert a positive influence in the community.

Whatever their ideas about marriage counseling it is as true of doctors as of ministers that they cannot avoid contact with marital disorders, or the social and professional obligation to do what they can to help in their resolution.

Many marital disorders come direct to a doctor in the first place, because the partners find him most easily accessible, and regard him as the most logical person from whom to seek advice and help. It may be a direct marital squabble which is distressing one or both to the point at which they feel the need of medical help, or even someone to talk to about it. It may go further, and one partner who has been attacked may come or be brought to a doctor for attention, or for the recording of cuts and bruises for possible litigation later. It may be that one or both partners are seeking help and advice with regard to some kind of sexual dissatisfaction or difficulty, or some apparent abnormality. A special example of this is when a wife returns home after giving birth to her first or a subsequent baby and finds herself indifferent to the sexual relationship with her husband, who has patiently waited through the final months of her pregnancy for it.

Other direct points of medical contact with marital disorders may be for such questions as family planning, especially at the time of marriage and after the first or a subsequent child, and in some cases there are differences and conflicts about this. Or there may be direct quarrels about the management of children and the doctor may be appealed to as an “umpire.” Or again there may be deep and growing suspicions by one partner about the fidelity of the other, and the doctor may be appealed to either for help in standing up to such threats, or for moral support when there seems nobody else to talk to.

There are also many indirect ways in which a doctor may come into contact with a marital conflict. Especially if the doctor is young and not well established people will often hesitate about telling him directly of their marital troubles, but may come ostensibly for help with some apparently unrelated symptom which arises from the marital disorder. For example the complaint may be of tiredness, nervousness, lack of sleep, restlessness, and the desire for a tonic, or some such nervous symptom. Or it may show itself as a “psychosomatic disorder,” such as indigestion, colitis, asthma, migraine, or certain kinds of dermatitis. In women there may be some gynecological symptom.

In more severe or prolonged cases the presenting problem may be some neurotic or even apparently psychotic manifestation, which may even reach the point of attempted suicide, either from despair or as an attempt to “punish” the partner. Of course marital disorder is not one of the fundamental causative factors of such mental illness, but it may well prove to be an influential precipitating factor, or may greatly intensify such troubles or hinder their recovery. As such it comes right into the field of medical practice.

A still less direct, but very important method of medical contact with marital disorder, may come through a third person, particularly through some trouble affecting one or more of the children. Poor health in a child without any obvious reason may open up inquiries by the doctor about the domestic atmosphere, particularly if the child is becoming increasingly nervous or “difficult.” The situation between the parents may be revealed on the other hand when a child or adolescent shows some consequence of parental neglect or mismanagement, such as when a teen-age girl is brought to the doctor for a premarital pregnancy, or a boy finds himself with prospective paternal responsibilities without benefit of marriage. Or a teenage boy or girl may have been the cause of a serious or fatal accident because of some careless and irresponsible escapade. There are all kinds of different ways in which the doctor may come into contact with marital disorder if he is awake to the possibility and ready to look into underlying causes.

It still happens all too frequently that a doctor faced with one or more of the symptoms or indirect consequences of marital disorder tends to leave the underlying causes untouched and to tell his patient that the trouble is with his “nerves” or that he “can’t find anything physically wrong.” Such a statement should be the beginning of positive investigation and therapy and not the end of it, and many opportunities of helping married people in troubles at a stage at which they are quite open to help are missed. With more general awareness of the influence of marital disorders on physical and emotional troubles, and more realization of the “curability” of many such marital disorders, this medical responsibility will be more often and more worthily fulfilled.

At this point it might be stated that there are many indications that a reasonable training in marriage counseling will not only improve the doctor’s handling of marital disorders, but will make a very great difference to the whole of his handling of people, in whatever department of medicine his work and interest may lie.

In the first place however genuine his “unshockability” may be, clients may not feel free to discuss some elements of their difficulties as well with him as with a “secular” counselor. Even if they do manage to talk out many deeper feelings they may then come to feel some difficulty and possible embarrassment when they have to face him later in the pastoral relationship. The secular counselor is free from this difficulty in that his clients do not have to face him again unless by their own desire. However much the minister accepts what he is told in non-judgmental fashion, people will still cast him all too often into the role of judge, and that may hinder his approach to the deeper elements of the counseling.

