Marriage counselors take a theoretical, academic approach to marriage. They’ve learned things from textbooks and in classrooms and have fancy degrees hanging on their walls, but they don’t necessarily have the most important credential of all: a happy, passionate, thriving marriage of their own. And you’ll never know how many couples your counselor has helped, because that information is confidential.
These intimacy skills were created in the trenches—with real women in real marriages—and they have worked for more than 150,000 women all over the world. To see some of their stories and pictures, visit the “Case Studies” tab at skillsforlove.com.
“When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.”
—Dresdin James, Author and TV Writer
My husband John and I were performing neurotic folk-rock songs at a tiny coffee house the night our counselor, Nicole, fatally injured her reputation as someone who could help us have a better marriage, falling off her pedestal to her professional death.
While John and I were performing, we were pleasantly surprised to see Nicole and her husband walk in. At the time, I saw her as someone who had it all: a great marriage, two adorable little boys, and a thriving counseling practice.
During one of our sessions, Nicole had helped me to see that I was controlling in my marriage. We’d talked at length about my dysfunctional family-of-origin, and John’s too. That was how we were going to get to the root of the problem and fix it: by healing the old wounds we had from our upbringing. She told us I needed to learn to let go and trust John more, and he needed to step up and take more initiative. Then we’d finally have more harmony and less fighting, and I wouldn’t be so exhausted all the time. We’d been doing our best to follow her instructions, but nothing seemed to be improving.
At the coffee shop, John and I finished our first set. After John set his guitar down, Nicole turned to her husband and said, “Why don’t you go up there and play ‘Landslide’ while they’re taking a break?”
Her husband shook his head emphatically.
“Oh come on,” Nicole insisted. “You do it so well!”
He declined again and began to look alarmed.
“Just go up there and play it!” she finally ordered him.
Looking stricken and terrified, this time he obeyed. After picking up John’s guitar, he began a halting version of “Landslide” that made everyone feel just as uncomfortable as he looked. Halfway through, he stalled, looked at Nicole pleadingly, and then excused himself to rejoin the audience.
That’s when it hit me. At least one reason this counseling hadn’t worked was that Nicole had the same problem I did: She too was controlling! And it was hard to imagine her husband taking any initiative. After all, we’d just witnessed him being unable to refuse her even when the consequence was humiliation.
Nicole couldn’t help us because she didn’t know herself how to have the kind of relationship I wanted.
John and I had been feeling a little hopeless, going to counseling week after week without things improving. We naturally thought it was us, that we were the problem. But it stands to reason that taking marriage advice from someone with a troubled marriage not only doesn’t help, it can actually do harm. Without that glimpse of Nicole interacting with her husband, I might never have known that her seemingly happy marriage was riddled with tension and bickering—just like mine.
For the first time, I realized that no Marriage and Family Therapy credential could guarantee that the bearer would have a happy, lasting, intimate marriage. I felt like I’d been getting the equivalent of personal training from a couch potato with a spare tire or financial advice from someone who was about to file for bankruptcy.
Even though John and I had invested more than $9,000 in her services, I knew at that moment that we were done with Nicole. I resolved in the future to only take advice from women who had the kind of relationship I wanted. And in fact, because counseling wasn’t improving my marriage, I had already started asking women who had been married for a long time about their secrets for a happy marriage. Their answers were like nothing I had ever heard before. They had advice that didn’t even make sense to me at first. It wasn’t the same as counseling at all.
One woman told me that she tried to never criticize her husband, no matter how much it seemed like he deserved it. That was a new one for me, and I was sure I could never do it. Another woman said it was a huge relief for her that her husband handled all the finances for them both. As a career woman and a feminist, I couldn’t fathom that working for me either. I asked them both, “Have you got any other advice?”
Over time, desperation won out and I decided I was ready to try their suggestions. I reasoned that I didn’t have anything to lose by at least trying something new. I told myself I could experiment, and if something didn’t work, I’d just throw it out. Through this process of trial and error, I started to see that when I took certain approaches, I found myself reliably enjoying intimacy and connection with my husband. I also saw that when I reverted back to my old, well-worn habits of trying to improve him through constructive criticism… Well, let’s just say the result was a lot more stress in my marriage.
For the first time, I saw a pattern that had eluded me. I had been convinced that my husband was being stubborn or distant or lazy, but as I experimented with these new approaches, I came to see that he was just reacting to what I said and did. And while I never thought I’d been such a bad wife, I started to see the harm of my old approach as though I had new glasses on. It was startling to see how much of the conflict and tension in our marriage had been my own doing.
By applying these insights, I gained a new way of looking at the problems in my marriage and a new way of behaving. Instead of seeming complicated and tedious, my relationship started to become simple and straightforward. I could see the causes and the effects, and I was able to use my newfound skills to make our marriage sweet, playful, and passionate. Before I knew it, I was passing on the steps I’d taken to other women all over the world.
