Reasons for Joint Interviews

This section is concerned, however, mainly with the joint interviews which might be arranged by the counselor at some appropriate point in the series of interviews. There are two main reasons for his wishing to arrange such joint interviews. The first of these is when one or both clients tend to concentrate mainly on the objectionable attitudes and the misdeeds of the other, and seem unable or unwilling to face their own contributions to the disorder. If the counselor just goes on allowing them to talk about their grievances in this way the counseling may well reach a point of “stalemate,” unless their unburdening can go on well enough and for long enough for them to gain adequate insight. When this doesn’t seem to be possible it may be tempting for the counselor to bring up some point offered by the other one, for example, “Your wife seems to feel rather upset by what she thinks is your cruelty to her.” A common answer to such a statement is, “She’s exaggerating that, I’m not cruel at all.” What is the counselor to do then? Is he to take it up with the wife next time, and say, “Your husband thinks you’re exaggerating,” which would not be of any help to her or to the counseling because she would deny his remarks with indignation. The counselor cannot become a “tale bearer” without doing a lot of possible harm to the counseling.

When each client persists with accounts of the other’s misdeeds and doesn’t face any of his own it often helps to seek a joint interview, first asking the consent of each of them, and then asking whether each one would be able to bring up any matters which are distressing them. There are certain essential conditions of successful joint interviews which will be discussed shortly, and when these are fulfilled the counselor may find such an interview very helpful. Suppose in this joint interview “Mary” brings up her concern at “John’s” cruelty. John may then accuse her of exaggeration, and Mary will then say something like this: “But you remember on such and such an occasion when you got really mad with me and you grabbed me by the neck and nearly choked me. I still don’t think you realize how you scared and hurt me in your raging temper!”

In many such cases John might try to interrupt Mary’s account of something that he feels threatening to him, as he would have done in all of their previous attempts to discuss it with each other. But on this occasion the counselor can help each of them to get a good hearing by waggling a finger in this case at John, and saying, “Let her have her say, John, and then you can have the floor!” In this kind of manner he can keep the discussion from being swamped by the emotional components in the disorder. Under such good-natured control the particular grievance will be hammered out to some kind of mutual agreement, and then the counselor, who has shown full acceptance of the attitildes and behavior of each of them, can take up any such matter with the partner concerned in a subsequent individual interview. For example he might say to “John,” “What about those outbursts of cruelty that Mary brought up when you were both here last time? What sort of thing gets in your hair to stir you up in that way?”

From this point the counselor may be able to work with John backwards towards any frustrated role expectations, his habitual attitudes and responses, his uncritical assumptions, emotional needs and their frustrations, and also his childhood experiences with parents and others which might well provide him with the clues to the violent reactions which perplexed him as much as they upset his wife. Properly handled, such joint interviews can make the rest of the counseling move ahead in such cases as these, by bringing many important areas of conflict on to the “agenda.”

A second and generally later reason for joint interviewing is that when each partner has achieved reasonable insight it still may be a valuable way of clearing up many matters of mutual involvement, or offering appropriate information applicable to both of them, about some of the principles of personal relationships. These may be termed “mediational interviews,” as distinct from the “clarifying joint interviews” already discussed. There will not generally be as much emotional inter-relationship or interaction in the mediational interviews as in the clarifying ones, and there will be more constructive and practical discussion. At this point it is necessary to formulate the main conditions which need to be satisfied if a joint interview is to have the best chance of succeeding. It goes without saying that the willingness of both partners is necessary, and the additional willingness of each of them to bring up any matters which concern them is advisable. But there are some other quite important conditions.

From what has been discussed so far it seems clear that any joint interview is more likely to be helpful if it is left until the emotional tensions have largely subsided. If things become so heated in any joint interview as to be likely to hurt or humiliate either partner too greatly it may be wise for the counselor tactfully to terminate it, either by stopping the whole interview with a sympathetic gesture to each partner, or by suggesting that one of the partners retires for a time and the other (possibly the more hostile one) carry on with an individual interview in which he is encouraged to unburden his intense feeling.

So that the emotional tensions may have a chance of subsiding before any joint interview it is generally wise to have at least two or three individual interviews with each partner before arranging it. Another condition, more difficult to carry out in many cases, is that the counselor should have reasonably comparable rapport with each of the partners. If this is not achieved it is likely that the partner with whom there is less rapport will feel ill at ease and even “odd man out,” and that may well do more harm than good. In such cases a more intensive counseling with the partner with less rapport may be very helpful.

Keywords: Marriage, Marriage Counseling, Marital Relationship, Marital Disorder, Marital Conflict