Many couples come to therapy after a long period in which they tried to solve the difficulty on their own.
They talked, fought, made up, tried to speak differently, and promised that this time they would manage not to reach that same place again. For a certain period things even improved, and then came another argument about raising the children, money, families of origin, sexuality, division of responsibility or shared time, and that familiar dynamic returned.
At this stage the thought arises: maybe it’s time for couples therapy.
Alongside the hope that something will be able to change, questions also arise. What does couples therapy actually look like? What happens in the first session? Does the therapist decide who is right? Do you need to tell the entire history of the relationship? How long does couples therapy last? What happens if one wants to come and the other is less certain?
I want to open the door to the therapy room a little and explain how I see a couples process, what happens in it, and what I think is important to know before starting.
It is possible to turn to couples therapy long before the relationship reaches a deep crisis.
Couples come for different reasons. There are those who feel that the fights have become more frequent or harder. There are couples who have almost stopped fighting, because along the way they also stopped talking about the things that really matter. Others feel distance, erosion, a decline in intimacy, or difficulty returning to one another after hurt.
Many couples turn to therapy around disagreements in raising the children, relationship with families of origin, money, division of burdens, sexuality, trust, or periods of change.
Behind the issue they argue about, it is sometimes possible to identify a dynamic that repeats itself. The more one pushes to talk, the other distances. The more one criticizes, the other defends. The more one asks again and again for confirmation that he is loved, the other feels he needs more space.
In therapy we are interested in the issue that occupies you and also in the way each of you participates in what is created between you.
Recognizing our part within the couple pattern is not meant to distribute blame. It allows each partner to identify where his influence, responsibility, and choice are located.
For me, the way we begin is already part of the work.
At the beginning of the process I want to understand what brings you, what each of you is asking to change, and what you would like to create in your relationship. It is also important to me that you get to know me and the way I work and can check whether it suits you.
The two partners do not need to arrive with the same definition of the problem. Two people can live in the same relationship and experience it very differently.
One can say: “We can no longer manage to talk.”
The other can say: “I try to talk. He just shuts down.”
Already within these two statements something of the couple dynamic is present.
My role is to understand how each of you experiences the relationship, how he responds to his experience, and what happens when these two responses meet.
At the beginning of the process I dedicate time to getting to know and assessing the relationship.
I want to know your couple story: how you met, what drew you to one another, what you built together, when the difficulty you describe began, and what you have already tried to do to cope with it.
I am also interested in the families you came from. We learn within our family something about closeness, anger, requests, boundaries, dependence, separateness, and love. Getting to know the family story can help us understand how the coping methods each person brings to the relationship developed.
Alongside understanding the past, we return again and again to the present: what is arising in me now and how do I want to act with it today?
At the same time, I listen to what is happening between you in the room. Who speaks and who is silent? What happens when one of you is hurt? How do you respond when the person facing you thinks differently? To what extent do you manage to remain curious about his experience even when it is different from yours?
The way you are together in the session teaches us a great deal about the relationship itself.
One of the concerns I encounter before therapy sounds like this: “And what if the therapist thinks he is right?”
My goal is not to decide which partner is more right.
There are situations in which it is important to call a behavior by its name and set clear boundaries. Responsibility within a relationship is not always divided equally.
In many couple conflicts it is more interesting to understand what each of you does within the dynamic.
What do you do when he distances? What happens to him when you try to get closer? What do you do when you feel criticized? How does she respond to your defensiveness?
When it is possible to see the circle, each person can begin to identify the place where he has choice.
Instead of focusing only on the question “How do I make him change?”, it becomes possible to begin asking “How do I want to act in the face of what is happening between us?”
This movement is a significant part of the therapy.
In my work I relate to the couple relationship itself as the focus of therapy.
Each partner has an inner world, history, needs, boundaries, and pain of his own. I want to give space to each of you and at the same time be interested in what you create together.
Where do you manage to meet? Where does each of you find it difficult to remain connected to yourself within the relationship? What do you ask of the person facing you? Which feelings are hard for you to bear when your request is not answered? Where do you need more closeness, and where is the ability to be two different people required?
