A Tried-and-True Approach to Couples and Marriage Counseling in Illinois
Over the past 35 years at The Couples Clinic® and Research Institute, we’ve pioneered a unique approach for helping people develop more satisfying relationships: The Pragmatic-Experiential Method for Improving Relationships. “The PEX Method” translates new discoveries in the fields of neurobiology and relationship science into practical strategies for improving the outcomes of couples and marriage counseling in Illinois.
Detailed in the books, Emotional Intelligence in Couple Therapy, and Developing Habits for Relationship Success, The PEX Method is scientifically-based, drawing from:
- Long-term research studies that have identified exactly how people who get their partners to treat them well go about doing it.
- Long-term studies that examine how emotional attachment occurs in couple relationships, and why an emotional bond is crucial both to the success of relationships and the well-being of individual partners.
- New neurological studies that suggest how we can rewire our brains for more flexibility, enabling us to develop new habits that are so thoroughly integrated into our neural circuits that they become part of our second nature.
Straight to the Heart of the Matter
Scientists have discovered that the dizzying array of bad things that happen in relationships can all be traced to a single cause – deficiencies in the core set of abilities that are necessary for relationships to go well.
By measuring the presence or absence of these abilities, researchers have been able to distinguish partners who are headed to a satisfying relationship from partners who are headed for unhappy futures (or break-ups) with over 90% accuracy. This kind of predictive validity is virtually unheard of in most branches of science and has captured the attention of therapists and educators around the world.
What’s Missing?
Most people believe that they have the abilities needed to make their relationships go well. But available evidence suggests that this is wishful thinking. Studies suggest that most people don’t meet the prerequisites for relationship success. It’s not surprising then, that half of all people who marry in the U.S. eventually divorce, and at least half of the couples who stick it out are unhappy with their relationships.
Most of us don’t have the habits needed to make our relationships thrive over the long haul. In fact, most people don’t even know what these crucial habits are. But studies show that they are not optional, and the PEX Method for marriage counseling in Illinois can help you develop those crucial habits.
Necessary Habits for Successful Relationships
“If you want your partner to treat you well, you need to learn to think and act like people who almost always get treated well by their partners – and you certainly don’t want to think and act like people who hardly ever get treated well.”
– Brent Atkinson
One of the habits that is not optional involves the ability to react effectively when your partner says or does things that you don’t like. When you feel that your partner is doing something that’s selfish or insensitive, it might seem to you that they are the one who needs to change. However, studies suggest that the most potent predictor of your partner’s willingness to change is your reaction to their selfish or insensitive behavior.
The ability to react effectively when feeling upset with one’s partner is what separates the men from the boys, and the women from the girls when it comes to having the emotional intelligence needed to sustain relationships.
Our book Developing Habits for Relationship Success will guide you step-by-step in learning about the set of habits that are so highly predictive of relationship success
Why Is It So Hard to Put These Habits into Action?
The abilities that are needed for relationships to thrive are easy to understand and learn but can be very difficult to put into practice because at key moments, we often experience strong urges and inclinations that take us in the wrong direction. Researchers have discovered that, when a relationship is distressed, each partner generally reacts to the other during arguments in highly predictable and patterned ways.
Thanks to some very helpful brain research in the past 30 years, we now know that this is because, across our lives, our brains get conditioned to produce highly specific response programs. These are conditioned brain circuits that are pre-programmed. Once triggered, they produce an amazingly predictable pattern of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
Brain researchers call these brain states “executive operating systems” or “intrinsic motivational circuits.” Ordinary people call them “states of mind” or “moods.”
“Atkinson saw evidence emerging from neuroscience suggesting that with the right kind of practice, even people who don’t have the benefit of well-attuned caregivers can still develop automatic internal tendencies and inclinations that facilitate relational competence.”
-Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy
The important thing is not what they are called, but to recognize that these internal response programs can dramatically dictate how you interact with your partner. To improve your relationship, you will need to become familiar with the specific mood state patterns that happen inside of you during disagreements with your partner.
Your best shot at acting differently comes when you develop the ability to shift internal states when needed. This is where The PEX Method and our couples and marriage counseling in Illinois come into play.
