Therapy.

I hate therapists, particularly social workers and psychologists, and I am not crazy about shrinks either. I hate all the "helpy" people. I also hate therapy obsessed people who are so pathetic that they pay people to listen to their idiot babble for hundreds of thousands of dollars in a life time never making any "progress".

I also think 'couples therapy' is a massive load of dogsqueeze and I will tell you why.

A friend of mine from high school was seeing a guy during university and wanted to get married.

They moved in together ('shacked up') and she wanted an engagement ring. He kept putting it off. She kept waiting. He schlepped it out.

He was scared, he was not ready, he was doing his PhD, there was always a reason.

Their other friends said they should GO TO THERAPY to try to WORK IT OUT.

And I said that was a stupid plan and she should dump his sorry unappreciative ass.

I think I put it a little nicer back then.

Anyway-here's the point. The point is that couples have to be able to figuratively 'slug it out' if there is any hope of staying together.

Getting married is easy. Staying married is damned hard work.

But if you require a third person to resolve things-be it a therapist, or a counselor or religious leader or whatever-you are pretty much doomed as a couple.

Having a third person in the picture means that you are not being brutally honest with your partner. You require someone else to translate your thoughts for you to the person you have chosen to be with. That sucks.

I've had some doozy arguments with my husband. It's not fun.

But somehow, we have manged to muddle through and come up with solutions-nobody is happy all the time. Sometimes both of us are not happy.

But I really believe you can't rely on an outside person to intervene in a marriage.

When I hear people mentioning that they are considering seeing a relationship therapist, or that they are in therapy, I pretty much assume that the marriage is doomed.

Or, as a male friend of mine once said (and he is now happily remarried), "I don't need an ugly lesbian with a butch haircut and a bad sweater to tell me what an asshole of a husband I am".

Ya gotta work it out-just the two of you.