Divorce Busting and The Divorce Remedy
Michelle Weiner-Davis' Message of Hope for Troubled Marriages
Nov 14, 2009
In the early 1990s, Michelle Weiner-Davis was engaged in marital therapy. She was not pleased with outcome of much of her work, or the approach taken by most therapists, or that some believed that the marriages of 90% of couples coming in for therapy were dead on arrival. The old ways of promoting insight into each individual’s history to explain why they had problems were not getting solutions.
Weiner-Davis knew there had to be a better way. This belief, coupled with another belief that marriage has significant benefits to the couple involved and those around them set her on a quest to find the better way.
She started looking into alternatives and came to believe that couples needed solutions, not explanations. The result was her commitment to solution oriented therapy. This approach concentrates on solutions rather than explanations, enabling couples to make behavioral shifts that transform their marriages. It can be used to break patterns such as Barbara DeAngelis' four R's.
In her own practice she found that concentrating on solutions even when one spouse was all ready out the door could make divorce the exception rather than the rule among the couples she worked with. With that discovery she felt compelled to share this approach with the many contemplating divorce. This led her in 1992 to write “Divorce Busting” which became a national best-seller. She followed it up in 2001 with “The Divorce Remedy”, building upon nine years of feed back from “Divorce Busting.” Both read not like analysis, but rather like action plans.
Divorce Busting, Negatives of Divorce vs. Positives of a Good Marriage
The initial sections of this book discuss the negatives of divorce, the positives of a good marriage and her journey to find solutions. She also addresses the thinking that leads people to divorce as an answer to unhappiness and what is illusory about that thinking, and how to address the thought process head on.
Many people feel when Weiner-Davis writes about this thinking or the problems that come from it that she has been living with them. A huge value in Part One is that in describing the problems and the thinking a reader with a marriage in crisis begins to see that the issues are not unique. This gives a suffering person both comfort and hope.
Divorce Busting, Action Plans to Save a Marriage
In Part Two of Divorce Busting, Weiner-Davis provides a plan of action to find and employ solutions to the problems in a marriage. Her first bit of advice is that one spouse can change the marriage by changing himself. She relates this to the “butterfly effect” concept which indicates a butterfly moving its wings in the rainforest affects the weather thousands of miles away. If one spouse changes the relationship changes, and this can have a profound effect on the marriage.
The spouse deciding to change needs to overcome the natural question as to why he needs to change. The answer is that if the relationship is not going well, it means the same patterns are being repeated, however, well intentioned they may be. The same old solutions will mean the same old results. Someone needs to take the initiative.
Once there is a decision to change and action is taken it is important to monitor the results of the change. Weiner-Davis wisely points out that not all changes are created equal. If a particular change does not get desired results, then try another change until a working pattern develops. Don’t do “more of the same.”
Among the illusions described in Part One is the belief that people are incapable of change. This leads to expected behaviors, but more importantly it leads to dismissal of desired behaviors as exceptions to expectations rather than possibilities for the future. When a partner, who seldom makes the bed, communicates on a deep level, or pays the bills on time does so, it should be noticed and not dismissed. It demonstrates that he/she can change. All habits can be broken and be replaced with new ones.
Sometimes changing means not doing something rather than doing something. Another part of identifying solutions to marital problems is to identify “destructive patterns” and interrupt them. Weiner-Davis demonstrates how small observations and actions can lead to large results.
The last section of Part Two talks about the value of taking care of one’s self. A person unhappy with himself is incapable of being happy with another.
Divorce Busting, Keeping the Marriage Changes for Life
Once one realizes that divorce is not the only option for many unhappy marriages, then there is motivation to attempt the changes proposed by Weiner-Davis. Weiner-Davis finally gives methods for keeping the positive changes in place, continue to work on solutions and to discern if things are improving. It is a life long job, but the potential joy and fulfillment are worth the price.
 |
 |
 |
