Farm stress and unhappy farm marriages:
what happens when your farmer husband needs to change?

by Hal Brown, LICSW
Rural Mental Health Therapist

This is adapted from an article I wrote about police marriages for Police Stressline, which was reprinted  in several print Police magazines, most recently in the June, 2000 Edition of Training Wheel.

I watched an infamous episode of the Simpsons the other day about Marge's fear of flying and about how, with free airline tickets, Homer was finally convinced to see a psychiatrist with Marge. He began the session lamenting about how therapists always blame the husband. The psychiatrist reassured him with the utmost sincerity as to her objectivity, but as she did so you could see her write, and underline twice, the following word on her notepad: husband.

Recently a major study of happiness in marriage demonstrated that the happiest marriages for both spouses were the ones where the husbands generally gave in to their wives wishes, even when there was a conflict.

And then, we have farm marriage. I have seen many farm couples in therapy and I am here to tell you that farm husbands aren't always the ones to blame for problems in farm marriages. Blame you say! I thought therapists were supposed to be objective, and I ought to give that speech about taking a balanced view of relationships and conflicts and that there's never a clear-cut case of one spouse being at fault while the other gets off Scott free. Sure, one spouse can look like a louse, but shrinks are always throwing around terms like enabler and co-dependency these days to describe the role of the non-louse spouse in marital dysfunction. But what do you suppose marriage counselors talk about when they get together? About how objective they are when they work with these couples?  They talk about why  the wife puts up with the so-and-so, because his chauvinism and lack of self-awareness is so ingrained that he'll never change. Although at least half of all psychotherapists are men, psychotherapy is still defined as a female oriented profession and many male therapists are threatened to some extent by men in traditionally male dominated professions like farming. Thus they may harbor an unconscious anti-farmer bias.

Of course, the reverse is sometimes true. Farmers are tillers of the soil. They are men's men who are comfortable operating heavy equipment while most therapists wouldn't know a D8 from a can of WD-40. They figure, often correctly, that therapists are aloof snobs who really don't know a hole from a stick in the ground.

The good news is that there's hope. Men can change. I find that the best predictor of success in a troubled, or merely a troubling, marriage (farm or "civilian") is whether both the husband and wife are willing to own up to their responsibility for needing to change.   It is very important for the farmer husband to be open and self-disclosing. Farm marriages are susceptible to all the ills that beset non-farm marriages, and then some. 

When male farmers make the call to arrange for therapy to work on changing themselves, and the marriage, I usually take it as a good sign because it shows motivation. Sometimes they do this on the threat of dire consequences if they don't. When wives drag their farmer husbands in kicking and screaming (or sulking and silent) it isn't the end of the marriage. It is my responsibility as a therapist and marriage counselor to coach him into husband material, to help bring back the man his wife married before farm stress took it's toll on him, and to help them  work together to become the partners they once were. My job with the farm husband is:

to help him listen to the emotional as well as the surface messages conveyed by his wife (and children, too);

to understand how not expressing his feelings about his stress hurts rather than helps a marriage;

to help his be more self-aware, to recognize his denial, and when it is applicable, to see how he may be doing to his own wife and children what his father did to him and his mother;

to help him learn the language of feelings, that is, to put into words emotions he may not even be aware that he has.

It isn't a hopeless task, because the very fact that he came to counseling is a plus. The prognosis for the marriage is even better when he comes back a second time. And he almost always does.

I sometimes find the wives do bear  responsibility for the slide into the ho-hum "we might as well just be roommates" kind of farm marriages. Motherhood sometimes does it, or other new interests, or the wearing off of the thrill of courtship. When sexual enthusiasm diminishes on the part of the wife, that vital part of love and intimacy is lost. Farm husbands need to feel loved just like anyone else, and sex is a part of marital love. So, if there's a problem in the sexual relationship, it needs to be resolved, whether it is a variance in the level of need or learning just what really excites the farmer husband. As with so much else that makes a marriage endure and grow stronger, the key to achieving sexual computability is open, forthright (but never hostile) communication combined with the willingness to be flexible and experiment.

Not every farm marriage is limping along leaving a trail of hurt feelings, alienation and resentment. In fact, most are thriving. Even with all the farm stress, most farmers wouldn't trade their way of life for anything. In truth, back-tracking on how I began this column (okay, I admit I was trying to get your attention), when there are problems in a marriage, dwelling too much on who may be at fault is counter-productive. Each partner must learn how their behavior effects the other and how actions can have unintended consequences. They must be willing to compromise and change. Both husbands and wives need to understand that marriage is the most complex of human relationships and conflicts never develop without the involvement of both spouses.

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