Why So Many Therapists Are Getting Marriage Wrong

Marriage was once understood as a commitment that required sacrifice. Husbands and wives argued, disappointed each other, went through dry spells, and occasionally wondered whether they had married the wrong person. None of those experiences automatically meant the marriage had failed.

Today, many therapists tell clients the opposite.

As a practicing psychotherapist, I’ve watched my profession gradually redefine what counts as a healthy marriage. Instead of asking whether a relationship is fundamentally sound, many therapists encourage clients to audit it. Is every emotional need being met? Do you feel consistently validated? Is your partner helping you become the best version of yourself?

Those questions sound reasonable on their own. Together, they turn marriage into a performance review, and most marriages, evaluated that way, will fail.

Marriage begins with a vow. Too much of today’s therapeutic culture treats it like a satisfaction survey.

I’ve worked with couples who came to me after months, sometimes years, of absorbing messages from other therapists, social media, and self-styled relationship influencers. By the time they arrived, ordinary marital frustrations had already been reframed as attachment injuries, emotional labor imbalances, or proof that a partner was no longer “showing up.”

Clients often arrive speaking the language of therapy culture: “Protect your peace.” “You attract what you tolerate.” “This relationship isn’t serving you anymore.” Those aren’t conclusions they’ve reached. They’re scripts they’ve learned from therapists, social media, and self-appointed relationship influencers.

“Protect your peace” may be the slogan that best captures what’s gone wrong. It sounds like wisdom, but too often it’s permission to avoid difficult conversations, stop tolerating ordinary imperfection, and make personal comfort the measure of a marriage. A good therapist doesn’t encourage anxious patients to organize their lives around avoiding discomfort. Marriage deserves the same wisdom.

The problem isn’t that concepts such as attachment injuries or emotional labor are always wrong. Sometimes they accurately describe serious problems. The problem is that therapists have become remarkably good at turning ordinary marital dissatisfaction into psychological pathology, then treating the diagnosis as a reason to leave.

Therapy once emphasized resilience, responsibility, and learning to tolerate frustration. Today it often encourages people to treat dissatisfaction as evidence that something in their lives must change. Marriage is sometimes the first casualty.

The language of self-care has reinforced the shift. Healthy boundaries matter. Leaving an abusive relationship saves lives. No serious person disputes that. But those ideas are now routinely applied to ordinary marital conflict. Feeling criticized becomes emotional invalidation. Compromise becomes people-pleasing. Patience becomes settling.

Once every unpleasant feeling demands immediate relief, commitment starts looking like pathology.

Therapists know emotions fluctuate. Patients struggling with anxiety or depression are taught not to make major decisions based solely on how they feel in the moment. Yet that principle is too often abandoned when the subject becomes marriage. Temporary unhappiness is treated as evidence that the relationship itself is broken rather than something two committed people can work through.

Children are often an afterthought in these conversations, and that should concern every therapist. Most divorces do not involve abuse, violence, addiction, or betrayal. They involve two disappointed people who have lost sight of why they married in the first place. Before encouraging divorce, therapists should ask harder questions. Have both spouses genuinely tried to repair the marriage? Are expectations realistic? What will this decision mean for the children?

Children don’t need perfect parents. They need parents who know how to repair conflict, keep commitments, and show that love survives seasons of disappointment.

The irony should embarrass the profession. Effective therapists routinely teach people to tolerate discomfort, resist the urge to escape, and recognize that growth often comes from doing what is difficult rather than what feels good. Yet those same principles are often abandoned when the subject becomes marriage. Ordinary disappointment is reframed as evidence that something is fundamentally wrong. Commitment gives way to self-fulfillment. Endurance is mistaken for dysfunction.

Marriage has never promised perpetual happiness. It asks two imperfect people to honor a commitment, weather disappointment, and build a family and a life larger than either person’s immediate emotional state.

Therapists should be the first to remind people that feelings fluctuate, conflict is inevitable, and lasting commitments require perseverance. My profession, though, has lately been sending the opposite message. It encourages people to trust today’s emotions over yesterday’s vows and to mistake temporary dissatisfaction for proof that a marriage has run its course.

If therapists stop defending commitment, they shouldn’t be surprised when fewer marriages survive. And if the profession continues to redefine ordinary marital struggle as psychological dysfunction, it won’t simply witness the decline of marriage. It will bear some responsibility for it.

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Jonathan Alpert is a psychotherapist in New York City and Washington, D.C., and author of the book “Therapy Nation.” Find him on X @JonathanAlpert.

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