A famous counselor who has treated 2,000 couples talks about “the lesion of married couples.

The first thing couples who don’t get along talk less. Because communication is not good, they are less motivated to understand each other and fight more. If such a relationship continues for a long time, both parties become ruffled, and they are unable to talk to each other more and more. I think this is a difficult situation to be in. Some people even say, “It’s really hell. Since Corona, there has been a real increase in the number of couples who have been ignoring each other for months or even years in some cases, and who are in a very “discordant” relationship. This is an unprecedented situation.

This has never happened before,” said Shukai Ando, a couple counselor who has counseled more than 2,000 couples over the past 10 years. During the three years of the COVID-19 crisis, they were forced to live as the smallest unit of a family, and each of them had to confront their family and marital relationships. While some couples have become stronger as a result of this, Ando says that there are now more couples who are in a state of “discord” and no longer want to see their partner’s face or be together.

Ando’s book, “Husbands and Wives Don’t Understand,” is a collection of real-life examples of couples counseling. In his book, “How to Recover from Marital Difficulties,” Ando provides examples of couple counseling, including “wives who want their husbands to pass away quickly” and “husbands who don’t understand why their wives are avoiding them.

Although not yet well known in Japan, marital counseling is a type of counseling that specializes in marital problems. While individual counseling is for one person, couples counseling is for two people (although sometimes only one person is consulted). The most common issues that couples bring to the counseling sessions are cheating, adultery, differences in values, and repeated fights.

These are the four most common marital problems. However, in many cases, the problems that are often the entry point for couples counseling are minor miscommunications or problems that are somewhat bothersome, which are often prefaced with the phrase, “It’s just a minor thing. It is not that I was cheated on or violated. However, there is something awkward and uncomfortable about the relationship. Such “disagreements” between seemingly happy couples are more troublesome because it is difficult to see the obvious cause. In couples counseling, we try to find the latent causes behind such discord.