Oder #315536 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Oder #315536 - Essay Example Marital therapy is perhaps the best haven that people in distressed marital relationships can go to so as to help in the healing of their marriages. A skilled and experienced marital therapist provides support and assistance that can help doubtful detached partners to carefully deal with their problems and start the problem-solving and healing process (Parenting and Marital Advice 2009). Marriage is a continuous struggle to â€Å"relate intimately to another human being without being controlled or taken for granted† (Guerin, Fay, Burden & Kautto 1987, 3). It can be a good-humored effort that enhances both partners and cultivates their growth, or it can be a tedious effort, wherein one or both partners are persuaded that their emotional, as well as their physical, survival is threatened (Guerin et al. 1987). The objective of this study is to review and discuss concepts of marital relationship and therapy. First, the paper will discuss the notion of marital conflict and marital therapy. Then, two of the integral concepts in the conceptualization and treatment of relational and marital conflict, namely, loss and context/attachment history, will be discussed. Finally, the paper will discuss how marital therapists could integrate the concepts of attachment and separation anxiety in their treatment plans. Marital conflict has been defined as â€Å"situations in which partners experience communication and problem-solving difficulties, find it difficult to work together, and have difficulty accepting each other’s differences† (Mead 2002, 299). It has been discovered that troubled couples interchange lesser gratifying behaviors and more unsympathetic behaviors than do non-troubled couples, and this is valid for verbal communications and for the interchange of other types of reinforcements (Shaddock 2000). It has also been discovered that troubled partners are