Getting the Most out of a Couples Counseling
Start with an honest consideration of what your goals for the couples counseling are. Consider whether the core of your goal more involves change in your relationship with your partner, or more change in your partner. As you imagine participating in a first session with a new couples counselor, do you imagine yourself talking more about the relationship, or more about your partner?
Ch-ch-ch-Changes
If your primary goal is change in your partner, I suggest that the chances you will have a satisfying couples counseling experience are pretty low. Typically, when attention in a couples session centers on areas of desired change in the partner, the partner responds in one of three ways: 1) defending themselves, 2) bringing attention to corresponding perceived deficits in the first partner, or 3) shutting down. Partners never enjoy any of these patterns and, unless the couples counseling shifts pretty soon, there is the risk that couples counseling will result in partners feeling worse rather than better.
Sometimes partners will tell me that their goal is “a safe place for each of us to share what irritates us about the other.” As you can imagine, I don’t take this as a good sign. It’s about impossible for me to imagine how a focus on what two people dislike about each other makes anybody feel better. Including the therapist.
Try This Instead
Rather, my advice for increasing the chances of a satisfying couples counseling experience is this: focus your desire for change on the relationship. And by “relationship” what I mean is: the pattern of interactions between the two of you.
Often partners will tell me their goal is to “improve communication.” This is a good start. The next step should be increasing awareness: what are the patterns of communication between two of you? Which patterns tend to make you both feel better? Feel worse? This is a crucial step.
In the next step, ways of altering the patterns that feel bad should be practiced. Almost certainly, the negative patterns will be characterized by a lack of intimacy, and the solution will involve deepening. Putting this in practice will NOT be easy: fears and hurts are going to emerge. There’s no way around it. Remember this: nothing of true value comes easily.
But the potential payoff is enormous. Healing comes from allowing your partner to love parts of you that you can’t love yourself. A good EFT therapist can help you take that risk.