Where the Bodies Are Buried: The Hidden Work of Couples Therapy
Half Mystery, Half Love Story: Why Your Relationship Needs a Specialist
If you scroll through a directory of therapists, you will see a familiar pattern. Almost every profile lists "Couples Therapy" alongside anxiety, depression, and stress. It is often treated as just another checkbox, a service added to round out a practice.
But having a license to practice therapy does not mean one has the constitution to hold the complexity of a relationship.
The uncomfortable truth is that the tools which make for excellent individual therapy—unconditional validation, silence, following the client’s lead—can be disastrous in couples work. To work with a relationship is to step into a completely different arena. It is not enough to have taken a weekend workshop. You need a specialist.
The Capacity to Hold the Heat The first requirement of this work is the ability to tolerate voltage.
Relationships are where our deepest wounds and our highest hopes live. Because of this, the emotional intensity in a couples session is exponentially higher than in individual work. A generalist often becomes anxious when the conflict rises; they may try to smooth things over or change the subject to lower the tension.
A specialist knows that the tension is where the change happens. We are trained to stay grounded when the room gets hot. We are holding a massive amount of invisible weight: your individual pasts, your current resentments, the unmet needs you haven't even whispered to yourself, and the fragile hope for your future. We have to hold all of that without buckling.
Solving a Mystery, Writing a Love Story Good couples therapy is a complex duality. It is half solving a mystery and half writing a love story.
The mystery is the forensic work. It is my job to understand where the bodies are buried in your relationship. I have to see the things you are hiding from each other, and often from yourselves. I need to sense what you need before you have the language to ask for it. I am looking for the unconscious pacts you made years ago that are no longer serving you.
The love story is the reconstruction. Once we have solved the mystery of why you are disconnected, we have to do the active work of writing the next chapter. This isn't just about "getting along." It is about recovering the intimacy and vitality that brought you together in the first place.
We Do Not Just Listen. We Intervene. The hallmark of a specialist is the willingness to be directive.
If I sit back and watch you reenact the same destructive loop you do at home, I am not helping you. I am merely providing an audience for your dysfunction.
A good couples therapist is not a referee who decides who is right. We are more like a flight instructor in the cockpit with you. When you reach for the controls to crash the plane—when you roll your eyes, raise your voice, or shut down in silence—I will step in. I will interrupt you. I will ask you to stop, breathe, and try it again.
We do this because insight alone does not change relationships. Muscle memory does. You need to experience a new way of interacting in real time, not just talk about it in theory.
The Courage to Look in the Mirror Ultimately, I can map the terrain. I can interrupt the conflict. I can show you exactly where the bodies are buried. But I cannot do the work for you.
