Couple therapists would agree that struggles over money can lead to serious relationship difficulties, even divorce. The most common dynamic I have experienced in my clinical practice is when a saver is in a relationship with or married to a spender. The saver appears financially frugal or, in extreme cases, cheap, and the spender is financially freewheeling or, in extreme cases, out-of-control.

People are marrying later in life, and marriage rates are declining. However, divorce rates remain formidable. This is because while postponing marriage can help some mature emotionally or establish themselves financially, it does not necessarily safeguard against choosing an inappropriate person. Contrary to popular opinion, this job is primarily left to our unconscious to get right.

Fry and Parker (2021) of the Pew Research Center reported that in 2021, 38 percent of adults were found to be unpartnered, as compared to 29 percent in 1990—statistics driven predominately by a decline in marriage. Indeed, over the past 50 years, the marriage rate has dropped by approximately 60 percent (Pandey, 2023). In 2021, 47.35 million men were never married, as compared to 41.81 million women (Duffin, 2022). And according to data from the Institute for Family Studies,

Most therapists do not treat couples when one partner is secretly having an extramarital affair. However, when the cheating spouse solicits individual therapy, many clinicians—particularly those trained in couple’s work—lean towards saving the primary relationship. They might deny this, but some of the brave souls I have spoken to admit they consider themselves successful if they help rescue a marriage. And while that is a noble objective, it may also be one of the reasons cl

If you don't know what's wrong, you can't fix it. Many couples do not consider premarital counseling as they go through the wedding planning process (Li, 2016). However, the clergy has been at the forefront of this concept for some time. Marital failure is particularly worrisome to most religious institutions in part because they frown upon divorce. I have received numerous calls over the years from priests and rabbis requesting that I evaluate a couple because they have scor

How to handle a partner's most painful transgressions. Whether you are married or in a long-term relationship, if your union is not considered “open” and an emotional or sexual transgression is committed by your partner, the pain is often palpable. However, affairs, like many life events, exist on a continuum. Some clients use the concept of “time” when considering where to place this type of transgression. They tend to make a great distinction between a “fling” and an “affai

... and why those affairs might be harder to stop. According to the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (2018), national surveys indicate that approximately 15 percent of women and 25 percent of men will have sexual intercourse outside of their marriages. Affairs that are emotional and sexual yet void of intercourse account for another 20 percent. Yet despite these numbers, most people do not typically go out of their way to have an affair. Affairs take up ti

The replication of past victimization in couples. Perhaps no one has written more about the impact that early injustices can have on one’s present and future than noted psychiatrist and family therapist Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy (1965). His most famous concept, parentification, is applied, for example, to a child who was chronically saddled with age-inappropriate responsibility while growing up. In some cases, the child may have been called upon to take care of ill or incompetent

These are the most common issues that couples present in therapy. Most couples who present for counseling complain of poor communication. In fact, that's often all they report. Fostering clear communication has long been one of the goals of most marriage and family therapists (Gottman, 2015; Guerney, 1977; Haley, 1991; Satir, 1988; Watzlawick, Beavin, & Jackson, 1967). In my years of conducting couples work, I have noticed at least eight distinct communicational styles that o

A different perspective on a challenging dynamic. I asked a recently married friend of mine how his marriage was going. He looked at me with a simper and said: “Great! I never realized how many things I did wrong until I got married.” Of course, my compadre was being sarcastic because he then went on to say that he was getting private lessons from his new wife in everything from folding towels to putting the cereal away to doing the laundry. You might argue that men are more

Never relocate without them Retirement is a popular concept. It would be difficult to turn on your television without being battered by some insurance company or investment firm, scaring you into buying their products to protect yourself from the poverty that may come with an inadequate retirement fund. Of course, most people are too busy trying to survive to worry about putting enough money away to lay on a beach one day. Nevertheless, if you do happen to think there is a p