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Whatever a marriage therapist's theoretical orientation, whether you opt for short 9 term therapy, long-term therapy, or a three-minute radio consultation with your local Frasier, the message you'll get is pretty uniform: Learn to communicate better. The sweeping popularity of this approach is easy to understand. When most couples find themselves in a conflict (whether it gets played out as a short spat, an all-out screaming match, or stony silence), they each gird themselves to win the fight. They become so focused on how hurt they feel, on proving that they're right and their spouse is wrong, or on keeping up a cold shoulder, that the lines of communication between the two may be overcome by static or shut down altogether. So it seems to make sense that calmly and lovingly listening to each other's perspective would lead couples to find compromise solutions and regain their marital composure. The most common technique recommended for resolving conflict--used in one guise or another by most marital therapists--is called active listening. For example, a therapist might urge you to try some form of the listener-speaker exchange. Let's say Judy is upset that Bob works late most nights. The therapist asks Judy to state her complaints as "I" statements that focus on what she's feeling rather than hurling accusations at Bob. Judy will say, "I feel lonely and overwhelmed when I'm home alone with the kids night after night while you're working late," rather than, "It's so selfish of you to always work late and expect me to take care of the kids by myself." Then Bob is asked to paraphrase both the content and the feelings of Judy's message, and to check with her if he's got it right. (This shows he is actively listening to her.) He is also asked to validate her feelings--to let her know he considers them legitimate, that he respects and empathizes with her even if he doesn't share her perspective. He might say: "It must be hard for you to watch the kids by yourself when I'm working late." Bob is being asked to suspend judgment, not argue for his point of view, and to respond non defensively. "I hear you" is a common active-listening buzz word. Thanks to Bill Clinton, "I feel your pain" may now be the most notorious. By forcing couples to see their differences from each other's perspective, problem solving is supposed to take place without anger. 10 This approach is often recommended whatever the specific issue— whether your conflict concerns the size of your grocery bill or major differences in your lifelong goals. Conflict resolution is touted not only as a cure-all for troubled marriages but as a tonic that can prevent good marriages from faltering. Where did this approach come from? The pioneers of marital therapy adapted it from techniques used by the renowned psychotherapist Carl Rogers. For individual psychotherapy Rogerian psychotherapy had its heyday in the 1960s and is still practiced in varying degrees by psychotherapists today. His approach entails responding in a nonjudgmental and accepting manner to all feelings and thoughts the patient expresses. For example, if the patient says, "I just hate my wife, she's such a nagging bitch," the therapist nods and says something like "I hear you saying that your wife nags you and you hate that." The goal is to create an empathetic environment so the patient feels safe exploring his inner thoughts and emotions and confiding in the therapist. Since marriage is also, ideally, a relationship in which people feel safe being themselves, it might seem to make sense to train couples to practice this sort of unconditional understanding. Conflict resolution is certainly easier if each party expresses empathy for the other's perspective. The problem is that it doesn't work. A Munich-based marital therapy study conducted by Dr. Kurt Hahlweg and associates found that even after employing active listening techniques the typical couple was still distressed. Those few couples who did benefit relapsed within a year. The wide range of marital therapies based on conflict resolution share a very high relapse rate. In fact, the best of this type of marital therapy, conducted by Neil Jacob son, Ph.D." of the University of Washington, has only a 35 percent success rate. In other words, his own studies show that only 35 percent of couples see a meaningful improvement in their marriages as a result of the therapy. A year later, less than half of that group--or just 18 percent of all couples who entered therapy-- retain these benefits. When Consumer Reports surveyed a large sample of its members on their experience with all kinds of psychotherapists, most got very high customer satisfaction 11 marks--except for marital therapists, who got very poor ratings. This survey may not qualify as rigorous scientific research, but it confirms what most professionals in this field know: In the long run, current approaches to marital therapy do not benefit the majority of couples. When you really think about it, it's not difficult to see why active listening so often fails. Bob might do his best to listen thoughtfully to Judy's complaints. But he is not a therapist listening to a patient whine about a third party. The person his wife is trashing behind all of those "I" statements is him. There are some people who can be magnanimous in the face of such criticism--the Dalai Lama comes to mind. But it's unlikely that you or your spouse is married to one of them. (Even in Rogerian therapy, when the client starts complaining about the therapist, the therapist switches from empathy to other therapeutic approaches.) Active listening asks couples to perform Olympic-level emotional gymnastics when their relationship can barely walk. If you think validation and active listening will make conflict resolution easier for you and your spouse, by all means use it. There are circumstances where it can certainly come in handy. But here's the catch: Even if it does make your fights "better" or less frequent, it alone cannot save your marriage. Even happily married couples can have Even happily married couples can have screaming matches-- screaming matches--loud arguments loud arguments loud arguments don't necessarily harm a marriage. don't necessarily harm a marriage. After studying some 650 couples and tracking the fate of their marriages for up to fourteen years, we now understand that this approach to counseling doesn't work, not just because it's nearly impossible for most couples to do well, but more importantly because successful conflict resolution isn't what makes marriages succeed. One of the most startling findings of our research is that most couples who have maintained happy marriages rarely do anything that even partly resembles active listening when they're upset. 12 Consider one couple we studied, Belle and Charlie. After more than forty-five years of marriage, Belle informed Charlie that she wished they had never had children. This clearly rankled him. What followed was a conversation that broke all the active listening rules. This discussion doesn't include a lot of validation or empathythey both jump right in, arguing their point. Charlie: You think you would have been better off if I had backed you in not having children? Belle: Having children was such an insult to me, Charlie. Charlie: No. Hold on a minute. Belle: To reduce me to such a level! Charlie: I'm not reduBelle: I wanted so much to share a life with you. Instead I ended up a drudge. Charlie: Now wait a minute, hold on. I don't think not having children is that simple. I think that there's a lot biologically that you're ignoring. Belle: Look at all the wonderful marriages that have been childless. Charlie: Who? Belle: The Duke and Duchess of Windsor! Charlie (deep sigh): Please! Belle: He was the king! He married a valuable woman. They had a very happy marriage. Charlie: I don't think that's a fair example. First of all, she was forty. That makes a difference. Belle: She never had children. And he fell in love with her not because she was going to reproduce. Charlie: But the fact is, Belle, that there is a real strong biological urge to have children. Belle: That's an insult to think that I'm regulated by biology. Charlie: I can't help it! Belle: Well, anyway, I think we would have had a ball without children. Charlie: Well, I think we had a ball with the kids, too. Belle: I didn't have that much of a ball. 13 Charlie and Belle may not sound like June and Ward Cleaver, but they have been happily married for over forty-five years. They both say they are extremely satisfied with their marriage and devoted to each other. No doubt they have been having similar in-your-face discussions for years. They don't end off angrily, either. They go on to discuss why Belle feels this way about motherhood. Her major regret is that she wasn't more available to spend time with Charlie. She wishes she hadn't always been so cranky and tired. There's a lot of affection and laughter as they hash this out. Neither of their heart rates or blood pressures indicate distress. The bottom line of what Belle is saying is that she loves Charlie so much, she wishes she had had more time with him. Clearly, there's something very positive going on between them that overrides their argumentative style.