Why go to Couples Therapy?
Couples therapy is a form of psychotherapy that aims to improve the relationship between partners. It can help address various topics like communication, life transitions, infidelity, finances, etc. Let’s talk about how couples therapy can help when it comes to having healthy relationships.
* Disclaimer: this blog talks about relationships with two partners but please note that this can also be applied to polygamous relationships.
Why Therapy for Couples is Important
Benefits and Insights
Maintaining a healthy and fulfilling relationship takes time, effort, and patience. However, even the strongest couples can face challenges requiring outside help. That's where therapy for couples comes in. Couples therapy is a form of counseling that can help couples overcome challenges, improve communication, and strengthen their bond. It can offer perspective as there’s a neutral party (i.e. counselor/therapist) that can show both parties a fuller picture on any given situation. Oftentimes when we’re upset in the relationship, it’s harder to see the other person’s perspective and therapy can help us slow down so we can see all perspectives.
Improved Communication
One of the most common issues that couples face is communication problems. Therapy can help couples learn to communicate more effectively, express their emotions, and understand each other's perspectives. There are levels to communication: what we say out loud and what we don’t say out loud. What we say out loud is only the surface level and therapy can help us dig a little deeper to get to what we don’t say out loud to each other.
As a therapist, I’ve seen many instances where couples will argue over who does the dishes or a particular chore but that’s only the surface level. The deeper conversation requires vulnerability to say ‘I feel disrespected’ or ‘I don’t feel valued’ when the dishes or any other chore is not done. Vulnerability requires courage and a therapist can help create a space that feels safe for both parties to share what’s not said so they can better communicate moving forward.
Conflict Resolution
Conflict is a natural part of any relationship. However, therapy can help couples learn how to resolve conflicts healthily and constructively. This can prevent conflicts from escalating into more severe issues.
Therapy can offer some guidelines on how to argue in a manner that’s fair to both parties. It can also allow couples to explore how they view conflict. For instance, does one person see conflict as a ‘bad’ thing while the other thinks it’s required to move forward? In that case, you have one wanting to avoid the conflict and another wanting to resolve it immediately.
When we feel heated, it’s hard to have these conversations but couples therapy can be that space to figure out how we get to a place where we ‘fight fair.’
Increased Intimacy
Intimacy is an essential aspect of any romantic relationship. Therapy can help couples develop deeper emotional connections, improve their physical intimacy, and enhance their overall satisfaction with the relationship.
Intimacy is not just physical. In most relationships, when we have emotional intimacy, physical intimacy follows. To have emotional intimacy requires the couple to have deeper conversations, openly communicate and take risks in sharing more than they normally would with others.
This doesn’t always come naturally for everyone and it’s important to figure out how important both physical and emotional intimacy is to one other. One partner might want more physical intimacy but the other partner might feel like they don’t have emotional intimacy which would get them to having more physical intimacy.
Therapists can be that neutral person in those circumstances to have these difficult conversations to get to a place where both parties feel their needs are being met and their voice is being heard.
Increased Self-Awareness
Therapy can also help couples gain insights into their own behavior, emotions, and needs. This can help them identify patterns that may be affecting the relationship and make positive changes.
Self-Awareness is key to our growth as it helps us self manage and self regulate. However, if we’re having conflicts in our relationships, it’s easy to point the finger towards the other person on their shortcomings. This only breeds resentment and leads to more conflict.
Couples therapy can allow us to see our part in our relationship without judgment, blame or shame. It allows us to self reflect on how we show up in the relationship and be better moving forward.
Strengthened Bond
Therapy for couples can help strengthen the bond between partners. Couples can build trust, resilience, and a deeper understanding of each other by working through challenges together.
When we are able to move through conflicts or challenges, it empowers us and makes us stronger together. It allows us to create a safe space to have difficult conversations in the future which build deeper connections with our partner.
When we’re struggling in our relationships, it can feel like we’re ‘failing’ if we have to seek therapy but that’s far from the truth. When we have conflict at work, we often reach out for support to mediate that conflict. Couples therapy works the same way. It’s important to have a neutral person holding the ‘middle’ space so that we can move forward in a way that feels healthy and more connected.
