Marriage Advice, as Elizabeth Weil notes in the New York Times is usually sought out by people who feel they need relationship help.   Many marriage counselors wish that couples would come and see them well before things turn nasty.  John Gottman’s research shows that most us are prepared to put up with six years of anguish before seeking couples therapy.

That’s why it was so refreshing to see the New York Times Dec 1 cover article feature Ms Weil’s article “Married (Happily) with Issues”.   She writes “My marriage was good, utterly central to my existence, yet in no other important aspect of my life was I so laissez-faire. Like most of my peers, I applied myself to school, friendship, work, health and, ad nauseam, raising my children. But in this critical area, marriage, we had all turned away. I wanted to understand why.”

Like most of us, Ms Weil was not seeking relationship advice, not running off to couples retreats, or knocking on the door of a local marriage counselor.  She was getting along pretty much fine, with a pretty OK relationship.

It was rather flattering to Imago that one of her first steps to collect marriage advice was to read Harville Hendrix’s best-seller “Getting The Love You Want”, although personally I wish she had maybe started with a different exercise.  But that’s not the story I want to tell now – Ms Weil does it much better in her article.

What really interested me was how challenging it seemed to be for Ms Weil and her husband Dan to build a better relationship.  It felt like each attempt to pick up some relationship help led them deeper into some new conflict.  Infact they even ran into something that Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt wrote about in “Receiving Love”.   Its as simple fact – being close to someone is hard.   That’s why we so often choose to be a little separate from our partners, close – but not too close.  Because when we get really close,  we see ourselves so much more – and if that’s not done well, it may not be a sight we enjoy.

Don’t dispair.  (Although it felt like maybe Ms Weil was close).  One of the beautiful things about Imago is how much it can help us all develop a much deeper and connected relationship, in a way which feels really supportive, and the opposite of scary.  I write this, as somone previously divorced, and I know that at the time my first marriage broke-up the very last thing I wanted was to see myself reflected in my wife’s eyes.  Marriage advice for me?  Oh no!!  I think that may be the fear that keeps many of us away from couples therapy for John Gottman’s six years.

If you read Ms Weil’s article, and I hope you do, you will probably come away feeling a bit skeptical about marriage counseling, couples retreats and other relationship education can do for you.  If you already have a good relationship, will couples therapy make your relationship better or worse?  Should you leave well alone?

Well let’s go back and look at what Ms Weil wrote above.  “In this critical area, marriage, we had all turned away”.  It’s like either we think we know it all, or that whatever is out there isn’t worth knowing.   And yet this is something that has more influence on our help and happiness than practically anything else we do.  (I will write a blog post soon on the research showing the connection between a healthy marriage and a healthy life!  It’s extremely convincing.)

Are we really all so satisfied with our relationship that we don’t need any more help?  I’m a great photographer (well I think I am) but it doesn’t stop me studying it more.  I’m not bad at the blues harmonica either – but I have a passion to learn more about that.  My marriage is good too, so why not seek all the relationship help and couples therapy that I can find?

Well maybe it is because we are afraid of what might happen?  What would it be like to hear what my wife really wants to tell me?  Perish the thought that she tells me infront of someone else!  Now remember I’m the one who chose the six years of misery and nasty divorce the first time around, and here I was again with someone I loved and a wonderful relationship.  What I found was that Imago was an approach to couples therapy that was far more delight than pain.  As I learned about my wife, it was in a way that was touching and build connection.  I learned what was important for her, and it made me love her more.  It made me feel great.

I think that’s why in the end I did feel sad about Ms Weil’s article in the New York Times.  It seems that in a way that our media is set up so there can be no happy endings, we’re  too sophisticated for that.  It would be no story at all to go out and find that getting some marriage advice simply led to a better and better relationship.   And yet with Imago, the potential really is there.  Its certainly worth some time to try it out – given just how much of our lives we can spend  in delight with our partner.