Not sure how couples therapy works? Here's an overview of what to expect and what questions to ask during your next (or first) couples counseling or marriage counseling session.
Are you contemplating whether or not to go into couples therapy? Maybe you’ve decided to go for it, but you’re not sure what to expect. This article will answer any questions you may have in mind about couples therapy.
When you decide to get into a relationship, it’s inevitable that you will experience challenges, setbacks, and friction on your journey together. Couples counseling, marriage counseling, or premarital counseling addresses any doubts, assumptions, and fears you may have about your partner and can help you set the ground for a healthy and fulfilling relationship ahead.
The purpose of couples therapy is to help you understand your relationship, work through its challenges, resolve conflicts, and create space for a healthier relationship. According to Linda Carroll, LMFT, couples therapy is about helping couples "get unstuck from painful dynamics that keep getting repeated."
Couples can seek help from a professional for various reasons such as affair recovery, dissatisfaction with sex and other intimacy issues, feeling unloved in the relationship, conflicts, financial strains, and issues in communication.
Simply put, if you feel stuck in your relationship, you keep having conflicts without resolution, or feel that nothing is working despite putting in the effort, it might be time to see a couples counselor. With that said, healthy couples can also benefit from couples therapy if they want to make their relationship better.
In couples therapy, your therapist acts as a mediator or neutral party that helps each partner see the issue with a realistic lens and get to the bottom of it.
Your therapist will conduct several sessions with you and your partner together. Typically, each session is about an hour long, but this is negotiable based on you and your therapist’s schedule.
In the first session, your therapist will gather background information and scratch the surface of your relationship. In the second and third sessions, your therapist might want to talk to each of you individually.
In subsequent sessions, they can bring the two of you together to observe your patterns and communication styles.
This is not recommended and most therapists refrain from this. Once your therapist sees you first, they become biased. In other words, they lean more towards your side. For this reason, they’re not able to act as an unbiased third party in couples therapy.
Choosing a couples therapist is more challenging than choosing a personal therapist. This is because in the former case, you’re putting your entire relationship at stake. Picking the wrong one can do your relationship more harm than good.
Here are some questions you should ask when evaluating couples therapists.
If a therapist has been in a relationship, that doesn’t make them qualified to become a couples therapist. A qualified therapist draws from scientifically-backed theories in psychology such as the Gottman Method, PACT (Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy), and Emotional Focused Therapy (EFT).
While the number of years of practice is not directly proportionate to the quality and experience of therapy, it’s sensible to pick someone who has substantial experience in counseling work specific to couples.
Your therapist will have their own perspective of romantic relationships too, and that will influence how they approach therapy. Choose a couples therapist whose values on romantic relationships align with yours.
For example, if you’re an LGBTQ couple, you want a therapist that supports the LGBTQ community, not someone who has conservative beliefs. Similarly, if you’re a devout Chrisitian, you’ll work best with a therapist whose therapeutic style draws from Christianity.
Once you’ve chosen the right therapist, the next step is to know what to expect in a couples or marriage counseling session. Below is a list of questions that will make this experience less daunting.
In the first counseling session, your therapist will talk to you and your partner together to get an idea about your relationship. Here are some questions they can ask:
Your couples therapist understands that you might not feel safe or comfortable discussing things in your partner’s presence. That’s why they may want to conduct another individual counseling session with you and your partner separately. In that situation, those questions can sound something like this:
In the final few couple therapy sessions, your therapist will invite you and your partner together again to resolve things. You’ll get the opportunity to ask your partner any questions that you previously didn’t feel comfortable or safe asking.
You might not know the right questions to ask your partner in a counseling session, so here’s a list of some important questions you can ask them:
Now that you have a complete list of couples counseling questions in hand, feel free to get in touch with a couples therapist and make the most out of your therapy session. Finding the right couples therapist and working with your partner to improve your relationship might turn out to be one of the best decisions you’ve made in your life.
Sadia Maqsood is a professional blogger, published author, and freelance writer with over 3 years of experience in writing about relationships, psychology, and self-improvement. She holds a degree in Psychology. Her work has appeared in Thrive Global, The Good Men Project, and top Medium.com publications. When she's not writing, she's immersed in true crime. She tweets @becomingsadia.
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