Apart from the role into which other people may cast the minister he has a few conflicting roles of his own to sort out. One of these conflicts is between the essential moralism of his preaching and his personal example and convictions, and on the tfter hand the necessary permissiveness of counseling relationships. A possible clue to the way through such a conflict is in the example of Jesus, who represented and proclaimed the “straight and narrow way” but at the same time could be permissive enough to invite Himself to dine with Zaccheus, to eat with “publicans and sinners,” and to refrain from condemnation of a woman “in adultery.” Permissiveness has to be seen as distinct from condoning, and it has been found quite possible to reconcile this apparent inconsistency by very many ministers in their pastoral care of their people and any who may seek their help.

Another of these conflicts is between the minister’s training and his popularly accepted role as someone who talks on all kinds of subjects and on all kinds of occasions on the one hand, and his counseling role as listener on the other. It is difficult for many ministers, and indeed for many other professional people, to switch from talking to listening, but it has to be done if the counseling is to succeed.

Perhaps the most difficult of all problems for the minister, reverting to the question of time and energy, is that the more successful he is in any counseling work the more demands will be made on his time and energy and the more trouble he will have in allotting it. It is generally harder for the minister to- decline an invitation or application for help from someone in deep distress than it is for members of most other professions, but if the minister is to keep his spiritual vitality and his efficiency as well as to do justice to his domestic responsibilities, he has to learn to delegate what can be delegated to other people, and to allot his time and energy wisely with the courage of his own convictions. In some cases he may need counseling himself in order to come adequately to grips with this problem through the disentangling of his own inner feelings and conflicts.

It is becoming more widely realized that the minister’s training should include some adequate opportunities for submission of himself for counseling as well as the practical and the theological elements which are now generally accepted as essential. When this is done there will be a great enrichment of the whole personal influence of ministers in any community, and particularly in the fields of marriage counseling and general pastoral counseling.

Whatever may be thought by the minister or anyone else about his fitness or otherwise for marriage counseling, in actual fact he is generally quite unable to escape some responsibility for it, because people will come to him for help in their marital troubles, and because ministers are found in many small towns and isolated places where trained marriage counselors are not easily available.

Apart from his geographical availability one of the greatest assets of the minister in marriage counseling is the fact that in his pastoral visiting and general pastoral care of his people he will often have a better opportunity than anyone, except possibly the family doctor, to discover and deal with many marital stresses and conflicts at an early stage, often long before the partners would have taken the necessary initiative to seek proper help. In this way a minister can do a great deal of creative work in the healing of marital disorders before they grow to serious enough proportions to reach the marriage counselor. This is quiet and unobtrusive work, which could be still better if all ministers were given more training in marriage counseling as an essential part of their theological course.

Another asset of the minister is that in many cases he already has the confidence of both partners, especially if he has watched them grow up, and has prepared and married them, and as long as he has shown himself to be a man of discretion and understanding who is not prone to gossip. He also has the privilege of calling on people on his own initiative.
In himself also the minister will generally have the spiritual awareness and sense of vocation which are valuable in any such “helping” activity, and which give power to his pastoral attitude and skill. He may also have behind him a strong and warm Christian Church fellowship, from which reunited couples may draw much further strength, and to which they may give grateful creative service, and deepen their own union in so doing.

Professionally the minister has an important asset for marriage counseling by virtue of the conviction that economic, sexual, personal, parental and social adjustments between marriage partners can only be adequately achieved when they are woven into a relationship which is basically spiritual, whether they realize it clearly or not. As long as this is offered in understandable terms to partners and not obscured behind words which may not have meaning to them, the minister can offer the central factor in all personal relationships to counselors with whom he comes into contact, as well as to his parishioners.

Alongside these and similar assets of the minister there are some special problems implicit in his position. One of these is time. He has a special responsibility to the whole body of people committed to his care, and specific duties which need careful and time consuming preparation apart from the hours involved in their performance. He has the difficult task of allotting his all too little available time between many conflicting claims on it. The same applies to his energies. This would seem to be something worthy of considerable discussion by groups of ministers, so that their whole scale of vocational priorities can be reviewed in the light of present day needs and demands. Many ministers agree that it is impossible to give more than about twelve hours per week to counseling in general without detriment to their total work.
Another special vocational problem of the minister in marriage-(and also in individual) counseling is found in his relationship with people apart from the counseling. This may have several consequences.

