Why Your Couples Therapy Isn't Working
You've taken the suggestion of your friends and Reddit, and started couples therapy. Or maybe you've been to a couples therapist or three and nothing much really changes. What gives? Why isn't this working?
Here are some of the most common reasons why couples therapy gets stuck:
Not enough safety, or not enough stress.
In order to change, a relationship needs roughly equal parts stress to safety.
Too much stress, and you're just putting out constant fires- healing from the fight of the week, and in a cycle of blaming each other without the ability to slow down and be vulnerable.
Too much safety, and there’s no real motivation for change. Its like having your shoelace untied while watching a movie- you're not in a rush to fix it. If one or both of you isn't being honest about how much YOU NEED THIS TO CHANGE NOW then you may find yourself coasting.
Misery stabilizers
If one or both members of a couple is engaged in a lot of distraction from life, it can keep things just "okay" enough that they never have to really change.
Examples of common misery stabilizers are: working too much, overinvesting in parenting, having a hobby that takes up most of your time, and daily drinking or weed use.
In fact, couples therapy itself can become a misery stabilizer! Couples can spend months or even years talking about their problems, not changing them, but kinda sorta feeling better for a moment when they have a session. Like a pressure release valve.
If your therapy is just helping keep your head above water... its not working.
Your dynamic really works in all the wrong ways
If you're doing more, and your partner is doing less... Well, that might actually feel pretty good to you in a perverse way. You get to be in control and feel right, and your partner gets to do less and feel bad.
Or maybe the fighting you're doing reminds you that you do care about each other, and you're capable of eliciting strong feeling from one another.
Perhaps you wouldn't know what to do with each other if you stopped this dance you’ve been in and you're scared to try.
If what you're doing fills some relational need that you're not sure how to meet otherwise, it might be hard to shake them.
Your therapist isn’t a good fit
Imagine walking into a party of strangers. Some you'd like, some you might hate, and maybe you'd really click with one or two.
Its the same with therapists. You should find someone that you both feel understood by, safe with, and who has the right training and approach for your issues.
If you're not there, couples therapy likely won't work for you.
All the needed information isn’t on the table
Perhaps one person is really in therapy because they'd like to end the relationship, maybe there’s been an affair or other harmful secret, or maybe you're not sharing the full extent of the relationship dynamic with your therapist to protect your partner or yourself.
Although its rare, not having all the informative on the table can hold you back from progress in therapy.
Therapy works when there is a clearly defined goal, and incremental changes that move you towards that goal. If that’s not happening for you- your therapy isn't working.
Did I miss anything? Drop it in the comments below.