Education

Marriage Breakthrough

During my time of trying to save my first marriage, I bought and read two books by Michele Wiener-Davis:

• Divorce Busting
• Divorce Remedy

Later I bought a pair of marriage seminar leadership packages created by respected licensed marriage counselor Michele Wiener-Davis. I obtained a certificate that would allow me to present these seminars.

Michele also has some telephone counseling and some materials for those who would like to lead seminars or hold Marriage Breakthrough or Keeping Love Alive training sessions at home, at church, or in a community center.

Her web site is DivorceBusting.com.

I do not believe Michele is a Christian, but rather is a Jew, but her family values are very strong and I did not find anything strange or new age in any of her materials, though one of her audio tapes, Keeping Sex Alive, contained some suggestions I felt were harmful and unwise. The rest of her materials were exceptional.

Michele's Methodology - Conventional versus Solution Based

Michele's approach toward saving marriages is that it is often possible to save a marriage even when only one spouse wants to save it. And you don't have to sin or sell your soul to the devil to do it either. Often just good, wise, solid communication and relationship skills will help tremendously to turn things around.

Her approach to marriage counseling is quite different from conventional marriage counseling. During the first years of her experience as a marriage counselor, she became disappointed over the lack of success she had saving marriages. She asked other counselors about their experiences and was disappointed to find they were experiencing the same thing. So, she went about researching how to change that.

The main difference I have seen in her approach to saving marriage is based on one root principle that results in many differences.

Conventional counseling engages couples into often painful gripe sessions in hopes of encouraging communication, getting to the root of the problem, making agreements and setting expectations.

Michele's refers to her approach as SOBT for Solution Oriented Brief Therapy. Rather than searching for the root cause of the problem, she searches for solutions asking questions like,

The goal here is to find out what works and do more of that. And it works really well.

Pros and Cons of Conventional and Solution Based Therapies

Conventional therapists argue this is only a temporary band-aid, and if you don't get down to the root of the problem, it will come back with a vengeance. Truth is, that doesn't happen much. When couples learn to behave, they start to expect the best from each other, and they fear less, and they feel more secure, and they feel more loving toward one another. Its the difference between a vicious cycle and a healthy cycle.

Conventional therapists make more money. Patients have to return for weeks, months, or years because the problems won't go away.

SOBT therapists get results in one or two or perhaps as many as four sessions and then the patients go on their way happy because they have the relationship skills and emotional maturity to make good things happen in their marriages.

Marriage Education Opportunities

Michele put together training seminars to give people the opportunity to become marriage educators using her materials. Essentially the person who buys these seminars and becomes certified is not a marriage counselor, but merely a facilitator leading and moderating the discussions and presenting the videos, asking questions, giving quizzes, and such.

Since Michele's seminars are not religious in nature, it may be easier to find an opportunity to present them in a local library conference room or a school or government facility.

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