The goal is to develop a relationship in which there is room for both closeness and separateness. A mature relationship can contain love, dependence, and leaning, alongside the ability to think differently, want differently, and remain in relationship even when there is no agreement.
This is a question worth asking every couples therapist before beginning the process, because there are different approaches to the work.
In my work it is important to me that the work on the relationship takes place in the presence of both partners. Even when personal material arises, we are interested in the way it meets the person facing you and the relationship you are building together.
Transparency allows us to work directly with what is happening between you.
I work with two separate people, and alongside the space of each of them is also my professional responsibility to the relationship between them.
One of the things that interests me especially in therapy is the way families of origin continue to influence our couple lives.
This can be seen clearly around raising the children. Two parents can love the child equally and hold completely different views about boundaries, authority, independence, or responsibility. Each of them brings with him what he learned in the family in which he grew up and the parent he is asking to be today.
This is also true regarding money, intimacy, division of roles, holidays, and relationship with the extended family.
The Gestalt perspective allows us to be interested in what each person brings with him to the relationship and to identify where an old story is influencing an encounter taking place in the present.
Getting to know the past expands our understanding. From within this understanding it is possible to ask: “What from what I learned is also suitable for the life I am building today, and what do I want to choose to do differently?”
In this way the past receives its place in the story without determining the continuation of the path.
One of the central axes in my work is differentiation.
Differentiation is the ability to be in deep relationship with another person and remain connected also to myself.
I can hear that you are disappointed in me and remain attentive to what is important to me. I can say what I want even when you think differently. I can take responsibility for the way I behaved and leave you with the responsibility for your feelings and choices.
I can also bear the possibility that you will remain disappointed in me.
Many couple struggles intensify when our stability depends on the person facing us changing. If only you would speak to me differently, I could calm down. If only you would stop criticizing me, I could get closer. If only you would agree with me about the children, I would know we are truly a team.
In therapy we gradually develop the ability to remain in relationship even when the person facing us does not respond exactly as we hoped.
A significant question in my view is: “Who do I want to be within this relationship even when the person facing me remains in a position different from mine?”
Differentiation allows difference to exist within a relationship that has love, closeness, and room for two whole people.
Worthiness in my view is connected both to knowing that I have value and to the way I choose to conduct myself within my relationship.
How do I speak when I am angry? How do I ask for what I need? How do I set a boundary? Am I able to see that I hurt, take responsibility, and try to repair?
It is possible to understand where a certain response came from and at the same time choose how I want to act today.
I can recognize that I behaved in a way that is not worthy in my eyes and still remember that I am worthy of love. My value allows me to meet my mistakes with honesty, learn from them, and choose differently next time.
The question “Who do I want to be when it is hard for me?” thus becomes a central part of the couple work.
Couple conflict also takes place in the body.
You can know intellectually that your partner asked for time to think and still feel your stomach contracting. You can want to stay in the conversation and feel in your body a strong urge to leave the room.
I am interested in what is happening in the body and in emotion during the encounter. We learn to identify the emotion, notice where it is experienced in the body, and gradually expand the ability to stay with it at a pace that can be borne.
The more a person is able to bear more of his emotional experience, the larger space of choice opens before him. Anger can be present without immediately determining how I will speak. Fear can be felt without deciding for me what I will do.
This ability is connected in my view in a deep way to differentiation: to feel what is arising in me, remain connected to myself, and choose how I want to meet the person facing me.
The couple work continues also outside the therapy room.
Your life together takes place at home, with the children, on the way to work, in the evening after a long day, and in the moment when one of you says a sentence that immediately activates the familiar pattern.
I can invite you to observe certain things between sessions or to practice a new way of meeting a situation that repeats itself.
I am interested in what you discover about yourselves within the attempt. Even a moment in which you intended to respond in a new way and found yourselves returning to the familiar pattern can become an opportunity for learning: what arose in me? What was hard for me to bear? Which possibility would I like to develop for next time?
Gradually, the ability built in the therapy room begins to be available also in the real moments of shared life.
From my experience in the clinic, in most cases it is possible to complete a meaningful couples therapy process within four to six months. This is also the common length of process among the couples I accompany.
The length of therapy varies from couple to couple and depends on the reason you came, the state of the relationship, the depth of the difficulties you bring, and the willingness of both of you to look also at your part and practice new ways within shared life.