As MARRIAGE is a universal institution, and marital disorders of a severity requiring help are almost as widespread, it is inevitable that almost anybody might become involved in some kind of attempt to assist in the reconciliation of marital conflicts. Many people will be emotionally involved as in-laws and other relatives; others may be less involved, such as good friends and neighbors, but still prone to take sides, to criticize or condemn, to advise, and in many cases to interfere on their own initiative. Even if some of these people have a so-called good practical knowledge of marriage, from their own direct or indirect experience, they still have had no adequate training in marriage counseling, and as we have seen their most sincere and devoted efforts are not likely to be of much permanent benefit. But they may have a valuable part in the reconciliation if they can be content to exert some influence towards the obtaining of more competent help.

Apart from these interested parties, what kinds of people might be or become involved in marriage counseling? If we survey the field in various countries the people who may find themselves in the role of counselor or conciliator in either an informal or a formal way may be divided into several groups for the purpose of discussion.

a. People with some training and experience in dealing with other people in a personal way, but with little or no specific training in counseling or in the principles of personal or marital relationships. Under this group heading we can include many ministers, doctors, teachers, lawyers, probation officers, magistrates, sociologists, welfare officers, personnel officers, military, naval and air force officers, youth leaders, and many others in positions of leadership. These people may often be brought into contact with marital disorders in the course of their daily work, especially if they are interested in people and sensitive to signs of anxiety and other kinds of emotional tension. A large amount of quiet, unobtrusive help is being given by such people in many cases of marital trouble, and it is probable that such help is often enough to prevent some early and less serious difficulties from further deterioration. It is hoped that some of the insights expressed in this book may possibly help such relatively untrained helpers to develop more and more adequate ways of serving those who come into their orbit.

b. People who are professionally trained in interviewing, and possibly in counseling and even psychotherapy, but who
have had little specific training in marriage counseling. This group includes psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, (especially psychiatric social workers), and ministers and sociologists with special training in counseling. From their training and experience such people are sometimes more likely to see the marital disorders which come their way from the point of view of the intra-personal difficulties of each part ner than from that of the inter-personal relationship, which is the primary, though not the exclusive concern of the marriage counselor as such. When they have become oriented to the “inter-personal relationship” point of view, and have equipped themselves with adequate knowledge of the principies and inner dynamics of the marriage relationship, they are then able to be of very great help indeed in marital problems, as consultants as well as counselors.

c. People who are professionally trained in interviewing and counseling as well as in their own professional activities, and have added to this an adequate special training in the principles and inner dynamics of marriage and family life. Such people may be well equipped to provide a professional marriage counseling service of high quality.
This is the goal toward which the American Association of Marriage Counselors is moving, and the membership of that association, for which stringent conditions are necessarily imposed, is made up of members of several professions who have undertaken special training and secured considerable experience in the whole marital field. In 1957 ll was made up of social workers, 20%; doctors, 19% (gynecologists 8%, general medicine 6%, and psychiatrists 5%); educators, 16%; ministers, 15%; psychologists, 14%; sociologists, 12%; and lawyers, 4%. (”Marriage Counseling: A Case Book” Association Press, New York, 1958, page 485.)

These professional people, and others who are similarly trained but are not members of the Association, carry out their work either as members of a marriage counseling or social welfare agency, an educational or psychiatric foundation or clinic, or a religious organization; or individually as private practitioners. There are some first class training centers in the United States, whose graduates are gradually spreading across the country. There are also opportunities for some professional training in Great Britain and in other countries.

d. People without any particular professional background or training, who have been very carefully selected from the
point of view of their personal integrity and intelligence, their emotional maturity and balance, and their ability to undertake and make use of special training. Such people have been recruited to an increasing extent in Great Britain and more recently in Australia and New Zealand from the point of view of ability to give their voluntary part time services to marriage counseling when trained and “accredited,” through marriage counseling agencies and under supervision. For various reasons the selection is limited to those who are or have been happily married and not divorced or separated, and very careful assessment is continuously carried on throughout their training regarding their fitness for the work. At the end of their training course, which is full and comprehensive, they are assessed again and if satisfactory are “accredited” as “provisional counselors” or “associate counselors.” They are then given a further period of “in-service training,” after which, if satisfactory to the assessors, they are accredited as marriage counselors on the staff of the particular marriage counseling agency or one related with it.

