On Why You Shouldn’t Wait for Your Relationship to be On the Brink to Go to Couples Therapy
A quick google search of “couples therapist near me” has a search volume of over 22,000 times per month. That’s a lot of people looking for a local couples therapist and seemingly, a lot of people looking to get relationship support. If you only go to couple therapy when you are trying to save your relationship, that would mean that at minimum, 22,000 partnerships are on the brink each month, which quite honestly makes my heart hurt.
As a couple therapist, the first questions I’m often asked about my work are: “what’s the weirdest thing you’ve encountered?” and “when should my partner and I go to couple therapy?” The answer to the first question is obviously “I’ll never tell” (confidentiality, c’mon!) and the answer to the second is “As soon as you start wondering about it.”
Western American culture is rooted in problem-solving—we wait for a problem to arise and then try out as many possible solutions as we can find to try to fix it. So too, is the way we practice medicine in this country. We wait for a break, an un-soothable pain, or an emergency situation before we reach for help. Even when we’re ailing, it often feels unacceptable or shameful to admit “I can’t do it on my own.” I’m here to tell you that taking this same approach to couples counseling, waiting until you’re on the verge of separation, really isn’t helping anyone.
If you’re curious about couple therapy and how it might help your relationship, my hope is to convince you that now’s the time to try it out! Waiting for your partnership to “fall ill” before seeking additional support makes it even harder to heal. Instead, consider taking a wellness approach and focus on preventing “illness” altogether.
“A primary goal of couples counseling is to help you increase feelings of security in your relationship and to know that your partner can reliably care for you.”
six reasons to start couples therapy preventatively
1. Build a Solid Relationship Foundation
Some of my favorite couples’ work is with newer partners and in Premarital Counseling. When partners come to therapy in preparation of deepening their commitment (whatever this may look like for them, it certainly doesn’t have to be working towards marriage), they are often more affectionate, loving, and energized to do the work. Relationship therapist, Margaret Paul, PhD, says “relationships fail over and over because people are not honest with themselves regarding what they can and can’t tolerate.” Premarital counseling and counseling for new(ish) partners invites honest, vulnerable exploration of the traits and behaviors that you love about one another as well as the parts that drive you nuts, so that you can make an informed decision about the sustainability of your partnership.
Premarital counseling and/or relationship therapy for newer partners is ripe with opportunity. It focuses on helping you to learn how best to soothe each other during conflict; teaches you how to make successful agreements; navigates important dealbreakers like having children, managing finances, religious/cultural differences; and helps to clarify each partner’s values and build more shared alignment.
Key Preventative benefits: A primary benefit of premarital relationship therapy is that it helps partners to identify and explore any uncharted territory and helps to ensure there are no big surprises later. It’s a great building increased confidence and security in the relationship, as well as to help resolve any ambivalence or concerns around if the partnership is sustainable before investing a lot more time and emotional energy into it.
2. Conflict is Inevitable, Why Not Learn to Do it Better?
Conflict is NOT a reflection of a “bad” relationship, unless it’s abusive, it’s an unfortunate reality of being in a relationship. When two (or more) humans embark on being in a relationship together, there will be competing needs, hurt feelings, and misunderstandings, which means there will be rupture. Accepting that this is a reality helps to highlight the value of reaching for couples therapy before conflicts get too messy.
In couple therapy we regularly talk about the cycle of rupture and repair. One key indicator of how successful a relationship will be is the couples’ ability to effectively and efficiently repair the rupture. “Repair” describes what the partners need to do in order to not only resolve the problem at hand, but also to restore feelings of warmth, trust, and security. Relationship therapy can help you understand and anticipate areas of frequent conflict ahead of time, as well as develop tools better resolve them.
Key Preventative Benefits: Couples therapy with Kindman & Co. will help you learn to effectively apologize and forgive when you ultimately do have conflict. You will learn how to use touch, your body, and tone to soothe your partner’s nervous system, so that you can repair a rupture within 30 minutes or less and avoid any unresolved, hurt feelings.
3. Increase Relationship Security & Your Ability to Tackle What Life Throws at You
Life is f*cking hard. Period. As humans, we are built for social and emotional bonds and we require others to help regulate ourselves during times of distress, a process called co-regulation. We need someone to express empathy, curiosity, and support that helps us sort out how we feel.
Partnerships are meant to keep you from weathering life’s difficulties alone. In order to feel safe enough to truly depend on your partner though, you have to feel secure in your relationship and the belief that your partner knows how to care for you. The blueprint for how safe each of us feels to show up vulnerably in our partnerships and what we need to do so is known as our attachment style. When you learn about your partner(s)’ attachment style and what makes them feel safe or unsafe, you increase how secure everyone feels in the relationship. Please don’t wait for frequent misses to occur! Regular miscommunication can get stored in memory as threats to relationship security and create additional barriers to meaningful connection.
Key Preventative Benefits: A primary goal of couples counseling is to help you increase feelings of security in your relationship and to know that your partner can reliably care for you. Relationship therapy helps you to understand your partner(s)’ attachment blueprint and what they need from you to feel safe and helps ensure that you get your needs met too!
