My marriage is in trouble. Can I fix it?
This question is asked by thousands of people every day. The difficult part is that many couples have
only one partner who realizes or is willing to admit that there are big
problems in a marriage.
There are many, many products and ebooks available that claim
to deal with the problem of failing marriages.
Unfortunately, many of them are written by people who are not qualified
to deal with the unique problems of the dynamic of two people in a
relationship.
Lee Baucom, PhD., is a very highly regarded marriage
counselor with well over twenty years of experience saving marriages. Dr.
Baucom’s non-traditional approach has saved thousands of marriages. He is a member of the American Association of
Marriage and Family Therapists. The
industry average success rate is approximately 20 percent, but Dr. Baucom
claims a success rate of approximately 90 percent. He states that his phenomenal success rate is
due to his unique approach to the problem of how to fix a relationship
that is in trouble.
Many self-styled marriage counselors deal only with the
actions that a couple should take in order to save their marriage. This can be viewed as closing the barn door
once the horse is gone – that is, it’s already somewhat too late. In order to save the relationship, it’s
important to know what things a couple must not do in order to keep the
relationship intact, before either partner begins to think of divorce as the
only solution. In other words, Dr.
Baucom’s approaches are much more proactive than those of many other products
and therapists.
Dr. Baucom claims that his straightforward approach has
saved thousands of troubled marriages since the development and first application
of his program. His website contains quite a few video clips where the
doctor delineates the contents of his innovative program.
The information is helpful, well-organized and easily
actionable, and it’s presented very clearly. Dr. Baucom criticizes the unprofessional and
unqualified self-styled “marriage counselors” who abound on the internet. He
states that much of the material offered by these people is not correctly
tested and is unproven.
Dr. Baucom admits that when he first began to practice,
he began by applying the archaic principles he had been taught. Distressed because they didn’t work very well,
and that his clients were frustrated at not getting the answers to their
question “How do you save a relationship?” he researched and developed
his own unconventional approach and his success rate rose dramatically.
Surprisingly, most practicing psychologists are not
trained specifically for marriage therapy.
They start in working with individual clients, and add on couples
therapy later on in their practice.
Naturally, they try to use the general individual techniques they were
taught in school to help married couples to fix their marriage. This sounds like a good idea, but it doesn’t
work, states Dr. Baucom, and this explains the low success rate.
Like most other current marriage counselors, Baucom began
in practice by applying the principles he had been taught in school. Unfortunately, these techniques were
outdated, especially for modern couples where the division of labor within a
marriage is so different now than it had been in previous decades. Add to that the truth that a marriage is not
merely two individuals with their own psychologies, but the marriage entity is
a unique thing with a blended psychology which has to be addressed in a very
special way, and the complexity of the problem increases dramatically. He found some unique and especially effective
ways to help couples to fix a relationship that’s in trouble.
Part of Doctor Baucom’s approach is first to show you the
“Four Myths of a Successful Marriage.”
These myths are:
- Communication is critical.
- There is only one path to a successful marriage. (The author claims there are at least eight
paths)
- You can’t save the marriage if your spouse isn’t trying.
- Time heals all (wounds, plus everything else).
Dr. Baucom claims that, many times, when one partner
files for divorce or otherwise claims that there are big problems in the
marriage, the other partner is taken completely by surprise. Somehow, the second partner had no idea (or
claims to have had no idea) that the marriage wasn’t going along just fine, and
suddenly, divorce is in the picture.
Dr. Baucom claims that more marriages die from neglect
than any other cause. Often a partner
will feel devalued and lonely simply because there is no positive work going on
in the marriage, and this makes the unhappy partner feel like saying “My marriage is over!” and makes them want to end the relationship.
People who are surveyed consistently rate their marriage
as one of the top three or four priority items, yet ironically, very few people
spend time working on their marriage.
Often the other partner sees this unintentional neglect as indifference,
and the result is separation and/or divorce.
In the work arena, when someone is faced with a similarly
difficult situation, many people simply change jobs rather than try to change
the work situation to suit themselves better and make themselves happier where
they are. It’s part and parcel of our
current disposable society. Also, our
society has diminished respect for the institution of marriage. These two factors can contribute to a partner
starting down the painful road to divorce.
Separation or divorce, of course, are not short-term, clear-cut
events. There is a long emotional
process involved before and during the actual legal decisions. Dr. Baucom states that a couple must know
what stage their relationship is in.
There are different treatments in his program that can be applied at
different stages in a couple’s relationship breakdown. This is very helpful and makes Dr. Baucom’s
methods tailor-made for each couple wanting to fix a relationship.
As with any product, Dr. Baucom doesn’t promise 100
percent success. Whenever you deal with
people and their psychologies, things are always changing and sometimes a
marriage will fail despite people’s best intentions and efforts. Dr. Baucom’s techniques do have an
astonishing success rate, however, and there are many life stories on the site
to prove the validity of his techniques.
Doctor Baucom closes by saying that his program isn’t
just about your marriage, it’s about creating the relationship of your dreams. As
long as both people want a fulfilling and happy future together, with a little
work and loving attention, they can achieve it.