This “lay” approach to marriage counseling, which is not found to any extent in America, has gradually emerged in response to increasingly urgent needs and a much greater shortage of professionally trained people than existed in America. Even if all the available professionally trained people could have been diverted to marriage counseling, which of course was impossible, this would still have failed to meet the needs of the situation or to come within the financial resources of the countries. “A new resource,” as Professor David Mace described it in England, had to be mobilized, trained, and put to work. With their genius for voluntary social services the people of Great Britain were pioneers in this great social project, and from 1942 onward it has developed and extended in a manner that has more than fulfilled the most optimistic hopes of its imitators and overcome the doubts of the skeptics. It has also received unqualified commendation from the British Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce, 1951-3 (London, H.M.S.O., 1956).

It is essential, however, to emphasize the conditions which are found to be necessary for such a service to be successfully carried out. Careful and continuous “selection” and screening, full and comprehensive training, followed by “in-service” training, expert and comprehensive assessment of suitability, the fullest safeguards of team work under the competent supervision of professionally trained and experienced “case supervisors,” and the full backing of a carefully selected panel of professional “consultants” to whom clients in need of any special help can be referred and with whom the counselors can consult in any case of difficulty.

It seems certain that this approach to marriage counseling as a voluntary part-time social service will continue and expand in countries in which it has been operating. The lack of sufficient available professional resources, and the cost of such resources even if they were available, would seem to make this inevitable. But more important still is the fact that this approach has abundantly proved its success wherever it has been carried out under the already mentioned safeguards. It seems clear that the greater the extension of this work the more efficient and available the professional supervision and the consultant’s panels will need to be.

e. Consultants. These are professionally trained people of special competence in an appropriate field related to marriage, who are willing to see clients referred to them, generally at their own professional rooms or offices, as a private professional service under a mutually acceptable financial arrangement. Included among them are those who are especially com^ petent in the counseling and psychotherapeutic fields, such as psychiatrists, psychologists, and some pastors and social workers. There will be others who may have little or no training or experience in the psychological areas, but are expert in some limited field, such as gynecology, urology, medicine, pediatrics, social casework, law, ethics, religion, vocational guidance or child guidance.

It seems desirable, and it often happens, that these people should have some continuous contact with the marriage counseling agency with which they work, and some acquaintance with the principles and goals of its work. This is helped by regular opportunities for mutual discussion between all who are taking part in the expanded “team work.”
As we consider the number and variety of people who may have an essential part in this many sided work of marriage counseling it seems clear that it is not a specialized branch of any profession or calling, but rather a specialized branch of counseling: an attitude and method of helping troubled people that is being more and more widely used by all the professions and by a steadily increasing number of trained laymen.

What might be called “the spiritual climate of marriage” has a very profound (but not easy to describe) influence on marriage, and in trying to give some account of it one must consider not so much the spiritual attitudes of the partners, as the general spiritual attitudes of the community.

It seems reasonable, at the risk of superficiality, to suggest that such spiritual values as love, generosity, and consideration have been to some extent replaced by utilitarian values and matters of expediency. This is not to underestimate the generosity of millions of people in the face of calamity and need, and the unassuming “good neighborliness” of people everywhere. But many of the disorders of marriage stem from the fact that partners allow selfish interests to take priority over the mutual interests of the partnership, the family, and the wider interests of the community. One reason for this in many cases is that they have grown up in a spiritual climate in which the values that are most essential to sound marriage and family life are largely ignored or even discredited. When children are brought up wisely, fully aware of the love of two parents who love each other and accept each other-even when the parents do not “understand” each other-the children yet receive the most essential spiritual nourishment for the growth of their own personalities. Such outgoing unselfish love, which radiates outward also from the family into the community, can only be sustained and deepened when it is continually nourished through some adequate kind of worship, whether this be according to conventional patterns or not.

In many ways the Church has lost some of its leadership in the community to secular organizations, and it has all too often failed to rise to the newest needs of the community. For example, its general emphasis on the indissolubility of marriage would seem to imply a sacred obligation to take a much more vigorous lead in the community towards better preparation for marriage. At the same time such leadership in the promotion of better home and family living would constitute the greatest possible contribution that could be made in these days towards the prevention of mental illness, and such “social illness” as delinquency, vandalism and crime. If it be true that the most influential of all known and controllable causes of mental and social illness is the deprivation of the right kind of love and security in childhood in the home, then the Church has a greater potential contribution to this great social project than any other body, the medical profession included.
This would seem to call for full consideration at the highest level-offering one of the greatest opportunities for united creative leadership that has ever been open to the Church.