To get there, I had to kill the idea that marriage counseling—two people sitting on a couch and hashing out their differences in front of a professional—could ever improve my marriage. In fact, John and I barely survived it. Now that I know what does work to make marriage better, I am convinced that, on the whole, marriage counselors are doing more harm than good. It gives me no pleasure to say so, but I must, because women just like me are suffering unnecessarily.
In his play Henry VI, Shakespeare writes, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” But I’m pretty sure that’s only because there were no marriage counselors in his day.
I’m not suggesting you should actually kill your marriage counselor, but depriving her of your hard-earned money would be a step in the right direction. Take back the hour a week you’ve been wasting on her drab olive couch complaining about your spouse—no relationship ever got better that way—and spend that hour doing something that makes you happy instead.
Don’t follow a marriage counselor’s bad advice about making a list of chores and dividing it evenly. Instead, practice the Six Intimacy Skills that will make your relationship feel easy and fun again. Then watch how quickly the chores get done, without you having to remind your husband to do them.
When I tell people I wrote a book called First, Kill All the Marriage Counselors, they usually want to know why I have it in for marriage counselors. And despite my experiences with Nicole, it’s not marriage counselors themselves I have it in for—it’s the structure of marriage counseling, which doesn’t empower women to have better marriages. I deplore the practice of couples focusing on their problems and complaints for an hour a week, and the fallacy that that will help your mate change—or that your spouse has to change for you to be happy. I’m especially outraged by the idea that a bunch of diplomas on a wall—not the firsthand experience of a woman with a happy, intimate, passionate marriage—is considered the most important criteria for someone who provides marital advice. Furthermore, the notion that an unhappy marriage is caused by deep psychological problems, and not just poor modeling or lack of training, is also reprehensible. I’m upset that marriage counseling perpetuates the myth that couples should seek help together, as though you can work on “the relationship.” The reality is that you can only work on yourself, which will then, naturally, change the relationship. Finally, I’m strongly against the outcome of marriage counseling, which is mostly divorce.
If you’re a marriage counselor or therapist, I invite you to train with me to learn the Six Intimacy Skills so you can share them with your clients. If you’re ready to deliver much more effective results, visit the “Become a Coach” tab at skillsforlove.com.
Of course, you don’t have to be a marriage counselor to join my team of coaches. Most of my coaches are women who are so inspired by their own relationship transformation that they want to help other women have the same experience. So far I have coaches in North America, Europe, and Asia, and I’m training new ones every year.
No matter who you are, I invite you to join my mission to make your relationship more intimate, make your work much more inspiring and effective, and end world divorce.
For years after I “killed” my marriage counselor, I still didn’t connect the dots between marriage counseling and the high divorce rate in this country—or maybe I didn’t want to believe it. After all, I figured our marriage counseling experience must have helped somehow, even though I couldn’t figure out how. I wanted to believe it had helped because we had invested so much time and money. And it wasn’t that we had a bad counselor; she was caring and attentive. But while our marriage survived the experience, counseling only made our problems worse.
I assumed we were an exception—that our experience was not typical of the entire multi-billion-dollar marriage-counseling industry. But as I heard story after story of marriage counseling that either didn’t help at all or else resulted in the demise of the marriage, I started to get a sinking feeling about so-called “therapy” for couples.
One of my clients, Stephanie, told me she went to a marriage counselor every week for a year. During the sessions, she told the counselor everything that was wrong with her husband. Each week the counselor listened carefully, sympathized, took her money, and said, “Same time next week?” Stephanie’s marriage never improved. In fact, after a year of counseling, she was seriously contemplating divorcing the father of her four children.
When Stephanie learned the Six Intimacy Skills, she made changes that resulted in a dramatic improvement in her marriage within a couple of weeks. Suddenly her husband was going out of his way to do thoughtful things for her, showing a lot of affection, and spontaneously doing things she had nagged him to do for years.
That was over a decade ago. Stephanie hasn’t been to a marriage counselor since, and she still gets tears in her eyes when she talks about how loving her husband became once she learned the skills, and how tragic it would have been had she continued focusing on his faults in counseling every week, or had she acted on her impulse to throw him out and find someone new. There’s no question in her mind that he is and always was the man of her dreams.
Christine met and married a terrific guy she was crazy about after adopting the Six Intimacy Skills. She also gained insight about the demise of her first marriage when she looked at it through this new perspective. She told me that when she described to a marriage counselor that she and her husband had been sleeping in separate beds for a year, the counselor told her, “Can’t you see your marriage is over? It’s dead! You need to get out of there.” The counselor made no attempt to help Christine improve her marriage, nor did she ask her if she wanted to leave—she just insisted that she should. She even implied that Christine was naïve or stupid for staying in her marriage. In Christine’s vulnerable state, it was hard for her to argue with this strong-minded counselor who seemed to know best. She went home and announced to her husband that she was divorcing him. He said he was willing to work on the marriage, but Christine refused. “It’s over,” she told him, repeating what the counselor had said. She tragically tore apart her young family, even though deep down she felt the marriage could have been saved.
