Even less adventurous would be to consider that counselling has no effect. But in any case, the study can only provide information regarding counselling with respect to couples that refuse it, not regarding counselling in general.
> I tell patients to have a consistent weekly meeting with their spouse, maybe a Saturday date night. During the meeting, each of them has to say one nice thing about the other, and then one problem that they want to work on. The other person thanks them for the nice thing and then they brainstorm a solution to the problem. If they both agree to the solution, they have to stick with it at least until the next relationship meeting. A lot of my patients have said this really helps them, have continued the meetings long after the immediate crisis passes, and probably expect the technique was invented by some clever person like John Gottman. I will never tell them that actually I picked it up from a different ex-girlfriend, not even the one who writes relationship advice columns.
> In conclusion, I have no idea what makes marriages work, and I am not convinced John Gottman does either.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/02/27/book-review-the-seven-...
It is standard relationship advice that flies around in various forms. I have seen multiple variants of it - the two componentams are regular dates basically and system which creates safe regular times for dealing with issues outside of conflict situation.
I mean honestly, the above does not give much trust to him.
“I recommend this construction technique.” “Sounds great. By the way where’d you learn it?” “I learned it building my last house.” “Can I go see it?” “No, it collapsed.”
Such a thing just can't exist. If that is the standard, then you would give up on giving to fix anything in relationship. Since there is a couple that whose issue won't be solved by that, why bother.
Especially with new relationships, you two are basically figuring out whether the couple have compatible value systems, expectations, whether one of them has destructive tendencies it is safer and better to nope out of. It is ok to break up if with the "I realized this is not for me, I think I will be better off with someone else".