There are many signs of growing interest and greater cooperation between the different branches of the Church, in what could be the most effective evangelistic opportunity of all time, the strengthening of the home life of the nation.
When the family is strengthened in these different ways it will soon recover much that has been lost with regard to its vital work of preparing people for future marriage. The homes of the future are in a very real sense being made or marred in the homes of today. With the recovery of family traditions the family itself will provide, as it used to do, some of the most influential and enduring preparation for sound marriage, and the influence will go on into the next and still more of the future generations.

Another fact of our time which has profound influence on marriage, as on almost every aspect of modern life, is the mass media-radio and television, the press, the cinema, the paper-back book, the magazine and the novel, the theatre, and modern mass advertising in all its intrusive channels. These, with their blatant and subtly suggestive emphasis on seductive charm and superficial “popularity,” based on possessions and external appearance and posturing rather than on genuine warmth and goodwill, add greatly to the problems of young married people as they “come down to earth,” often with painful disillusionment.

The extent of the influence of mass-media communications in our culture is quite beyond assessment. There is no doubt that they provide a very subtle and painless form of brain washing, repeated day after day from the time when a child is first able to comprehend to the time of senility or death. The fact that other victims of the brain washing reiterate the superficial ideas gives a kind of “feed-back” quality to the original ubiquitous influence, increasing its effect to a still more alarming extent. The total effect on marriage of the persistent emphasis on sensuality, or gratification of appetite and other forms of self-centeredness, and on the superficial emotional aspects of human relationships, is yet unmeasured. But one apparent aspect of this is the molding of people into a cultural pattern in which competitiveness and conformity seem to go hand in hand, in which a significant part of our western culture has been drawn from the “tradition directed” and the much more civilized “inner directed” influence to the “other directed” attitudes which would convert human communities to something comparable with flocks of sheep. The terms have been borrowed from David Riesman’s book “The Lonely Crowd” (Doubleday,
1953)-

Another effect of this enormous growth of the mass media is the more general acceptance of the idea of divorce, with much less associated sense of failure and guilt. This has profound effects on marriage and family life. One of its consequences is that people tend increasingly to marry, thinking of marriage as some kind of trial partnership, which can easily be scrapped if it fails to “work out.” This constitutes a threat to “the sanctity of marriage,” in that people then tend to marry with much less sense of responsibility and more from “gratification of appetite.” The result must be increasing incidence of marital failure if it is not faced and dealt with by better education and preparation for marriage and parenthood. This is a much more constructive way than trying to prevent divorce in cases where a marriage has obviously broken down beyond hope of repair. On the credit side of acceptance of divorce is the attention given to protection of children from the strains of parental divorce, which may help them in their eventual marriages.

With the increasing acceptance of divorce there is also an increasing social and even political acceptance of “de facto” wives, which tends to add to the disorganization of marriage, however “expedient” it may be in any particular case. It is not the counselor’s business to moralize or to interfere in any such relationship, but rather to help to promote better harmony for those who seek his help, whatever may be the kind of marital relationship they may choose to participate in. In some cases however the interests of the rejected wife or husband may be helped by inviting consideration of the ultimate possibilities of what the “de facto” partners are contemplating, but this can only be done in an atmosphere of acceptance and permissiveness, unless the counselor is determined to exceed his prerogatives.

At the national level the creation of what has been called “The Welfare State” may have striking effects on marriage. In Australia, for example, where pensions and social benefits have increased over the years to the point of reasonably workable social security, the institution of pensions for “deserted wives” seems to have brought about a great increase in the number of deserting husbands. It would appear that many of these deserting husbands have been “encouraged” to leave by the knowledge that their wives will be assisted by the Government, and this is already constituting a serious problem for the Government social welfare organizations.

Behind all of these social and cultural changes of our time there is the constant menacing threat of overwhelming world conflict, following on the two great world wars and the uneasy peace that occupied the years between them. The revolutionary discoveries of atomic physics and the increasing conquests of space, together with the astronomical expenditure on these things and on defense, have also had their effects on marriage. Among other effects are those consequent on the enormous expenditure on defense, which involves heavy taxation and the diversion of manpower into fields that are unproductive when considered against housing and other social amenities. The general unrest, a product of incessant underlying anxiety, has probably made for more nervousness and less flexibility in domestic relationships. It may be that the human race will have to live with these difficulties for some time to come, and this is also a challenge to marriage, which at its best can provide the best of all havens of peace for the “recreation” of tired strained personalities.

