Therapy And The Will, Improves Marital Conflicts

Marriage And Beyond

oi-Cara

By Cara

Tuesday, April 20, 2010, 17:17

Married couples can overcome their marital conflicts with the help of effective therapy sessions. Therapy can help distressed couples, if both partners want to improve their marital relationship.

A study, conducted by Andrew Christensen, Professor of Psychology studied 134 married couples. Most of them were in their 30s and 40s, and half of the couples had children. Though all the couples were chronically and seriously distressed, all of them were optimistic about improving their marriages.

The aim of the therapy was not to make the couples better in beds but to improve their relationship and make them happy in life. All the couples received up to 26 therapy sessions within a year.

The traditional behavioral couple therapy, focused on making positive changes, including learning better ways of communicating, especially about problems, and better ways of working toward solutions.

The integrative behavioral couple therapy, used similar strategies but focuses more on the emotional reactions and not just the actions that led to the emotional reactions. In this approach, couples were made to understand their spouse's emotional sensitivities.

Post the therapy sessions, about two-thirds of the couples overall had shown significant clinical improvement.

The integrative therapy was significantly more effective than traditional therapy for the initial period. However, the difference between the treatments diminish in the long run.

Therapies to improve marital relationships is a long process. It goes on for five to six years. According to the study, after five years of treatment, about half of the couples significantly improved from where they started, about a quarter were separated or divorced and about another quarter were remained unchanged.

For such therapies to work, both partners should be strongly willing to improve relationships. Both should do their share to make their relationship work.