Michele Weiner-Davis

Michele Weiner-Davis is a licensed clinical social worker, marriage and family therapist and author in the field of family therapy. She is frequently quoted in the media and has been interviewed significantly on television news programs regarding divorce prevention. Weiner-Davis has often been referred to as The Divorce Buster after coining the term “divorce busting” at an American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy conference in 1989. She currently writes a regular column, Divorce Busting: Musings From an Unabashed Marriage Saver in Psychology Today.

Personal life

Weiner-Davis was born on March 27, 1951, in New York City where she grew up along with two brothers. She has described her young childhood as idyllic, similar to the "Walton Family". During Weiner-Davis' senior year in high school, her parents divorced after twenty-three years of marriage. Her mother had been speaking with a therapist for several years, and she had been advised by the therapist that the differences between her and her husband were irreconcilable. Because of her parents' divorce, and due to the fact that many family counselors considered divorce to be a therapeutic option as a first resort in the 1960s, Weiner-Davis became a believer in the sanctity of marriage and a champion for saving the relationships of others.

Weiner-Davis has two children, a son and a daughter, and has been married since 1977.

Career

Weiner-Davis received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1973 from Grinnell College. She then earned a Master's Degree in Social Work (MSW) in 1977 from the University of Kansas. She began her early career in private practice, counseling young couples with relationship issues. During this time in her career, she believed that a separation was inevitable if one spouse had pre-determined that they wanted a divorce. In those situations, Weiner-Davis would counsel the couples on how to make the divorce easier on the family.

During the 1980s, while working with the McHenry County Youth Service Bureau in

Woodstock, Illinois, she became involved with Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg and his team at The Brief Family Therapy Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She was part of the group of researchers that made contributions in the field of psychotherapy to help develop what is known as Solution Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT).

During this period of her career, after her publications in the Journal of Marital & Family Therapy, she wrote her first book on divorce prevention: Divorce Busting, published in 1992. She opened her first Divorce Busting Center in Woodstock, Illinois. After moving to Boulder, Colorado, she opened her second Divorce Busting Center where she continues to see individuals and couples as a marriage and family therapist. Weiner-Davis says her patients are usually out of therapy in about six visits, while many marriage therapies last months or years. She advocates an action-based approach and asks each partner in a marriage to "provide what the other needs regardless of whether the giver understands it". She launched an online marital support website, Divorcebusting.com in June 1998. It attracts thousands of people each day. Her free Open Messageboard web forums gives the public a place and a way to communicate with Weiner-Davis and has become a place of last resort for many couples before they end up in divorce court.

Weiner-Davis is a clinical member and approved supervisor for the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy Therapists from many countries come to the U.S. for her professional training seminars and some of her books and publications based on SFBT are used by university professors and professional organizations for classroom and continuing education credits. She also works directly over the phone with couples from many countries including Hong Kong, Singapore, India and Japan.

She is also involved in education and support in supplying advice for several online internet groups including Redbook, Planet-Therapy.com, IVillage, and The National Registry of Marriage Friendly Therapists.

Weiner-Davis was a State-of-the-Art Faculty presenter in 2005 and in 2009 for the Evolution of Psychotherapy Conference that is held every five years by The Milton H Erickson Foundation.

Weiner-Davis maintains a private practice in Woodstock, Illinois.

Books

In 1989 Weiner-Davis co-authored her first book, In Search of Solutions:A New Direction in Psychotherapy with Bill O'Hanlon. This book was aimed at practicing psychotherapists and based on the principles of Solution focused brief therapy (SFBT), which is said to have derived in part from the influence and work of Milton H. Erickson and their research from the Brief Family Therapy Center. A revised second edition of the book In Search of Solutions, which contained new material in the advances in the field of (SFBT), was re-released in 2003.

After years of experience in private practice Weiner-Davis came to the conclusion that in many cases divorced couples were merely exchanging one set of problems for another. She desired to translate the principles of (SFBT) into everyday English and to spread the word of its effective use, believing that most marriages are worth saving and their problems solvable. To accomplish this goal she wrote the self-help book Divorce Busting: A Step-By-Step Approach to Making Your Marriage Loving Again. The book challenged mainstream psychotherapeutic techniques at the time and gave her national recognition as a notable therapist in family therapy. Weiner-Davis believed that far from the traditional fairy-tale notion of "happily ever after," successful marriages involve working through and surviving problems, setbacks, and conflicts to become stronger. The core of the book's principles is that even if only one spouse desired to save the relationship or make a change, a marriage could be saved.