Parallel with these social and cultural changes of the twentieth century is the progressive concentration of more and more people in large cities, with all the drawbacks as well as the advantages of urbanization. People of greatly different cultural and racial backgrounds are thrown into close social and cultural contact, and this is intensified by the vast growth of transport facilities.

This development has had many effects on marriage and family life. In the past young people mostly met and married partners from their own neighborhoods, and of reasonably similar cultural and racial background. Their respective parents also generally knew each other well, and the marriages began with fairly sound roots. In these days, however, young people often meet and marry partners from much more varied backgrounds and from much greater distances because of availability of public and private transport and of telephone communication. Their respective parents may not have even seen each other until the wedding day, and sometimes not even then, and the young people may well begin their marriage with practically no social roots. Their differences of culture, class, religion, or even race may seem of little account when they are “in love,” but they all too often prove to be a very great handicap to the development of unity when the “glamor” has worn off in the grim realities of everyday living together.

Apart from such differences of family background there is also much greater likelihood in these days of unsound family backgrounds in one or both partners. This has been found by-many investigators to be one of the very common factors in marital disorder and breakdown. At the 1959 Annual Conference of the British Medical Association Dr. H. V. Dicks of London reported that he and his collaborators had studied 157 disturbed marriages, and compared their findings with a control group of happy marriages. In the maritally disturbed group the marriage partners were predominantly of high social status and education: four fifths owned their own houses or flats. Of 299 spouses, no fewer than 239 came from broken homes or homes with poor parental relations, where there was violence between the parents, temporary desertion, and so on. Only 4.2% of the spouses came from emotionally good homes.

In contrast, in the matched control group, 54.6% came from good homes. The 299 spouses showed few overt neurotic symptoms, but disturbed parental relations in the home when the spouses weer children seemed very significant, and under certain conditions the spouses seemed to enact a compulsive repetition of their childhood experience. One of the conditions seemed to be their age. It seemed that marriages came to a crisis when the partners reached 35 or so, when the children were off to school. Dr. Dicks thought this mid-term crisis might be partly physiological (hormonal ageing), or partly the consequence of middle-class people having become isolated within the family group and demanding more of marriage and the family than they could give. (British Medical Journal, Sept. 26, 1959, page 567.)

In addition to its value in elucidating factors in marital disorder, this and similar investigations provide much support for the view that any project which helps in the betterment of present day marriages will have many positive effects on marriages in the future, by equipping more young people with the emotional and personal resources for the achievement of a satisfactory marriage. In some countries the marital situation has been made still more difficult because of much greater mobility of families than in earlier times, with greater difficulty in laying down roots to increase their solidarity in the face of the stresses and strains of modern urban life. New social organizations seem to be needed, and in many places are being created, to provide better opportunities for family consolidation.

Much of this mobility arises from the necessity of earning a living in a country in which many jobs involve frequent change of domicile. In addition to these movements of necessity there are probably many which arise more from insatiable ambition than from necessity, in which social status is felt to depend on advancement and “success,” and which must therefore be pursued, whatever the cost. In such cases the disturbing factor is more personal than environmental.

Under this general heading we can profitably consider a large number of different external environmental factors which may contribute in a direct or in a very subtle way to marital discord and even disaster.

In general it may be said that the rapid change over the last half century in society, in culture, and not least in technology, has possibly had as great an influence on marriage as on any other social institution. Most of the factors about to be described are linked closely with this rapid change. As already mentioned, marriage and family life cannot be unrelated to social realities, and rapid change will always bring periods of strain and conflict between old and new, and challenges to adaptation to the new situation. In such a close personal relationship as marriage, with its deep emotional involvements, there are bound to be distressing tensions in the process.

One of the most radical and far-reaching of these changes has been the emancipation of women. Fifty years ago few women were trained to any kind of occupation that would make them financially independent, and it was rare for a woman to enjoy the social independence of a “bachelor’s flat” in the middle of a big city. As a result wives were generally so dependent on their husbands that even if they suffered greatly in marriage they were compelled to make the best of it. Today almost all women are trained in some occupation through which they can be financially independent, and large numbers of single women, together with widows and divorced or “separated” women, live alone and carry on a full life with complete social acceptance. As a result of this great change there is no essential reason, except for the needs of children, why any woman should put up with continued cruelty or persecution in marriage. This emancipation is the social fulfillment of an ideal to which people have paid lip service for many centuries; the essential dignity of human personality, male and female, and it provides one of the greatest challenges to marriage.

