Maryam Murtaza Sadriwala explores how a marriage counsellor can save a relationship

Sana has memories of her parents soothingly counsel her newly-wed sister and brother-in-law through their tiffs. She did not comprehend the critical nature of these counselling sessions until she herself was married years later and had experienced the turmoil of adjusting to marital life.

“My husband’s nature was very volatile,” explains Sana. “He would flare up at the most trivial of things and I had a very tough time trying to understand how his mind works.” It was Sana’s neighbours who helped counsel the couple. “They would make me and my husband sit down and smooth out our differences. From spats over why something was cooked a certain way to my need to go to my mom’s house, to the way the children were raised — everything was resolved at my neighbour’s home.”

Sana wishes she could have opted for a professional marriage counsellor trained to resolve the myriad problems in a marriage. “It would have kept my domestic affairs private.”

In our part of the world, caught up in the frenzy of wedding preparations, mothers or grandmothers will have a ‘talk’ with the bride-to-be about her new life and the role she is supposed to play in her new home. The women in the bride’s home will advise her based on their own marital experiences. Yet, she will never realise the complexity of the web of relationships she is due to enter until she is actually in her new home spending day and night with her new partner and in-laws.

Many spouses turn to self-help books to unearth the solution to their marital discord; many seek help from close friends, family elders, marriage bureaus or religious heads whom both the spouses hold in esteem.

But what happens when the tiffs between couples cannot be resolved by the amateurish intervention of your family or loved ones? Whom do you go to if you want your marriage to survive?

Clinical psychologist Dr Kausar Ansari, who is also an associate professor at the Institute of Clinical Psychology, says that only a trained psychologist, psychiatrist or trained social worker is equipped to counsel a couple who are facing a tough time in their marriage.

Dr Kausar says, “I see couples come to me due to issues of verbal abuse, sexual problems, financial tribulations, ego, jealousy, anger or one of the spouses suffering from a personality disorder or psychological issue; many a time it is some form of addiction, usually alcoholism, which takes a toll on the relationship.” Ansari shares that in our part of the world marriage is more complex due to the role of the in-laws. “It’s not just about the couple dealing with each other — it’s about the entire family influencing the couple.”

Sheila Ali, mental health consultant and psychotherapist, explains that people come to a marriage counsellor with the notion that things will be patched up. “But that is a huge misconception. A marriage counsellor cannot provide band-aid solutions to marital discord. A professional marriage counsellor is trained to act as a mediator between a couple; the counsellor helps identify the problems which exist and offers a space or environment where the couple can communicate things that they would normally not be able to.”

Sheila further elucidates, “The point of therapy is to help you figure your relationship out for yourself and accept and face things for what they are. Counselling and therapy helps you look at the right things.”

While speaking about her experience with counselling married couples who are having problems, Dr Kausar Ansari says that couples come to a counsellor as a last resort, “I get a lot of patients for marriage counselling at my private clinic who belong to the upper class but surprisingly, at the government institute I teach, I also see people from the middle and lower classes wanting to make their marriage work.” Ansari observes that some problems are similar for many marriages no matter what the class. However, the manner in which the problems manifest can depend on the social class.

Cognitive behaviour couple therapy is one manner of tackling a couple who is facing conflict. “It aims to resolve distorted ways of thinking and reorient the perceptions and emotions of the spouses and consequently change the way a person looks at and responds to a situation,” says Ansari.

Dr Kausar says that counselling works better if both the spouses are present, willing and motivated. “If that is not a possibility and only one spouse comes to us, we listen to the nature of their problems and counsel as to how he/she can handle the situation with her partner.”

“In our part of the world women believe that they should stay in a marriage, no matter how dysfunctional, because of their children. That is a huge myth! It is far more unhealthy for children to grow up in a dysfunctional abusive environ,” says Sheila. According to her observations, the majority of children who require severe treatment for emotional issues are those who come from families where the marriage is dysfunctional.

So how popular is marriage counselling in our part of the world? Sheila quips, “There are at least 15 top-notch, qualified counsellors in Karachi — and all of them are heavily booked. That speaks for itself! The last decade has seen a huge acceptance in couples for marriage counselling.”

Sheila says with a laugh, “The first year of marriage is the worst — anybody who’s been married knows that. A wife needs to be realistic regarding her expectations from her husband — he can’t be your everything! She needs to have a productive social and professional life beyond her spouse.”

So much emphasis is placed on marriage in our part of the world, but do we prepare our children for the enormity of this relationship? For a healthier family structure for our future, we need to seriously contemplate a system of pre-marriage counselling.