A couple of years ago, I appeared on an episode of the Talking Therapy podcast. I love the show. RJ Thomas and John Webber are good guys and good hosts, and I’ve thought that since before they invited me on. Their show is rightly popular. They’ve even featured one of the world’s most prominent therapists: Dr. Susan Johnson.
Johnson developed Emotionally Focused Therapy, which I use in my own practice with distressed couples. As you can imagine, a lot of her interview focused on couples and couple therapy. Almost as an aside, early in the interview, Webber noted that half of US marriages end in divorce. That’s flat wrong.
So I went back on the show to yell at him about it.
Much to my chagrin — I went in well-armed for a debate about statistical methodology, just in case it proved necessary — John is far too enlightened of a guy to get defensive about such things. We instead got into a great conversation about divorce and how therapists think and talk about it. We also covered some additional territory, like therapists doing Emotional Support Animal letters. It’s a good episode, I was honored to be back, and John and RJ (and you) are welcome to call out my mistakes any time. Give it a listen here:
For more on the US divorce rate, take a look here and here and here, and check out Tara Parker-Pope’s excellent book For Better, which examines the issue in some detail. If nothing else, your two takeaways on the divorce rate in the US should be (1) it’s under 50%, a milestone it actually never reached; and (2) it’s far lower for those who are well-educated.
You can listen to my previous appearance on Talking Therapy here. The Talking Therapy homepage, with all episodes, is here.
In the interest of full disclosure, we’ve sponsored some episodes, and will continue to do so. We didn’t sponsor either of my appearances, though, because that would be weird. And we also have our own podcast! The most recent episode is here.