Another client, Bridget, told me, “I worked really hard on my marriage in couples counseling, but I felt hopeless that it would ever change so I told him I wanted a divorce. At first he tried to talk me out of it, but then he became resigned to it. Now I’ve asked him if we could try to reconcile, but he refuses.” After she discovered the Six Intimacy Skills, it was devastating for her to realize that the hard work she had done was the wrong kind of work. She was filled with grief when she told me, “I can’t accept that there’s more I could have done to have saved my marriage. It’s just too painful.” Poor Bridget had the wrong information, and it cost her dearly.
The significance of these stories, which are both real and representative of what I hear from women every day, is that there are proven, practical ways to get the marriage you’ve always wanted, even if it’s been dead for years. But most marriage counselors don’t know them.
Of course, in any profession there are bad eggs—the incompetent mechanic, the plumber who rips off his customers, the dentist who drills and fills unnecessarily. Marriage counseling is no different—there are a few really bad eggs out there taking advantage, but that’s only a small percentage of the people in the field. Most marriage counselors are good people who genuinely want to help. But ultimately it doesn’t matter whether you find a counselor whose intentions are good or bad; the entire structure underlying marriage counseling is toxic.
For one thing, there is no respectful way to complain about your husband in front of a stranger. No matter how carefully you word your grievances, you will still be putting down the man you chose to marry in front of someone who doesn’t know him. That’s the very opposite of creating the emotional safety that intimacy needs to thrive.
The results we’re collectively getting from marriage counseling tell the story: Marriage is down. Divorce is up. In most developed countries, the chances of having long-term marital success are only as good as the chances of getting tails on a coin flip. One law firm that specializes in divorce refers to marriage counselors as “marriage cancelers,” because so many of their clients are fresh from the office of a Marriage and Family therapist or psychologist.
You might argue that marriage counselors have a nearly impossible job, because by the time a couple arrives in the professional’s office, the marriage is already dead. You might think it’s too late to save the relationship when there’s so much hurt, blame, and anger built up.
But my experience is that most marriages are completely fixable, no matter how long the couple has been separated and no matter how hopeless it seems. I see marriages come back to life after one or both parties have filed for divorce. I see women who were completely hopeless that their husbands would ever be able to meet their needs smiling and gratefully admitting that my Six Intimacy Skills really did work.
Marriage counseling often focuses on your partner’s weaknesses. This book will show you how to focus on your strengths instead.
I’m a strong advocate for marriage, but there is such a thing as a divorce I endorse. Here are the types of men with whom you are not safe and therefore you cannot reasonably hope to have an intimate, passionate, peaceful relationship:
• A man who is actively addicted to drugs, alcohol, or gambling
• A physical abuser
• A man who isn’t capable of being faithful to you
Those are the deal-breakers. Your safety comes first, and these kinds of men are acting on compulsions that supersede everything else—even their desire to love and protect you. If you aren’t safe, consider ending the relationship and creating the space in your life for a good man, the kind who will treat you the way you deserve to be treated.
If, however, you decide that your relationship with such a man is at least 51 percent good, and you decide to stay in the relationship, know that I trust you as the expert of your own life to decide what’s best for you. However, I can’t promise you will have all the intimacy, passion, and peace that you deserve and that is possible.
If your husband does not fall into one of these categories, then you have a good guy that you are safe with. Of course he’s not perfect, but you can have a wonderful relationship with him. If you’re not enjoying that right now, this book will show you why and what to do differently to have the relationship you deserve. You’ll start by implementing simple skills, and over time not only will your perspective change, your husband will respond to you differently.
Sometimes a client will add something to this list of deal-breakers because she’s unhappy in her relationship and convinced that it’s because there’s something wrong with her man. She’ll throw in addiction to food or cigarettes or insist that verbal abuse should be on the list. Some clients are convinced that mental illness is a deal-breaker. It’s rare that I talk to a woman who doesn’t have some kind of psychological diagnosis for her husband—one she got from a professional or one she came up with herself—that explains why he is so difficult and the marriage is so hopeless. But over time, these clients shift their perception and discover an astonishing path to improving their relationship despite their previous conviction that it simply wasn’t possible. These concerns—though painful to live with and not to be taken lightly—don’t have to stand between you and a happy relationship.
Even if your husband is not in any of the deal-breaker categories, you still might feel that your situation is hopeless. However, my experience of working with thousands of women in dozens of countries for the past sixteen years is that everyone feels that way in the beginning—including me. But what I’ve observed is that any woman who has a good guy has the power to make the relationship amazing if she learns the skills that contribute to intimacy. Most guys are good, and they really want their wives to be happy.
Let’s suppose for a moment that I’m completely wrong and your husband really is an exception. Until you try the Six Intimacy Skills, you’ll never know for sure if the problem is his character flaws or that you simply haven’t been trained properly. If you experiment with the suggestions in this book and on the companion site skillsforlove.com, you’ll certainly find out where the problem really lies.