CHAPTER ONE
 INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF THE SYUDY
Marriage is a social institution that is designed among other things to ensure the happiness and fulfillment of men and women. Marriage according to Olusanya (1982) is a sacred and permanent contract between a man and a woman who have consented to live a life of fidelity and caring for each other for the purpose of promoting their mutual growth and welfare throughout their lives.
A family is the bedrock of any society. A healthy family produces a healthy and crime free individuals in a society, while an unhealthy and unstable family produces an unstable and criminal congested society or community. A man from a troubled home cannot be productive likewise a woman from an unstable home cannot be termed a “virtuous woman” which produces a healthy and uncultured off springs.
Marriage… made in heaven! Marriage vows… taken to be together forever! The magical starting days of married life are full of dreams and pleasure. But as the time passes, many couples may begin to realize that they are not perfect for each other. They come to know about the huge differences between them; and feel that they are not compatible with each other. Small arguments may turn to big conflicts. Sometimes these conflicts cross the tolerance limit and make it difficult for the couple to live together and the couple starts thinking about breaking the relationship and getting separated. Yes, they wish to get a divorce!
Divorce is a legal termination of marriage between a husband and wife. But why do marriages fail? It may be due to certain marital problems such as aggressiveness of one of the partners, physical or emotional abuse, alcohol or drug addiction, family stress and strain or infidelity of a partner. Whatever might be the reason, but divorce and separation is definitely painful for both the partners. And it’s not all only about the couple; it also affects the entire family, especially the children.
The institution of marriage commands high social recognition importance in Nigeria. Traditional marriage grounds itself in an arrangement between families and not essentially a union of two individuals. It is also regarded as a union between a man and a woman for the duration of their lives and also as a forum for wider association between two families or two sets of families (Obi, 1966: 155). Expectations are that “marriage is for life” or “should be for life”. This can be explained by the religious and socio-cultural beliefs that the matrimonial home is sacred and the utmost fulfillment was in marriage.
While marriage is supposed to be a beautiful special relationship for the life and calls for harmonious integration of husband and wife to “become one flesh”, many other factors (psycho-social, cultural, education, economic and environmental show the tendency for people inside marriage to deviate significantly). They pursue autonomy and harmony simultaneously and these two are diametrically conflicting goals (Adelson, 1970). This as Kalis (1970) has noted, the particular nature of conflict in human relations may be perceived rightly as the most abundant source of psycho-social problems which threatens marriages and many other institutions.
Conflicts are bound to emanate from the marriage relationship since it involves human beings who have come from various cultural backgrounds and have different individual and social values. The sum of the couple’s reactions to their marital problems will ultimately determine the survival of their marriage or its failure. Counsellors involved in resolving marital conflict must necessarily understand the nature of such conflicts if they must succeed in their enterprise. The study is an attempt to understand the nature of marital conflicts as well as help counsellors acquired skill in resolving conflicts general and marital conflict specifically.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Spouses usually work had toward handling these differences and difficulties but
some are not able to resolve the differences and difficulties. Their marriage fails. When marriages fail, divorce is the resultant effect. There are some basic and fundamental needs for a stable and peaceful marriage which cannot be overemphasized. Some major causes of divorce include financial problems, sexual incompatibility, problems from in-laws, religious incompatibility, financial problems, cultural differences, lack of parental skills, poor communication, childlessness (mostly in the African system and even the issue of a male child),  among other issues.
Marriage counselling is not yet as effective as is psychotherapy or counselling directed at non-marital problems. In one study, for example, about 66 percent of the subjects who received marriage counselling reported the result “helpful”. In contrast, 88 percent of the subjects who sought help for personal non-marital problem reported the result as “helpful” (Guin et al 1960).
In Nigeria the issue is not how effective marriage counselling is, it is its total absence even in “official quarters”. This means that the divorce rate is high (Weigh 1994) and even for marriages that seem to be together, the couples are unhappy and only “bear their marriage as a big cross” (Mbazue: 1995).