The article discusses common misconceptions about couple therapy, particularly the expectation that therapists can magically fix relationships like parents or doctors do for children. It highlights the danger of having a passive attitude where one expects therapy to solve problems without personal effort. Couples often incorrectly believe therapy's purpose is to reconcile them or to shift blame onto one partner. Instead, effective therapy helps couples explore their feelings and needs, and the therapist does not determine the outcome; the couple must actively work on their relationship for it to improve.
When we are little children and we fall, bruising our knee, Mommy or Daddy kisses the injury and makes it all better. They do magic. When we get sick and the doctor comes, administers some pills, and cures our ailment, the doctor does magic. When we are grownup and have marital problems, we go to another type of doctor-the marriage doctor-expecting that he or she will make the marriage all better, like magic. Unfortunately, therapy doesn't work that way.
A passive stance-'Therapy will make us all better'-is an unrealistic attitude that guarantees therapeutic failure. This is probably the most common unrealistic expectation that couples bring to therapy… In actuality, a relationship works because the couple works at it.
Couple therapy is a process designed to keep the relationship together. This is not true. Therapy is supposed to help couples clarify their own needs, wishes, and feelings and to identify in their partner those traits that meet their needs and those that do not.
The couples therapist, being an intelligent individual, will see my side of things and straighten my partner out; he/she is really the problem. Very often this is the hidden agenda.
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