When I was in graduate school, my Marriage and Family Therapy professor had the class watch a video of a real married couple receiving relationship counseling. The video began with the therapist asking the wife to say a bit about why the couple had sought out marriage therapy.
In a soft voice, the wife spoke haltingly about how she and their two young children were often on eggshells because her husband’s temper was unpredictable and often terrifying. She described how yelling, threatening, and spanking were his preferred methods of parenting—all of which she believed were doing harm to the children’s emotional and physical well-being. The wife reported that her husband sometimes got into violent altercations—recently he’d started a fistfight with a neighbor over borrowed power tools. The wife admitted to feeling as if she no longer knew how to behave to avoid his bullying, protect the children, and keep peace in the family.
The wife glanced nervously toward her husband each time he shifted his position or let out an exaggerated sigh.
I gripped the edges of my desk as I took in this woman’s fear and felt in awe of her bravery. I waited eagerly for the therapist to explain to the wife that what she was experiencing was abuse. I felt certain that the therapist would warn the woman that domestic abuse often escalates, that her husband’s displayed capacity for physical violence was a real threat to her and the children, and that she should immediately seek safety and contact an attorney. I imagined the therapist turning to the husband and firmly informing him that she had a duty to report the abuse of his children and that he must seek treatment for his anger and violence if he wanted any hope of having a relationship with his kids in the future.
Instead, the therapist kept her eyes fixed on the wife and calmly asked, “And what part are you playing in enabling his bad behavior?”
I recall the anger I felt as my professor and I debated whether a woman ever contributes to or “enables” her husband’s abusive behavior. I shook my head in disbelief as he explained to me—at the time I was in my mid-40s, married 20 years, mother of two—that I must learn that both parties in a relationship share equal responsibility for whatever occurs within it.
Unfortunately, this is what many heterosexual women experience when they finally convince their partners to try couple’s therapy. Therapists are human, and unless they bring a specifically social-justice-based point of view into their work, they too may display a complete misunderstanding of the role that culturally prescriptive gender dynamics play in contributing to many women’s dissatisfaction in their relationships.
The example in the video exists at the extreme end of the spectrum of the ways in which women are blamed for their own unhappiness. More common examples include:
Telling a woman with “low libido” that the problem lies in her own body or mind rather than exploring how her lack of desire may be connected to being exhausted and resentful from carrying the full mental load of raising a family or a result of her partner’s lack of curiosity about how she receives pleasure
Explaining to a woman who has been begging her partner for more help around the house for years that she hasn’t been “communicating her needs” correctly
Diagnosing a woman with postpartum depression without exploring the quality of care and support she’s receiving from her partner
Suggesting that a woman will have to give up her hopes for equitable sharing of household labor because her partner has ADHD
Insisting that “all feelings are valid” without recognizing that, for example, a wife’s desire for fully consensual, pleasurable sex is valid while her husband’s belief that marriage means having on-demand access to his wife’s body is not
Too often, agreeing to attend couple’s therapy is a way for a man to look as if he’s committed to improving the relationship while not actually making any significant behavioral changes, in large part because counselors often just don’t hold men accountable.
Therapists are taught that we should keep our personal biases out of the therapeutic relationship. Unfortunately, many therapists interpret that to mean that it’s wrong to point out the difference between apples and oranges. Anti-bias is not the same thing as both-side-ism. The desire to exploit, oppress, or gaslight another person is not equal to the desire to live free from these things.
Couple’s counseling only works if both partners are willing to authentically engage and the therapist has excellent training in a social-justice or feminist modality, lived experience of their own long-term relationship, and a firm understanding of culturally enforced gender power dynamics and expectations.
If couple’s counseling hasn’t worked for you, you’re not alone. Please reach out if you’d like to explore next steps on your own.