Couples often arrive in therapy knowing a great deal about their problems. They can identify the subjects they fight about, describe each other’s habits with considerable accuracy, and recount the history of a disagreement in extraordinary detail. What is usually harder to see is what happens between them while the problem is unfolding: the moment a question begins to sound like an accusation, an explanation becomes a defense, one partner starts pressing for an answer, or the other decides that saying less is safer.
My approach to couples therapy is active and depth-oriented. I want to know the history each person brings into the relationship, what has happened between you over time, and how those experiences influence the way you respond to each other now. From there, we can work more specifically on communication, conflict, trust, intimacy, decision-making, and the parts of the relationship that have become difficult to discuss without repeating an old argument.
What Happens Between You During a Conversation
A couple may tell me that their problem is communication, and within several minutes I can often see where the conversation begins to break down. One person asks a question and adds three examples because they are concerned the first one will be dismissed. Their partner hears a case being built against them and starts correcting the details. The first person experiences those corrections as further evidence that the original concern is being ignored, becomes more emphatic, and soon they are arguing about details that had very little to do with what either person was trying to say.
I may stop them at that point and ask what each person heard, what they intended to communicate, or what happened just before the conversation changed direction. Examining those few seconds closely can show us why an argument that begins with one concern repeatedly ends somewhere else.
I will also interrupt conversations that have stopped being productive. Once we know how an argument deteriorates, spending another forty minutes repeating it only gives the couple more practice having the same argument.
Why I Meet With Partners Individually
Early in couples therapy, I generally meet with each partner individually. People often speak differently when they are not simultaneously considering how their partner will receive what they say, and these conversations give me a fuller account of the relationship from each person's perspective.
We may discuss family history, previous relationships, major losses, trauma, conflict, money, sex, trust, substance use, mental health, or other experiences that have some bearing on the current relationship. I am interested in history where it helps explain something we are seeing now: why criticism carries particular force, why asking for help is uncomfortable, why financial uncertainty produces an outsized reaction, or why someone becomes quiet during conflict despite having a great deal to say afterward.
Individual conversations can also make room for subjects that have been difficult to raise with a partner present, including resentment, shame, uncertainty about the relationship, concerns about sex, or information that may materially affect the couple. Because these meetings remain part of couples therapy, I explain my policy regarding privacy and secrets before we begin so that both partners understand how consequential information will be handled.
The History Each Person Brings to the Relationship
Long before people meet their partners, they have learned something about anger, dependence, affection, trust, disagreement, asking for help, disappointing other people, and what happens when someone they love is upset with them. Those experiences can become particularly influential during conflict, when reactions happen quickly and there is little time to consider where they came from.
Someone who grew up around unpredictable anger may notice a change in tone before their partner recognizes that their tone has changed. Someone whose concerns were routinely dismissed may keep explaining long after the point has been understood because stopping feels too much like giving up. A person who learned that participating in conflict only made matters worse may become quiet at precisely the moment their partner most wants an answer.
History can explain why a response developed and why it remains so readily available. We then have to address what happens in the present, including whether that response still serves the person using it and what it does to the person on the receiving end.
Accountability Has to Be Specific
Reducing every relationship problem to communication can obscure important differences in responsibility. Partners continuously affect one another, and recurring conflicts frequently involve contributions from both people, although those contributions may be quite different in nature and consequence. An affair, hidden debt, repeated dishonesty, intimidation, uncontrolled substance use, or another serious breach requires direct accountability from the person responsible for it.
Specificity matters in more ordinary conflicts as well. “We both need to communicate better” gives a couple almost nothing to do differently. One partner may need to stop pursuing a conversation after the other has asked for twenty minutes to settle down, while the other needs to return after those twenty minutes rather than allowing a temporary break to become the end of the discussion. One may need to raise concerns before resentment has accumulated for months; the other may need to hear a complaint without immediately explaining why the complaint is unfair.
Accountability becomes useful when each person can identify the behavior within their control and begin changing it, regardless of whether their partner changes first.
