What is Couples Therapy? Does it Work?

There is no feeling quite like the feeling of being in love and in a relationship with someone. Few joys compare with that walking-on-sunshine feeling when things are going great with your beloved. Despite our best intentions and deepest desires, our relationships aren’t perfect.

Living as we do after Genesis 3, even our best intentions and plans fall short or are misunderstood, complicating our relationships, and introducing challenges into the mix. We find that even the most exemplary couples whose relationships are rich, deep, and fulfilling have their tiffs now and then.

Into this reality comes the welcome news that there are avenues for all couples – both those desperate for change and those needing a bit of help to work through a hump – to get help. Couples therapy, which is also called marriage therapy or marriage counseling is beneficial, whatever the nature of your relationship, and whatever the difficulty you’re facing in your stage of life. Going to couples counseling for wisdom and guidance is a good move.

What is couples therapy?

Couples therapy is a type of therapy in which a trained marriage and family therapist helps a couple to work through a specific issue in their relationship or to address the dynamics in their relationship that may be affecting their union. Couples therapy isn’t a nuclear option that you use only when things are on the brink of disaster – some couples use therapy even when things are going well.

This is because the tools that the therapy provides can be used to improve communication and intimacy, whether they are in decent shape and need a few tweaks, or they are in disrepair need to build new connections. A couple can choose to meet with a therapist by themselves, or they can opt for group therapy where a few other couples will meet and discuss issues with the guidance of a trained therapist.

Whatever the format, couples therapy is intended to address aspects of a relationship and bring the whole closer toward flourishing. The number of sessions needed for a couple to address their situation will depend on the severity of their circumstances and depth of concerns.

Using effective techniques such as emotionally focused couples therapy, some of the outcomes that couples therapy tries to accomplish include, but are not limited to:

• Helping to find harmful patterns of behavior in the relationship
• Helping to build trust and improve communication within the marriage
• Helping couples see their situation and problems from a fresh perspective
• Providing tools to help a couple have more and positive interactions with one another

Do I need couples therapy?

Each couple must decide for themselves if they should go for couples therapy. The difficulty is that sometimes people wait longer to seek help than they should. This happens for a variety of reasons, including getting used to an unhealthy dynamic, concerns about costs for therapy, fear of being judged for going to therapy, fear that going to therapy is an admission of failure, etc.

However, when things aren’t going well, getting the help you need sooner rather than later is the best thing you can do for your relationship. All of us need help at one time or another and going for couples therapy isn’t an admission of failure: it’s an admission of the reality of our humanity and its limitations.

Here are a few questions you and your spouse can ask to see if you might need couples therapy.

• Is your communication poor? Do you or your spouse feel misunderstood or that you’re not heard in your relationship?
• Is there a lot of criticism or resentment in your relationship? Some of it may be verbalized, but some of it may come through via non-verbal cues such as tone of voice, eye-rolling, or the silent treatment
• Are you defensive in your marriage, either individually or as a couple?
• Have you stopped having fun or adventures together?
• Have you stopped thinking of each other as husband and wife?
• Is your identity centered on your kids or grandkids and not on each other?
• Do you withdraw from one another, physically, and/or emotionally? Have you stopped touching one another often, through kisses, hugging, holding hands? Have you stopped having in-depth conversations with one another (which aren’t arguments)?
• Has infidelity, abuse, or addiction made its way into your relationship?
• Do you have unrealistic expectations of one another, and do those expectations, whether spoken or unspoken, cause conflict in your relationship?

If you answered in the affirmative to any of these, consider going for couples therapy to address these concerns. Your relationship will be healthier for it.

Does couples therapy work?

We come to it now. A couple may need therapy, but does it work? As with most things, the answer is “it depends.” While research shows that emotionally focused couples therapy helps around 70% of couples to recover from marital distress and that couples that go for therapy are less likely to divorce than those who do not, there are a few things to consider.

Timing matters. Sometimes, couples wait a long time before they get help. One statistic indicates that couples wait for an average of six years in marital distress before they look for help. The longer a couple waits, the more entrenched the unhealthy behaviors become, and the more damage is done in the relationship. It is far better for a couple to go for counseling sooner than later.

The motivation level of both partners also matters. If one or both partners have given up on the relationship, the counseling sessions may simply become a way of letting the other partner in on the fact that the marriage is over. To get the best from any therapy, the people involved must be willing to put in the work and to come with the right attitude and mindset.

A couple needs to share honestly with one another and the therapist so that they get the help they need. Additionally, they should be open to change and be willing to look at themselves honestly and see flaws so that they can address them. Both partners in the relationship must be willing to put in the work between the sessions that the therapist assigns them, because simply showing up for the sessions will not help you.

Find a therapist that works for both of you. At other times, therapy isn’t as effective as it could be because both partners aren’t comfortable with the therapist from the outset. This discomfort can hinder progress and may undermine the recommendations made by the therapist if one partner feels the therapist is biased towards the other.

Overall, couples therapy has an overwhelming rate of success; it does work to address the issues for which people come for counseling, and it improves relational dynamics. However, in some situations, couples counseling can also confirm for the couple that their relationship may be beyond repair.

In such cases, couples therapy helps people to end things well by giving them the tools they need to communicate better, problem solve, and plan for life beyond their relationship.

Conclusion

While one cannot accurately predict from the outset whether a couple will heal through the counseling process, giving couples therapy a serious try will give your marriage a fighting chance.

Couples therapy helps a couple to reengage one another, deepen their interest in one another’s inner world, rekindle intimacy, and develop the tools to become better listeners and more empathetic. Real change in a relationship can come through couples therapy if the couple is invested in the process and are willing to do the work required.