The immediate result of the emancipation of women is that marriage has been raised to a higher status, an equal partnership carried on by mutual consent by two free autonomous people. At the same time it is inevitably more difficult, and demands more from the partners, than ever before. The great increase in the breakdown rate over the last half century is more probably due to the increased standard of marriage than to any great decrease in the competence and character of people.
This social change is something that no marriage counselor can or would wish to alter, but it has a vital effect on the whole work of helping to promote better marriage. Most importantly of all, it has brought a vital new need into the forefront of human affairs: the need for first-class, comprehensive and universal preparation for marriage, from earliest childhood onwards. And marriage counselors are in the forefront of this great future social project, designed to help all people to become as fit as possible for the conduct of modern marriage, and so prevent so many of its disorders from happening. The other great effect on the work of marriage counselors is that it includes the consideration with each of the conflicting partners of the main essential conditions of such an equal partnership between free autonomous people. Many of them have inherited from their own upbringing an out-of-date concept of marriage as a male-dominated “autocracy” or dictatorship, and this uncritical assumption may be very difficult for some husbands to grow out of.

Another social factor in marital disorder is found in the prevailing social ideas, values, customs and practices in the community. Such matters as the current practices regarding “dating” and courtship, and the earlier age at which people tend to marry, may have much to do with later difficulties- especially when combined with the current tendency to individualism, which makes partnership more difficult and vulnerable when the partners feel frustrated in their desire to get more than they give. It is often difficult for people conditioned by the highly competitive acquisitive atmosphere of the business and even the professional world to reorient themselves to the mutual consideration and self-offering so necessary in marriage, unless they have been very strongly conditioned in this unselfish, habitual attitude. This may be one reason why many people who have proved their competence and even brilliance in the business or professional world have proved to be utterly incompetent as marital partners and parents.

At the same time our present way of life has led to much specialization and “compartmentalization,” possibly necessary for efficiency in the many complex technicalities of modern life. But this has so far not been balanced by sufficient training in the arts and the humanities for full personal development. The result is a lessening of human communication in social contacts, and therefore a lessening in human understanding. This is often made worse by social conventions which separate the sexes, through which men and women form separate groups at social gatherings, and feel ill at ease in ordinary social discussion, which therefore tends to be superficial and trivial.

In some countries also young people are forced to a separation between the sexes during the important school years, from the ages of five or six to as old as eighteen or twenty, which deprives them of some practice in the art of social relationships to the possible detriment of their later spontaneity and self-control in friendship, courtship, mate-selection and marriage. Here again these factors are mainly relevant to the fuller preparation for marriage which is so necessary in our present situation. At the same time as the lessening of emotional and intellectual communication between men and women there is a much greater “throwing together” of men and women in their daily work. As a result of this many a man or woman may have as many or more interests in common with colleagues and associates at work than with the partner at home. This of course need not happen if the partners set out to cultivate and practice common interests, but if they fail to forge bonds of this kind the shared interests with someone of the opposite sex outside the home may tend to compete with the marital relationship and eventually destroy it.

Another important change in the social and cultural environment is the development to universal availability of scientific contraception. This has completed the emancipation of women, and saved them from many unwanted pregnancies. Families have tended to become smaller, more “selective,” and when young people have larger families it is generally because they want them. This makes for more contentment in the marriage partnership and has in many ways strengthened it. (It has also made it possible for people to indulge in sexual intercourse outside marriage with much less fear of pregnancy, and this is always a potential or actual threat to the stability of marriage. At the same time the progress of medical science has greatly diminished the fear of venereal disease, and this has also increased the temptation to illicit sexual relationships.)

This is a possible source of many marital difficulties. “Interfering in-laws,” especially when any of them live with or very near the partners, have been a well known source of trouble. The seductive charm of “the girl at the office” or “the man at the office” is also well known. Many a so-called “friend” has exerted a disruptive influence on a marriage partnership, and so have neighbors, job associates, “gangs,” and other personal interferences.

But it seems clear that just as the resistance of the human body is an important factor in germ infection, so the “resistance” of the marriage relationship is an important factor in the marital “infection.” When some personal interference is found to be an apparent causative factor in a marital disorder the counselor will generally have no contact with, and certainly no influence, on the source of the interference, so he can then only help by trying to strengthen the “resistance” of the marriage to such attempts at interference.

