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Whatever Happened to Happily Ever After

By Debbie L. Cherry

It’s Monday morning. You are at the office reviewing the stats from yesterday’s services when your secretary tells you that Cinderella is here to see you. You hardly recognize her as she enters your office. Wasn’t it just yesterday that you saw her in all her glory sitting beside her Prince Charming? But today, she’s distraught, disheveled, and despairing. Midnight must have struck.

As she sits in your office crying, she tells you there is trouble in paradise. The prince’s armor is tarnished and smudged, and he has fallen off his white horse. She feels her life consists of nothing more than keeping the castle clean and corralling the little prince and princess while he is out slaying dragons. The glass slippers have been lost under an unending pile of laundry. She is feeling unloved, neglected, taken for granted, and desperate. With tears in her eyes she wants to know, "Whatever happened to happily ever after?" She has come to you with high hopes and great expectations. She sees you as being the fairy godmother who will simply wave your magic wand, fix the marriage, and bring back "happily ever after."

Maybe it wasn’t quite that dramatic. But if you are like many of the ministers I have talked to, you have probably experienced something similar. Many ministers report that marital problems are the No. 1 reason people come for counseling. It is also the wives who make the initial contact much more often than their husbands. (This is true in my practice as well as other professional counselors.) Although marital problems are identified as the No. 1 reason for seeking counseling, many ministers do not feel they are adequately equipped to help couples with the skills necessary to keep a marriage strong and happy.

This article will describe a specific framework that helps the couple see quick progress in their relationship and gives them the encouragement needed to conquer the more difficult aspects.

INSTILLING HOPE

As you begin counseling the wives who come to you, strongly encourage the husbands to come as well. Rebuilding a marriage is most effectively done if both are committed to work on their marriage. Also, be sure to let them know you don’t have a magic wand.

Although most people would never admit to holding this belief, many do hope for an immediate cure. The problems in their marriage did not occur overnight. They came about gradually and will need to be worked on and resolved gradually. You will be there to guide them and help them make the needed changes, but the actual work is up to them.

You should also be sure to instill hope that the marriage can improve, and that they can experience "happily ever after." I believe that marriages can be strong, happy, and healthy "until death do us part." You need to help couples believe in marriage as a forever commitment and realize they can maintain healthy marriages for a lifetime with just a few basic skills.

UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE OF FEELINGS

Help the couple put their feelings into perspective. Couples may come to you stating they feel that they have fallen out of love. Most of them can tell you of a time in their relationship when they felt they were in love. Your first challenge will be to help them understand that the love that holds a marriage together is not a feeling, but a commitment. Feelings, although very strong at times, should not be the basis for a decision to marry or to end a marriage. Feelings can change from moment to moment and day to day. Just as our relationship with God is not measured by the feeling of love we have for Him, but rather by commitment, our relationship with our spouse should not be measured by feeling in love, but rather by our level of commitment and the fruits of our marriage.

Feelings are a result of thoughts and behaviors; therefore, they change as our thoughts and behaviors change. In the early stages of a relationship (dating, honeymoon, and early years) the couple exhibits positive actions or behaviors toward each other (spending time together, writing love notes, sending flowers). They spend time thinking about the positive aspects of the other and the relationship. Over time, this brings about the feeling of being in love. However, as the relationship continues, often a couple’s behaviors change (they begin to spend less time together, write to-do notes, and forget important dates), and their thoughts focus more on the irritants and negative aspects of their spouse. Eventually, this will bring about a feeling of falling out of love. As you help couples put their feelings in perspective, they learn they can exert some control over their feelings by making changes in their thoughts and behaviors.

The following back-to-basics approach presented here will help couples conquer these out-of-love feelings and replace them, with feeling in love.

REFOCUSING ON THE POSITIVE

Help the couple realize they must have demonstrated behaviors in the past that caused their spouse to fall in love with them. Relearning a skill is always easier than learning it the first time. As you help them identify the behaviors and thoughts that were present early in their relationship, you will likely hear things like: "We spent quality time together"; "We talked often and about everything"; "We shared our thoughts, feelings, and dreams with each other"; "We complimented each other often"; and "We focused on each other’s positive traits." By the time a couple reaches your office, many of these thoughts and behaviors will have been absent for some time and will have been replaced with negative thoughts and behaviors.

How you proceed from here can make all the difference. What many counselors, ministers, and couples feel they need to do is to focus on reducing the number of negatives that are present in the relationship. In other words, if the couple complain of fighting constantly, you may feel you need to focus on what they are fighting about and help them resolve it. Although this is important, it is not the most effective starting place.

A more effective starting place is to help the couple change their focus. Most couples come to you focused almost entirely on each other’s negative traits. Therefore their outlook is negative and their motivation to work on the relationship is low. Your job is to redirect their focus toward the positive aspects of their spouse and their relationship, causing their outlook to improve and increasing their motivation to rebuild their marriage.

Once their focus and interactions become more positive than negative, the couple will experience a renewed sense of closeness. This will result in their being better able and more motivated to work on and resolve the negative aspects of the marriage. The couple will view their marriage in a positive light and realize it is worth all the work necessary to get it back on track.

How do you move a couple’s focus from negative to positive? You help them identify specific behaviors they each engaged in during the early part of their relationship and then have them start doing those things again. Here are a few suggestions: Have each person make a list that starts with "I feel loved when you…" and include as many things as possible that their spouse either did in the past, does every day, or could do in the future that would make them feel loved. Have them exchange lists and begin doing some of these things.

Another way is to have the couple sit facing each other and alternate telling something they like about the other. This can also be done in written form.

Finally, encourage the couple to have a date at least once a week and to spend that time talking and sharing. These exercises can bring a quick change by increasing positive interactions for the couple, which results in their feeling more in love.

A few weeks later, as you encounter Cinderella, you will likely notice her smile and tiara back in place as she reports that Prince Charming has climbed back on his white horse and shined his armor. The glass slippers have been found and were worn on their most recent ride through the kingdom. She is feeling loved, valued, and cared about and is ready to resolve those little things that need attention. You will know that it was a change in focus that first helped this couple begin the process of recapturing happily ever after.

Debbie L. Cherry, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist at Eaglecrest Counseling Center in Springfield, Missouri.