When Your Spouse Refuses to Take Responsibility

"How can I find affordable marriage counseling? My husband and I need help, but he won't go and he won't pay for me to go, either".
(From Sue Shellenbarger's Work & Family Mailbox column in the Wall Street Journal)

Although Ms. Shellenbarger answered this question in her usual helpful way (see if your employer has free counseling under an employee assistance plan; or perhaps your church has a free or low-cost program), I think she misses the bigger picture. Yes, there may be low-cost alternatives for those who cannot afford traditional marriage counseling, but what good can they do if one spouse refuses to participate?

A spouse who won't attend counseling sessions of any kind is saying, in effect, "This is your problem. Go ahead and fix it if you want to, but don't bother me about it". He or she (although usually it's a "he") is washing his hands of all responsibility in the matter.

In a situation like that, marriage counseling, in the usual sense of that term, is impossible, given that it's based on the notion that the marital relationship involves the participation and consent of both spouses. A spouse can unilaterally change his or her own expectations and behaviors, but cannot unilaterally change the marital system. Recognizing this, many marriage counselors will not accept individual spouses as clients, or, if they do, they will stress to the client that the counseling sessions will be more in the nature of individual therapy. In severe cases---where the non-participating spouse essentially has one foot out the door---the therapy may have to focus on the reality of divorce and prepare the client for her new life, whether she wants that new life or not.

Having said all that, though, I'll offer at least some hope. A lot of men instinctively avoid marriage counseling because they know in their hearts that they have contributed greatly to the problems in their marriage, but they don't want to have to defend their bad behavior to a stranger, especially if that stranger is a woman. The good news is that marriage counseling is normally not about assigning blame but about coming up with workable solutions. And although probably a majority of marriage counselors are women, there are thousands of men in the field, as well as a fair number of male-female counselor teams. There is no need for a husband to feel that he's going to be tried, convicted, and executed by an all-woman judge and jury.

But if logical reasoning fails to persuade and the husband refuses to budge, he's sending an unmistakeable signal that his wife can do whatever she wants, as long as it doesn't involve him. Whether he knows it or not, that's a dangerous signal to send. His wife may well interpret it as proof that the marriage is over, and she may skip the calls to the marriage counselors and start making calls to divorce lawyers.