Working Toward Real Change and Improved Relationships
Shifting out of unproductive internal states cannot be done on command, just as musicians and athletes cannot perform skillful maneuvers without practice. Fortunately, hundreds of studies show that the ability to shift internal states can be strengthened through practice, just like any complex skill. Through our marriage counseling in Illinois, the PEX Method offers daily exercises that:
- Interrupt rumination
- Strengthen the ability to let go of upset feelings
- Reduce physical arousal in response to perceived threat
- Curb urges to judge, interrupt, or defend during disagreements
- Foster openness and flexibility in conflicts
But the PEX Method goes beyond conflict resolution—it helps cultivate enjoyable relationships. Research shows that strong friendships are marked by partners who:
- Are curious about each other’s worlds
- Acknowledge positive qualities and shared experiences
- Seek common interests, goals, and values
- Respond to bids for connection
The key isn’t simply trying harder to do these things—it’s making caring actions genuine. True intimacy comes from triggering brain processes that make us naturally more interested, invested, and attuned to our partners. The PEX
Method primes the brain for warmth, affection, playfulness, and desire through daily practices.
You can read several stories about how The PEX Method helped partners improve their relationships:
Grace and Adam
“Somebody please get me out of here!” Grace had to check to be sure that she hadn’t actually blurted the words out loud. She’d come to this wedding reception as a favor to her husband, Adam, whose friend from high school was getting married. Adam was sitting at the main table, laughing and having a great time while Grace was stuck listening to a plump, middle-aged woman chatter about her poodle.”
Susan and James
“On a humid evening last September, Susan and James burst into our office looking like two high schoolers in the grip of a classroom giggle fit. Usually serious and reserved, James, 36, explained between chuckles that he had been telling Susan a story about his boss’s gaffe at a meeting earlier that day. Still chortling as she landed on our office sofa, 27-year-old Susan ran her fingers through her cropped, blond hair and tried to compose herself, then eyed her gleeful husband and began hooting all over again.”
Loretta and Jack
“Here we go again, I thought. Loretta and Jack were back in my office, dispirited and fed up. “I don’t think I love him anymore,” Loretta began, and what caught my attention was not what she said but the way she said it. Quietly, flatly, as though she was beyond caring. During our first round of couple’s therapy, one year earlier, 31-year-old Loretta hadn’t said anything quietly. She had been chronically pissed off at Jack and had let him know via frequent, name-calling outbursts.”
Maria and Tony
In the 15 years that I’ve been following developments in neuroscience, the most compelling clinical lesson I’ve learned is likely to rub you the wrong way. An overwhelming body of research now suggests that we clinicians rely too much on insight and understanding – and too little on repetitive practice – in promoting lasting change.
Debra and Steve
“At the tail end of a sweltering, humid Chicago day in 1993, I took my family to the community pool for a dip. As the children splashed gleefully, I sat nearby reading Robert Ornstein’s new book, The Evolution of Consciousness, unaware that my life was about to change. Seven years earlier, I’d emerged from my doctoral studies utterly dissatisfied with existing answers to the question of why people continue to behave in self-defeating, irrational ways despite clear evidence that their methods aren’t working.”
PEX Method Accolades
“Brent Atkinson has a plan that’s completely counterintuitive and wonderfully effective. Atkinson explains how…our self-protecting impulses can block the love we crave – but we don’t have to let them.”
-The Oprah Magazine
“The PEX Method is the only approach that adequately addresses the problem of blame and contempt in the early stages of relationship recovery.”
– Filip Pavlinec — www.paarinstitute.ch (Swiss Institute for Relationships)
“Over the last ten years I have asked Brent Atkinson to train my staff several times in his PEX Method of marital therapy. We decided that it is such a useful method that any therapist who wants to provide relationship therapy needs to have a working knowledge of The PEX Method. This model is complete, sophisticated and approachable.”
-Suzanne Drennan, Owner, The Psychology Center, Madison, Wisconsin
“Destined to be one of the most important books on couples therapy of this decade… A tour de force of scientific sophistication and clinical wisdom. Emotional Intelligence in Couples Therapy will be a classic!”
Douglas H. Sprenkle, Ph.D.
-Former Editor, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy
-Recipient, AAMFT Award for Cumulative Career
Contribution to Family Therapy Research.
“Atkinson’s pioneering methods for rewiring automatic emotional processes in the brain are widely recognized.”
-Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy