by Barbara Sherf

Max Rivers, 67, inspired by his marriage to his wife, Elise, 52, has made a successful career out of helping couples with marriage problems. The couple have been together for 15 years. At the beginning of their relationship, they both studied mediation in Massachusetts.

Elise was studying acupuncture after having worked in law. Max had been a computer programmer for 30 years before pioneering the field of marriage mediation. Because of the impact that learning mediation had on their own relationship, they saw the potential for using the practice in all aspects of life, especially marriage.

The couple moved to Mt. Airy in 2003 and opened Two Rivers Mediation, later renaming the company TheMarriageMediator.net when Elise turned her attention full-time to her acupuncture business, Community Acupuncture of Mount Airy (CAMA). At that time, Rivers took over the business alone.

Baby boomers — people between the ages of 54 and 70 — make up much of Rivers’ clientele. Rivers shared his perspective on relationships during an interview in the couples’ Mt. Airy home and office. “Who you are changes over the course of a lifetime,” Max said. “The needs of the person you fell in love with in your 20s and 30s are not going to be the same in their 50s, 60s and 70s.”

Rivers recently published a 286-page book, “Loving Conflict: A New Alternative to Couples Counseling,” that teaches couples who are “tired of having the same old argument” how to mediate their own relationships.

The book explains the mindset that locks couples into conflict and what to do about it. It also shows them how to create the relationship they want by using skills of “embodied non-violent communication” based on Rivers’ idea that couples move through three stages: infatuation, conflict and maturity.

“Even though I now see clients worldwide over the internet, the reason I wrote the book is that I just can’t get everyone on my couch,” Rivers said. He has developed a six-session process to teach couples what he calls the Teamwork Method. “If clients don’t find value in the first session, there’s no charge,”

According to divorce-statistics.info and other sources, 50 percent of marriages end in divorce, and second marriages have an even higher failure rate — up to 75 percent.

Rivers feels that not having the skills to clearly communicate what we need is one of the major contributors to the high divorce rate. This belief is why he focuses on teaching skills like non-violent communication (NVC) instead of doing counseling or therapy.

In Marshall Rosenberg’s seminal book “Non-Violent Communication: A Language of Life,” Rosenberg describes what he calls “universal human needs” as the life affirming, positive-intentioned values through which we respond to life’s situations. These needs are for things like autonomy, celebration, interdependence, integrity, spiritual communion and physical nurturance.

Rivers based his practice on the NVC principle that all communication is an attempt to get one’s needs met, and judgments are just badly formed requests.

According to studies, only about one out of 10 couples who have done a year of marriage counseling report feeling their issues were resolved. Rivers said that teaching couples to self-mediate gives them the kinds of skills they need to resolve not only their presenting issues but also their differences over a lifetime.

Retirement often creates a sense of unexpected stress for married couples. Rivers described one such couple in which the husband was the CEO of a major corporation. “For over 20 years, while he was working 60-hour weeks, they were like two ships passing in the night,” Rivers said. “When he was forced to retire at the age of 75, they faced the realization that they had not been relating.

“His wife dragged him into a session, and he came to understand that he was trying to use the same skills that had made him a success in business in their relationship, and it just wasn’t working.”

Rivers said they also hear from women whose children are going off to college, abruptly changing the women's role as a full-time mother. “Their reason for being is coming to an end, and they are suddenly faced with not knowing who they are,” he said.

Baby boomers are living longer, and as a result, couples often find that after being successful in their separate roles, they don’t know how to reconnect when their situation changes later in life.

Rivers believes anytime there is ongoing conflict in a relationship, that is a signal that the relationship needs attention. “Conflict isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it’s often the relationship trying to get to a deeper level of intimacy,” he said.

For more information, visit TheMarriageMediator.net. This article is reprinted, with permission, from Milestones, the monthly publication of the Philadelphia Corp. for Aging.