Why couples therapy is worth it
Our journey into couples therapy and how it’s fundamentally changed our relationship.
It’s taken me quite a long time to gather my thoughts on this topic (especially as I kept learning more and more each month), but finally I managed to wrap it up! I’m going to start the new year by talking about the most impactful thing that Justin and I did in 2022: couples therapy.
I’ve always thought that Justin and I were pretty good at working through challenges in our relationship - navigating long distance, residency, and wedding planning. But this year, 8 years into our relationship, our ways of resolving arguments stopped working. What would start as an innocent question about the other’s plans for the week would end with Justin frustrated that I kept prioritizing frisbee and friends above him and me resentful that I couldn’t do the things that I wanted to without his blessing. We simply couldn’t agree on how much time to spend together. For months, we were at a stalemate. I was at a complete loss for what to do, and to be honest, I couldn’t help but wonder — if we’re already running into issues 1 year into marriage, how are we going to make this thing work for the next 50 years?
Discovering couples therapy
Couples therapy had never really been on my radar before. It’s not that I didn’t support the idea for other people. It’s just that with the high costs, the challenge of finding a good match, and the fact that we could usually resolve our issues on our own, I’d never thought about looking into it.
That was until one day when a friend of mine couldn’t stop talking about it. She and her partner had been married for 7 years and thought they knew their relationship inside and out. Yet with couples therapy, they were learning new things about themselves and each other. She walked me through the concepts they learned, the flow of their conversations, the small things their therapist would notice. It was the single best thing they had done for their relationship in years.
I will be honest though, even with this glowing review, I still hesitated. We’d both never spent a penny on mental health and were largely fine - would it really make that big of a difference? It wasn’t until Justin persistently nudged me that I finally asked for her therapist’s info. We were not making any progress on our own. It was time to try something different.
Our first session
The two of us sat side by side on a bench, a laptop in front of us and our therapist on the screen. We had just spent 10 minutes getting him up to speed on our relationship, our big issue, and the details of our latest arguments, and were eagerly awaiting his answer.
But he gave us no such response. In fact, he firmly stated that there was no right number of hours to spend together. For the next hour, we didn’t talk at all about the issue we had just shared. Instead, we learn about a bunch of new relationship terminology. We learned how our “attachment styles” affect our arguments, how our “windows of tolerance” narrow when we get stressed, and how nitpicking the details when we fight is like being “in the courtroom” — and nothing good happens in the courtroom.
That first session was polite, safe, manageable. It felt like we were back in the classroom, learning new words and concepts with which to view the world. I wasn’t sure how learning these new words would solve our problem, but I was intrigued.
Discovering the power of feelings
The safety of the classroom feel did not last long. By session 2 or 3, we were forced to set aside our need to problem solve and instead dive into our feelings. And we weren’t going to stay at the surface. We were going in deep.
At one point, Justin was facing the screen, explaining to our therapist some details about our conflict and difficulties with scheduling when our therapist jumped in.
“But Justin, what is it you want to feel?”
He immediately started responding to the question, when our therapist politely interrupted him again.
“Instead of saying it to me, why don’t you turn and say it to Kelly?”
Justin paused, then turned to face me. And I finally heard what it was that he wanted.
“I want to feel like you’ve got my back, like I’m not alone.”
As we explored where this feeling came from, things felt so different. There was none of Justin’s usual strong voice, logical statements, or stone-faced expression that would appear during arguments. It was just him with his feelings laid bare, wanting a security that he wasn’t sure existed in our relationship. And suddenly I was crying because for the first time, I was able to step away from my own defensiveness and understand how he really feels.
We came out of those sessions feeling more connected than we had in a long time. And surprisingly, the conversations weren’t even about the amount of time we should spend together. By exploring and acknowledging our feelings, we were able to uncover even more fundamental needs that were not being met and then figure out how to address them.
You can’t change everything - and that’s a good thing
Justin and I have always prided ourselves in having a growth-mindset. When things go awry, we seek out solutions and put the onus on ourselves to improve. But therapy challenged this mindset.
Instead of talking about how to do better when we were stressed, we were given new words to characterize our stress responses. Instead of figuring out how to control our feelings of anger or frustration, we were taught to lean into these feelings and give them space to breathe. For the first time, we were told that not everything about ourselves is within our control and that it’s okay to accept that fact.
Because of therapy, the mental model with which we viewed ourselves and our relationship was breaking. And oddly enough, it was relieving. Suddenly, it became okay to be who we are, even when we’re at our worst. When Justin snips about disorder in the house after a long shift or when I hide on my phone after a long day, it no longer felt personal - it was just our anxious and avoidant stress responses peeking through. When you accept that these reactions are not in someone’s control, you no longer feel a need to blame them for their irrationality. Instead, it becomes so much easier to forgive and then find a path forward.
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It’s been 5 months since we first started couples therapy, and it’s completely upended the way we view ourselves and our relationship. Therapy has given us:
an appreciation of our feelings. While acknowledging your feelings can be scary and at times make it feel like your world is imploding, it’s actually critical to making things better. Avoiding your feelings is easy. Acknowledging them is the first step towards finding a true solution.
a new vocabulary that helps us better understand our dynamic. We have new words to define our stress behaviors, describe what we need from the other, and help us recognize when a stressful moment is happening in the first place. There is power in having the right language, and the words we’ve been given validate our experiences and make us feel normal.
a space to care for our relationship. Therapy forces us to pause and gives us a dedicated space to look at our relationship on a regular basis. Because of therapy, we talk about hard things more often, and that’s made it so much easier for us to work through other assumptions, hurt feelings, and frustration before they grow too large.
Through therapy, we have learned a whole new set of relationship tools. But the most important thing therapy has taught us is that no matter how much work you put in or tools you learn, you will still come across obstacles in the future. Not because something is wrong, but because relationships are a forever changing thing. Even in the past half year, we’ve encountered completely new situations that we’ve never dealt with before. But we’ve learned that there is no need to worry when we struggle. Change doesn’t have to be a bad thing. We just have to be brave and continue listen to each other’s feelings, learn from each other, and find a path forward together.