Do We Need Couples Therapy? Find Expert's Opinion

Read Time:5 Minute, 38 Second

Do we need couples therapy? When do we need couples therapy?

When is it necessary and when can you “do it yourself”?

These are difficult questions to answer unequivocally. There are always many different factors that come into play in any individual situation. To give a qualified answer for you and your relationship, I would need to know more about you.

But because I’ve gotten a lot of questions about it, both from clients and from all of you who received my email course on love and relationships, I’d like to do what I can to help you get a little more clarity on whether you might need couples therapy as a good next step for you.

You Might Need Couples Therapy If:

You’re arguing/discussing/having the same conversations about the same topics and you don’t find talking about it helpful. You know, those conversations where you can almost predict in advance what one of you will say and what the other will say and it ends in an argument or silence.

There can be several degrees of this, but if you’re at the point where you both almost can’t or don’t dare to engage in those conversations because you just know it’s going to end up in an even worse place than it already is, it’s worth working on talking in a different way.

It’s hard to find each other again when you’ve lost touch in misunderstandings or arguments. If you have too long periods of silence and distance. It can be “just” a few hours. It’s too much if it happens too often. If it’s several days of distance and rejection, I would recommend you get help to change that pattern. It wears on trust and love too much in the long run.

You drag old situations into new conversations. It could be about your relationship and behavior towards your in-laws/family, old infidelity that keeps coming up even though you’ve agreed to move on, or specific situations where one of you has felt betrayed or misunderstood and not recognized. If you’re there, it’s a really good investment to get help to work it out in a calm way.

Otherwise, it will continue to weigh on you forever.

You often feel so attacked by the other person that you resort to attacking back immediately. Or you feel the need to defend yourself vigorously against your partner’s accusations and attacks. So strongly that your defense very quickly resembles an attack. Even if you really try not to.

There are things/topics/conversations you stop bringing up because you’re afraid of your partner’s reaction to it. Will she get angry? Does he even hear it or does he not care? Will I be rejected?

You realize that your confidentiality is starting to go elsewhere. You no longer share things that are important to you with your partner, but start taking them to other relationships.

Too many times you’ve thought “We just need a vacation / just get over the extra workload / just take care of the kids and go on a weekend trip / just…. it’ll be better….” and it hasn’t had the effect you were hoping for.

And now you might be thinking “It’ll get better when the kids get a bit older”. It rarely does if you do nothing along the way. It will get better if you do something now.

You’ve started to question whether “it’s just you” who is too demanding / touchy / hysterical / has too many needs / has too many emotions / wants too much, and you’ve started to turn yourself down or shut down parts of you because it feels like they can’t or must not be there if things are to work between you.

You’ve come to see your partner as the “bad guy”. That all the fault and responsibility lies with him/her. That he/she is the one who needs to change his/her behavior in order for you to get better. It’s a stuck perspective to be in. A relationship’s challenges are never just one person’s fault or responsibility, and never just one person’s job to fix. If you’ve gotten stuck looking at each other, you need to unlock them if you’re going to meet and move forward.

You have doubts about your feelings. Are they there? Have they just been tucked away during all the arguments and can be found again? Or are they on their way out?

You start to orient yourself out of the relationship. If you’re a little too flattered for your own taste, by your coworker’s interest, your bike buddy’s compliments, the guy who bought you a drink at the bar and who you suddenly find yourself looking for on Facebook.

You withdraw from closeness and intimacy. Physically and/or mentally and emotionally. It feels awkward and uncomfortable to be close and intimate and you reject your partner’s invitations. Or you find your partner rejecting your invitations.

You may feel like you’re about to give up and lose hope, and have thoughts like “Is this it? Is this how it’s supposed to be?” or “This is probably just the way it is. Our friends aren’t having a great time either” or “Are we right for each other when we feel like this?”

If your partner suggests couples therapy. This is an important sign that there’s something between you that needs to be adjusted. Otherwise, your partner wouldn’t suggest it. If it goes on too long with one of you wanting to work on your relationship together and the other of you hesitating and rejecting, something can die down too much in the first party and you can become too displaced in your positions and experiences of your relationship for you to meet in it again.

So if your partner suggests couples therapy, take it as a huge declaration of love and invitation forelskelse og kærlighed – and go for it.

You miss your partner. Miss feeling connected to him/her. Missing the two of you. But don’t know how to get closer to each other.

One Way To Go

Couples therapy can be helpful for those of you who have no doubt about your love for each other and “just” feel that a lot of hassle is overshadowing it. And for those of you where one or both of you have doubts about your loving feelings, whether you can solve it and whether there is a way for you to walk together.

You don’t have to recognize all the points before couples therapy can be relevant. If you find yourself affected or otherwise impacted by reading through the list, just know that there are options ahead. There is help available. It is possible to create new and more constructive ways forward – together. Lovingly and caringly.