Help! My Partner Won't Go To Couples Therapy
If you’re having a hard time getting your partner to go to couples therapy, you’re not alone. In many of the couples we see at Colorado Therapy Collective, one or both partners initially had some reluctance about going to couples therapy. While this can be frustrating, often there is a positive intention behind the reluctance - people don’t want their relationships to get worse, or are worried that couples therapy will only focus on the bad in the relationship. The relationship is important to them, so this is understandably a scary prospect.
However, good couples therapy will ultimately strengthen a relationship, so here are some strategies to get your partner to give couples therapy a try.
1. Bring up couples counseling outside of conflict
Often couples therapy is brought up in the heat of an argument. This makes sense since likely one or both partners are in distress and feeling desperate for help. However, if you have only brought up the prospect of couples therapy in moments of distress, your partner may not realize that you are serious about it, and may also think that once the fight has past, the desire for couples therapy has also past. By finding a time when you are connected to your partner to bring up the topic, you can let your partner know that this is something that is important to you even when you are in a more regulated state, not just when you’re upset or something is going wrong.
2. Focus on your longings, not your complaints
Something we often say at CTC is that complaint and longing are two sides of the same coin. If we have a complaint about something, we also have a longing for something to be different. For example, if I complain about my partner working long hours, there is likely a longing there to spend more time with him/her/them. When you are approaching your partner about your desire to get help from a couples counselor, focus on the longing instead of the complaint.
For example, rather than saying “You’re so distant these days,”
Try: “I miss feeling as close to you as I felt before we had kids, and I want to get back to that closeness.”
Instead of, “You never want to have sex anymore,”
Try: “I love being intimate with you and want to figure out how we can keep that connection alive.”
3. Invite them to share their concerns / fears about couples therapy
It’s easy to fall into a trap of countering / responding when your partner seems resistant to the idea of couples therapy. Maybe you find yourself thinking, “They’re just finding any reason they can not to go.” This can set up a dynamic in which it feels like one of you will “win” the battle over whether to go to couples therapy, and one of you will “lose.” Instead, if your partner expresses reservations about couples therapy, see if you can really listen and get curious about their reservations / fears. Try to validate the ways that these fears make sense before trying to counter them.
For example:
Reservation: “Couples therapy is expensive. We can’t afford to go.”
Validating response: “You’re right, it’s a significant investment and it makes sense that we would need to really think about how it fits into our budget.”
Reservation: “John’s wife asked to go to couples therapy and told him she wanted a divorce two months later. It seems like it might just make things worse.”
Validating Response: I totally get that it would be scary to start a process that you’ve seen not work out for a good friend the way he wanted it to.
4. Research to find a quality couples therapist
I wish it weren’t true, but unfortunately many of the couples we see at CTC have had some type of negative experience with a “couples” therapist prior to working with us. The truth is that not all therapists have sufficient training and experience to work effectively with couples. At Colorado Therapy Collective, all our therapists have extensive training in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT), an evidence-based couples therapy with decades of research demonstrating its efficacy. If you’ve gone to all the trouble of getting your partner to try couples therapy, you don’t want to work with someone that doesn’t know what they’re doing - this can just reinforce the belief that couples therapy doesn’t work, or will do more harm than good.
5. Do a consultation together
Most couples therapists will offer a complimentary consultation for potential clients. Inviting your reluctant partner to join for a consultation is a low stakes way for them to explore the idea and ask any questions that they may have. Meeting an actual, warm, and down to earth therapist can help make the idea less abstract and scary.
6. Go to a couples therapist yourself
If you have tried the above tips and your spouse / partner still is reluctant to join you at couples therapy, you can go by yourself. This may seem odd, but a skilled couples therapist like those at CTC can help you explore your own contributions to the negative patterns in your relationship, and help you begin to shift the pieces that you have control over. This alone can improve your relationship. It also often is the nudge that partners need to get involved. If your partner sees that you are willing to do the work to improve the relationship and are willing to own your contributions, they will likely be more willing to participate.
To schedule a no-pressure consultation with one of the skilled Denver couples therapists at Colorado Therapy Collective, give us a call at 720-204-8589, or easily schedule online here. You’re just a conversation away from compassionate and expert relationship help.