Understanding a Pattern Is Only the Beginning
Couples can become remarkably articulate about their problems while continuing to reproduce them. They know that one pursues and the other withdraws, that criticism produces defensiveness, or that a particular subject reliably ends badly. The difficulty appears when the familiar reaction is already underway and each person is responding to the other in real time.
I may ask someone to make a complaint without presenting the entire supporting case, tolerate a pause without filling it, answer the question that was asked before defending themselves, express hurt without converting it into contempt, or remain engaged long enough to hear something uncomfortable without immediately correcting the other person's account.
These changes can require considerable effort because familiar responses usually developed for a reason. Silence may once have prevented escalation; explaining may have been necessary to be taken seriously; self-sufficiency may have reduced the disappointment of depending on other people. A response can be understandable in light of someone's history and still create problems in a current relationship.
What happens between sessions gives us useful information about whether anything is changing. We can examine a conversation that went differently and identify what made the difference, or return to an argument that deteriorated in the usual way and locate the point where another response was available.
Different Problems Require Different Approaches
Infidelity or another serious breach of trust may require careful attention to disclosure, accountability, questions, boundaries, and the conditions under which trust could develop again. Chronic conflict requires close examination of escalation and the points at which each person loses the ability to listen, think clearly, or remain constructive.
Sexual concerns raise different questions involving desire, attraction, physical health, resentment, pressure, initiation, rejection, and the couple's ability to speak candidly about sex. Financial conflict may involve spending, debt, secrecy, differences in risk tolerance, earning disparities, family money, or fundamentally different beliefs about security and what money is for. Parenting disagreements can involve limits, discipline, responsibility, loyalty, and the influence of each parent's own upbringing.
The subject matters because couples can communicate quite clearly and still disagree profoundly. At that point, better communication helps them understand the disagreement more accurately, while the larger task involves deciding how two people with competing needs, values, or priorities are going to live together.
When One Partner Is Unsure About Staying
Traditional couples therapy becomes difficult to use well when one partner is working toward repairing the relationship and the other is primarily trying to decide whether to remain in it. The couple may appear to be working on communication or intimacy while each person is pursuing a different outcome.
In those circumstances, I may recommend discernment counseling, a structured, short-term process that gives both partners an opportunity to examine how the relationship reached its current position, their respective contributions to that history, and what each available path would require.
A decision about the future of a marriage deserves careful consideration, particularly when children, finances, shared businesses, extended family, or many years of history are involved. The purpose of discernment counseling is to give that decision dedicated attention before asking a couple to undertake the longer process of repairing a relationship they may not both have decided to continue.
What I Ask of Couples
Couples do not need to arrive knowing how to discuss subjects that have repeatedly gone badly at home. I do ask for honesty about information that materially affects the relationship, a willingness to examine one's own behavior with some rigor, and enough openness to consider that a familiar interpretation may be incomplete.
I will ask difficult questions, point out inconsistencies, interrupt exchanges that are becoming destructive, and tell you what I am observing. I will also slow things down when one person is struggling to say something important or when a conversation is moving too quickly for either partner to understand what is happening.
Over time, I want couples to become more capable of doing this without me: recognizing escalation before it takes over a conversation, saying what they mean without requiring the other person to decipher it, hearing something uncomfortable without immediately preparing a defense, repairing an injury after one occurs, and knowing which disagreements can be negotiated and which require a more consequential decision.
Conflict will still be part of a relationship that is going well. Two people sharing a life will continue to disappoint each other, misunderstand each other, want different things, and occasionally handle those differences badly. The measure that interests me is what happens next: whether they can recognize what went wrong, take responsibility for their part, return to the conversation, and address the problem without allowing the way they fight about it to become a second problem of its own.
Regina Abayev, JD, LMFT provides couples therapy in Hermosa Beach and online throughout California. Couples intensives are available for couples who want or need longer sessions than a weekly appointment provides. If you would like to find out whether this approach fits your relationship, you can request a consultation.
