When I was growing up, we always had lots of magazines around the house. One of them, Ladies Home Journal, had a feature every month called "Can This Marriage Be Saved?". I read it avidly, hoping, I must admit, that this month would be the hopeless case, the marriage that could not be saved. We could conjecture about the source of my curiosity and my rather dark wish, but that is for another time and place.
I have never enjoyed working with couples myself. In the 70's and 80's I took a number of workshops and seminars on marital therapy and couples therapy thinking maybe it was a matter of finding the method that would appeal to me but I have always found working with a couple entails more people in the room that I enjoy. When I read John Sanford's The Invisible Partners, I understood why that was so for me. So I have never enjoyed working with couples and rarely do so. And I appreciate those couples therapists that I know who are really good at their work.
In today's NY Times Magazine, there is a long and excellent article on marriage and whether or not the variety of marriage therapies can make a good enough marriage better. And I really like this concluding thought:
In psychiatry, the term “good-enough mother” describes the parent who loves her child well enough for him to grow into an emotionally healthy adult. The goal is mental health, defined as the fortitude and flexibility to live one’s own life — not happiness. This is a crucial distinction. Similarly the “good-enough marriage” is characterized by its capacity to allow spouses to keep growing, to afford them the strength and bravery required to face the world.
It's a good article and worth your time to read it.