|
Marriage Guidance
I find my role as a Marriage Guidance
Counsellor to be most rewarding. It can, of course, be
challenging and, indeed, in recent times has carried some risk.
This latter problem has followed from our professional commitment
to take full account of the most up-to-date research into
relationships.
In the past, the Marriage Guidance
Counselling Service has based its approach on enhancing
communication and emotional understanding between couples. There
then emerged incontrovertible sociological research which proved
beyond doubt that this had been based on an incorrect premise.
Far from marital discord being caused by misunderstanding and
miscommunication, we now know that, in the vast majority of
cases, problems are caused by one party being totally
unreasonable.
Our previous approach of valuing the
perspective of each partner had only served to undermine the
confidence of the one who was in the right and collude with the
psychopathology of the one who was in the wrong.
We now attempt to identify the partner who
is to blame at the earliest opportunity and then robustly
confront his or her behaviour.
Mr and Mrs Jones were one such example. I
told Mrs Jones, outright, that her nagging and complaining would
make a saint swear and that being overweight, unattractive and
totally useless in bed seriously compounded the problem. It did
not surprise me when she started throwing items from the
bookshelf and, between ducking, I had to scream that her
mindless, hysterical behaviour was typical - just like that of
her hideous, bad-tempered old battle-axe of a mother.
Another example was Mr and Mrs Smith. In
this instance it was Mrs Smith who was perfection personified and
her husband who was the pointless waste of space. I became so
annoyed while confronting his stupid behaviour that I had to hit
him with one of the consulting room chairs. Had he got up, things
could have turned very nasty. Fortunately, Mrs Smith kindly
joined me in kicking the shit out of him to avoid that
eventuality.
The Marriage Guidance Counselling Service
has also developed its services into the post-counselling phase.
We can arrange legal advice for the blameless partner to ensure
that their selfish bastard or bitch of a spouse gets not a penny
more than necessary. Also that access is limited or avoided, so
that the minds of the children cannot be poisoned.
We also provide a dating service to
introduce wronged and long-suffering partners to each other.
Sometimes this is with a view to a lifelong match though, due to
the popularity of this service, clients are eligible as soon as
they have been identified as innocent. Many have found the solace
of even a short affair during counselling to be of great support.
I and other councillors often make valuable use of this service
ourselves. In fact, I am sure that having had intimate relations
with Susan - Mrs Smith in my above example - helped me gain far
greater insight into her marital circumstances.
|