I see couples therapy as a process that has direction and purpose. We want to understand the patterns that run the relationship, identify each person’s part within them, and develop new ways to act in the moments when the familiar pattern arises.
My goal is to equip you with understanding and tools you can take with you into life: to speak in a way that allows meeting even when you do not agree, to identify earlier the circles that distance between you, to bear the difference better, take responsibility for your part, and know how to return to one another after conflict.
One of the successes of couples therapy in my view is the moment when you feel you have enough tools to continue this work on your own.
You know your relationship better, understand what happens to you in challenging moments, and know how to use what you acquired in the process to continue nurturing the relationship.
At this stage it is possible to sum up the path we took, part from the therapeutic process, and send you forward with the tools you acquired and with a blessing for the road.
Couples therapy can create a meaningful possibility for change when the partners are willing to look at the relationship and at their part within it.
There are couples who come when love exists and they are asking for a new way to cope with conflict. There are those who want to rebuild trust or intimacy. There are couples who come at a time when one of them is no longer certain whether he wants to stay.
The purpose of the process is to meet the state of the relationship with honesty and check what is possible and what you want to build from here.
For many couples the movement is drawing closer and renewed building of the relationship. In other cases the process can bring clarity regarding the continuation of the relationship.
The ability to see the relationship as it is allows decisions to be made from more awareness, responsibility, and choice.
Before starting, it is worth checking also the therapist’s way of working and her fit for you.
It is possible to ask how she sees the role of the therapist, what the first sessions look like, what her position is regarding individual sessions during couples therapy, how she relates to secrets between partners, and what happens when one wants to continue and the other is uncertain.
It is also worth paying attention to your experience in the encounter. Do both of you have space? Is the therapist able to meet complexity? Do you understand what you are working on and where the process is heading? Does the encounter invite you to look also at yourselves and discover the places where you have the possibility to influence?
Meaningful therapy allows you to feel seen and also to meet things that are hard to see alone. This encounter can be pleasant, surprising, challenging, and sometimes also liberating.
If you are considering couples therapy, I would begin with three questions:
“What relationship do we want to build?”
“What do I want to be different between us?”
“What am I willing to examine in myself in order to allow this change to happen?”
The third question is especially important.
It is natural to come to therapy when we know very well what we would like our partner to understand or do differently. Alongside the requests we have of him, the couple work invites each person to turn part of the gaze also toward himself.
In this way it is possible to identify the place where our influence, responsibility, and choice are located.
It is possible to come to therapy from great pain and from a real desire that something in the behavior of the person facing us will change. In a couple relationship there are requests we need, boundaries it is important to set, and behaviors whose change can greatly affect the quality of the relationship.
Alongside the desire to influence what is happening between us, the therapeutic work also expands the place where each of us has freedom: how I speak, what I ask for, which boundary I set, what I am able to bear, what I take responsibility for, and what I choose to do when the person facing me remains a person separate from me.
It is possible to love, need, ask, lean, and be hurt and at the same time develop the ability to remain connected to ourselves and take responsibility for the way we act within the relationship.
This in my view is one of the important movements couples therapy can allow.
Couples therapy is an opportunity to stop and look at what is happening between you in a way that is hard to do when you are again inside that same argument.
We learn to know the patterns you developed, what each person brings from the family of origin, the feelings that arise, and the way each of you responds when the relationship becomes challenging. Alongside understanding, we return again and again to the present: what is arising in me now, what is in my responsibility, and how do I want to be within this relationship.
The change can appear in your identifying earlier what is happening to you, being able to bear more of the difference between you, speaking in a way you can respect also after the storm passes, taking responsibility, and knowing how to find your way back to one another.
In the end, I want you to leave therapy with more than a solution to the difficulty that brought you to me. I want you to know your relationship better and yourselves within it, and for you to have the ability to continue nurturing it also after our process ends.
Before the question “Will the therapy succeed?” I suggest asking a different question: What relationship do we want to build, and what is each of us willing to bring in order to create it?
This in my view is a meaningful opening point for couples therapy.
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Expert in couples therapy for relationships without a supportive family safety net.
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