For example, when a mother-in-law seems to be dominating one of the partners, the counselor can generally do nothing with her even if it were regarded as the right way to deal with the situation, which is seldom if ever the case. The dominated partner, however, will need some help designed to bring insight into the reasons for allowing such domination, and the constructive ways of recovering the kind of mature autonomy which is necessary for a good adult partnership.

In many other cases of interference there is an underlying defect in the marriage which makes it, or one of the partners, vulnerable to such outside attractions or pressures. There may have been long and wearing conflict, lack of attention to the marriage with indifference and neglect, persistent loneliness and monotony, or any other similar disease of the marriage. Sometimes such chronic disease, like disease in the human body, is “walled off” from everyday interaction, but yet it may gradually corrode the marriage and make it susceptible to any external destructive influence.

Another aspect of the personal environmental influences is the type of job being carried out by one or both partners. When there is inescapable job dissatisfaction it will inevitably have its influence on the marital relationship, as of course disturbed domestic relationships will have their influence on the quality and satisfaction of a person’s daily work. It may be too that an inescapable job involves long or difficult hours, undue worry or strain, or prolonged absence from home. It may also make it impossible for a family to settle down for any length of time in one place because it entails constant moving from place to place. These difficulties add to the strains of domestic life, and may often be revealed during counseling. When the external difficulties cannot be altered it is then the task of the counselor to help the partners to work out possible ways of working better together within the limits laid down by these vocational necessities.

Here we may think of such various influences as housing, neighborhood resources, financial arrangements, and equipment.
Cramped, uncomfortable and otherwise unsuitable housing, lacking in opportunities for desired privacy or in playing space for children, may well add greatly to the burdens of marriage, especially when there is ill health, fatigue or other reason for extra strain. Situations of this kind often have to be endured by young, newly married, often immature partners, who have had no opportunity to settle down properly together and forge a strong enough union to be able to bear these burdens; and it is all too easy for them to be brought to the point of despair as a result. This was particularly true during the post-World War II years.

Deficiencies in such neighborhood resources as shops, kindergartens, schools, churches, community centers, parks and other recreational facilities, lack of adequate transportation resources, and lack of such amenities as home help and baby sitters, may also add heavy burdens to a young couple compelled to live in such unsuitable areas because of the requirements of jobs or because of financial stringencies. Here again the situation is more difficult for people who have not had the opportunity to establish real partnership or to put down adequate roots in their community.

Some rapidly developing “new housing areas” are taking these factors into more consideration in these days, but in other cases they are showing little evidence of so doing. The cramped apartment living in many large cities, with few available recreational amenities, would appear to provide many extra strains for marriage and family life. When children have only the streets to play on, and when the streets are ruled by some form of gangsterism, the community is breeding more and more delinquency for the future, as well as making marital disorder more frequent.

There are some financial factors which make for difficulty in marriage. Financial stringency can be a very heavy burden unless there are some reasonable expectations of relief. In some cases the financial stringency is the result of foolish spending on unnecessary things, or on gambling or drinking or even drugs in some cases, but then the marital disorder is more appropriately tackled from the point of view of the personality disorder behind the overspending. In other cases there are deep conflicts about the financial arrangements of the partnership, and often these are the expression of a deep emotional conflict which fastens itself on anything that can be used as a battleground. In these cases no great relief from the marital disorder is likely until this underlying emotional conflict, or this battle for emotional domination, is honestly faced.

It is an interesting and tragic comment on human nature that many marital disorders seems to be traceable to the fact of too much money as a factor in the trouble. Here of course it is not really the excess of money that causes the trouble but the immaturity, selfishness or similar personal disorder that makes it difficult to cope with excess wealth. The good counselor will try to help the partners to the achievement of some insight about these deeper elements of the problem.

Domestic furnishings and equipment have some part to play in the general comfort and “homeliness” of the living arrangements, and this is necessarily related with the financial resources of the couple, with the steadiness and permanence of the husband’s and wife’s jobs (which allow more indulgence in “time payment”), and also with questions of priority and agreement in what the available resources are to be spent on. Here again the real problem is often an underlying personal or relational one.

When these factors concerning the physical environment come up in counseling it is therefore the counselor’s task to gain some idea of any underlying personal and relational factors that might have brought the housing, financial and other difficulties about, or might be making them persistent or destructive to the marriage. At the same time it may be possible to refer them to some available and suitable social agency which may be able to help in the crisis and to assist them to better ways of promoting their marital and family welfare.