4. Learn to Work Together to make Fair, Win-Win Agreements
That old cliché that “relationships require compromise “may not be all it’s cracked up to be. As a PACT-trained (Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy) therapist, I regularly hear PACT founder, Stan Tatkin,’s voice in my head, saying (and I’m paraphrasing here): “Agreements have to be win-win, in that they really work for all partners. If Partner A wants to vacation in Hawaii, and Partner B really wants to go to New York, it’s unlikely either partner will feel happy with a compromise of ‘meeting in the middle’ and ending up vacationing in rural Iowa.” That vacation doesn’t sound quite as fun now, does it?
PACT adopts the perspective that relationship agreements that are sustainable are ones that really work for all parties. Of course, not every conflict can be resolved with a perfect 50-50 split down the middle every time. Couples therapy can help you to lead with curiosity and empathy as you cultivate a shared understanding of what each partner desires and come up with fair and just agreements that support you to each get more of what you’re really wanting. Instead of ending up in Iowa, maybe you decide to go to Hawaii for this vacation, but in doing so you promise to prioritize some of Partner B’s favorite activities while you’re there. Then you agree to go to New York for the next vacation and pick out finite dates for when that will be. See? Win-Win.
Key Preventative Benefits: Using relationship counseling as a support for making agreements that really work helps to prevent future irresolvable conflicts down the road and leads to increased relationship satisfaction. A skilled couples therapist can help you see beyond your individual needs and wants to come up with fair solutions that work better for everyone.
“Therapy supports you to be the expert on your partner and them to be the expert on you, and that’s really the most important thing.”
5. Develop a Shared Story & Build a Couples’ Mission Statement
Humaning is extraordinarily difficult and being in relationship is incredibly complex. The more that we can expect that life will present pain and hardship, the more that we can put preventative supports in place (See Points 2&3!). A great reason to consider going to couple therapy with your partner is to work on developing a clearer, mutual understanding of your shared purpose—why you first came together, why you choose to stay together, and what you aim to do together.
As therapist, Beth Newton, says on the PACT blog: “Couples need to know why they are partners instead of single or with someone else. They need a shared identity to get them through the hard times. Couples are chaos without inspiration and structure.”
Establishing a Partners’ Mission Statement helps you to have a reminder and place to return home to amidst challenging seasons, conflict, and relationship distress. You can even check out the exercise and try it out for yourselves at home!
Key Preventative Benefits: Relationship counseling helps you to revisit why you came together and what keeps you in the relationship. Having a clear purpose grounds you in the value of your partnership in moments when it can feel really hard to see.
6. Increase Relationship Satisfaction & A General Sense of Well-Being
American culture tends to shy away from (or even shame) sex, public displays of affection, direct communication, and authentic vulnerability. As a result, we don’t have a lot of great opportunities to learn how to be transparent, responsive, and affectionate partners. An essential factor in relationship satisfaction and sustainability is how often partners respond to each other’s emotional bids for connection. “An emotional bid is a signal for affection, attention or any other form of positive connection that one partner sends to another.” We all want to feel loved, desired, and cared for within our partnerships. The more that we do, the happier we are across many aspects of our lives. We can all be a little dense or self-involved sometimes! Relationship therapy can help you learn how to best meet your partner’s emotional bids and ensure that you actually see when they are reaching for connection and affection.
Also, couples counseling can support you to have a really yummy, intimate, and pleasurable shared sex life! Your therapist will work to cultivate a space where you feel comfortable exploring sexual needs, desires, and fantasies and help you develop a language to directly and compassionately communicate about these to each other. Even if you’re already having great sex, there’s probably a way that it can be even better, no? Learning about what is most pleasurable to your partner and having new experiences together invites increased feelings of overall well-being.
There are always places that partners haven’t yet gone together. Engaging in couples therapy preventatively encourages gentle exploration of these uncharted spaces and supports you to discover and learn new things about one another. The more that you know and share, the safer and more connected you will feel.
Key Preventative Benefits: Relationship and couples counseling aims to help you find more ways to make each other feel loved and how to love even better than you do now. Therapy supports you to be the expert on your partner and them to be the expert on you, and that’s really the most important thing.
When we feel safe, connected, and loved in our relationships we more confidently navigate our lives. I hope that you will consider starting couple therapy as a means of caring for and prioritizing your relationship. Ideally you don’t wait for something to be in pain to start going to the gym or to begin a daily movement practice, instead you do these things to try to build supports for everyday living and to prevent future pain. Doesn’t your relationship deserve this same kind of care?
Click here for more information on the couples and relationship counseling services we provide at Kindman & Co. and get connected to an inclusive relationship therapist today.
Kaitlin Kindman, is a co-founder of Kindman & Co., an activist, and a feminist. Her purpose is to help her clients come to believe that they are not alone, they belong, AND they inspire—they have the power to bring about change. She works with her clients to feel more connected, so that they take actions that improve their relationships and the world.
Kaitlin is deeply committed to providing socially just and anti-oppressive therapy. She really loves working with couples to improve their relationships and deepen intimacy, with other therapists and healers, as well as entrepreneurs and other business owners. Kaitlin finds true enjoyment in cuddling with animals, a just-right temperature cup of tea, feeling the sun on her face, and dancing in supermarket aisles.
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