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A Man of Few Words - by Swan Morrison

Marriage Guidance

I find my role as a Marriage Guidance Counsellor to be most rewarding. It can, of course, be challenging and, indeed, in recent times has carried some risk. This latter problem has followed from our professional commitment to take full account of the most up-to-date research into relationships.

In the past, the Marriage Guidance Counselling Service has based its approach on enhancing communication and emotional understanding between couples. There then emerged incontrovertible sociological research which proved beyond doubt that this had been based on an incorrect premise. Far from marital discord being caused by misunderstanding and miscommunication, we now know that, in the vast majority of cases, problems are caused by one party being totally unreasonable.

Our previous approach of valuing the perspective of each partner had only served to undermine the confidence of the one who was in the right and collude with the psychopathology of the one who was in the wrong.

We now attempt to identify the partner who is to blame at the earliest opportunity and then robustly confront his or her behaviour.

Mr and Mrs Jones were one such example. I told Mrs Jones, outright, that her nagging and complaining would make a saint swear and that being overweight, unattractive and totally useless in bed seriously compounded the problem. It did not surprise me when she started throwing items from the bookshelf and, between ducking, I had to scream that her mindless, hysterical behaviour was typical - just like that of her hideous, bad-tempered old battle-axe of a mother.

Another example was Mr and Mrs Smith. In this instance it was Mrs Smith who was perfection personified and her husband who was the pointless waste of space. I became so annoyed while confronting his stupid behaviour that I had to hit him with one of the consulting room chairs. Had he got up, things could have turned very nasty. Fortunately, Mrs Smith kindly joined me in kicking the shit out of him to avoid that eventuality.

The Marriage Guidance Counselling Service has also developed its services into the post-counselling phase. We can arrange legal advice for the blameless partner to ensure that their selfish bastard or bitch of a spouse gets not a penny more than necessary. Also that access is limited or avoided, so that the minds of the children cannot be poisoned.

We also provide a dating service to introduce wronged and long-suffering partners to each other. Sometimes this is with a view to a lifelong match though, due to the popularity of this service, clients are eligible as soon as they have been identified as innocent. Many have found the solace of even a short affair during counselling to be of great support. I and other councillors often make valuable use of this service ourselves. In fact, I am sure that having had intimate relations with Susan - Mrs Smith in my above example - helped me gain far greater insight into her marital circumstances.