Interaction Hypotheses in Marriage Counseling

Marital partners are significant others who enable and constrain each other's behavior in interaction. Problems arise when the spouses do not have a common definition of the situation in which their interaction occurs; they cannot understand each other's behavior causing their differences to become conflicts. To maintain a common definition of the situation each spouse offers explanatory hypotheses about his own and the other's behavior. Instrumental hypotheses interpret the spouses' behavior so problems can be solved; terminal hypotheses do not. The counselor assists the spouses to develop instrumental hypotheses and he encourages each spouse to behave in such a way as to enable his significant other to change in accord with their professed goal in counseling.