While every couple will have specific goals or issues they’re looking to work on, the objective of the therapist is to facilitate communication, honesty, and healing between them.
“A therapist knows how to help couples get to the real trouble [at the heart of the issue] and can teach skills or appropriate referrals to help them through it,” marriage therapist Linda Carroll M.S., LMFT, explains. Those skills include honesty, how to express emotional needs, and how to settle disagreements, for example.
“Couples often come to get help with attachment injuries, growing apart, wanting more sexual connection, and needing to relate to one another differently,” licensed marriage and family therapist Lexx Brown-James, Ph.D., LMFT, tells mbg.
“The main issue people always come in for is communication; I don’t find that to be necessarily true, though,” she adds. “A lot of the time, people understand what the other is saying; they’re just not honest in what they are communicating.”
If you are considering couples counseling for the first time, you may be wondering what to expect from the first session.
You might think, “What will it be like?” or “Will I be antagonized by the therapist or my spouse?” You also may be skeptical of therapy even working for your relationship. A lot of fears and stigmas that stem from the idea of couples counseling are often put to rest after a couple attends their first therapy session.
You Will Meet Together as a Couple
When you meet the therapist for your first session, you and your partner will meet the therapist together (rather than individually). Most of your sessions will be together, apart from one or two individual sessions. The purpose of the individual session is for the therapist to receive some background and history on each of you separately and give the counselor a chance to be more understanding to each of your specific needs.
After that initial session together, you may have one (maybe a second) individual session, and for the rest of your sessions, you and your partner will be working together on your relationship issues. The first session will set the stage for what you can expect during future sessions, and will prepare an environment where you and your partner can be encouraged to express your feelings and past experiences together.
Address History of Relationship Distress
During the first session, expect to discuss the history of your relationship distress. The therapist will want to know the main problems you are experiencing, and what causes most of your stress within the relationship.
Some aspects of relationship stress that may be discussed include parenting conflicts, intimacy issues, and communication issues (or other types of distress). It is essential to be open and honest about your relationship history with your therapist because it is the basis for setting goals in counseling. Once the significant issues of your relationship are highlighted, you will all work together to find ways to improve those areas of distress within your relationship.
Goals Setting
Goal setting is very important to understand when it comes to therapy. As you attend your first session, you will set goals for the relationship. The goals you set will help you and your partner to experience more positive interactions and connectedness.
What if you don’t really know what your goals should be? It’s okay – it’s the first session. If you are unsure of where to start with goals, your therapist can help you to set your first goals.
Contrarily, if you know what goals you want to work on together, that can be a great start. Based off your relationship history, you and your partner can determine goals to propose to your therapist. Either way, your therapist will be there to guide you and your partner to a place of peace and connectivity.
What if Our Goals are Different?
Every person that goes to counseling has different goals, which means you and your partner may have different perspectives. You could be going into counseling hopeful that the relationship is worth fighting for, while your partner is not so sure. This could make your initial goals a bit different from each other.
Despite differing perspectives shared during the first session, it doesn’t mean that the relationship is doomed. Both of you can still work together with the therapist to find healing and improvement for your relationship. The overall goal is to achieve confidence in yourselves individually, and as a couple to move forward in the relationship.
To be successful in couples therapy, you must find balance when working on relationship issues with your partner. Whether you choose to part ways or work through your relationship issues, the therapist will determine a treatment plan that fits your needs, promoting healing and positivity (regardless of the outcome).
You Should Feel Understood
Having a good connection with your therapist is vital if you want to have productive counseling. Your therapist should display empathy and understanding toward both of you during your sessions.
For example, if you are expressing concerns with your therapist, you should feel that you are being taken seriously. Confidence in your therapist will leave you feeling relieved and comforted by the fact that you feel understood during therapy.
If not, you will likely not trust the therapist, leading to doubts and distress in therapy (and your relationship).
Feeling understood is more than just being taken seriously. Your therapist should create an environment for you and your partner to openly express your feelings and concerns. You should be encouraged and motivated to achieve your goals, and overtime feel confident that reaching those goals is possible.
Fear of Incompatibility or Divorce
Many people fear that relationship counseling will lead to a therapist encouraging you and your partner to split up – that is not the case.
Counseling is meant to promote healing, not separation. A therapist is not to express whether they think you are compatible or if divorce is in order. Their role is strictly to walk you through the struggles of your relationship by teaching you how to handle your differences, achieve effective communication, and cope with your relationship issues together.
The decision to separate or stay together is entirely up to you and your partner.
Be Vulnerable
Being vulnerable is essential to success in therapy. Vulnerability is allowing yourself to talk about the pain, embarrassment, and insecurities you struggle with in your relationship.
Naturally, you may tend to withhold information at the beginning of your session because your therapist needs to earn your trust. When you start to feel comfortable enough to show some vulnerability, you will receive much better outcomes during therapy.
If you plan on setting and achieving any goals during your time in counseling, you should make it a goal to build a trusting relationship with your therapist in order to feel comfortable expressing your weaknesses.
Clearly, there are a lot of thoughts and concerns that will cross your mind when you try couples counseling for the first time, and that is all completely understandable. Building trust with a therapist can take a long time, as well as healing your relationship. The best way to approach your first few sessions of couples counseling is to go in with an open mind, and be honest with yourself, your partner, and your therapist.
According to Dr. John Gottman, couples wait an average of six years before they make the decision to seek out couples therapy. That’s six long years of beating your heads against the wall hoping for a different outcome. That’s also more than enough time to have cultivated some ineffective and even downright unhelpful communication habits.
The Misconception of Couples Therapy
Many couples assume that if they should be able to work through the rough patches on their own without the need for outside help. Other couples experience guilt and shame about finding themselves in the position of needing couples therapy. They tell themselves they just aren’t good at communication. They say that they shouldn’t be having conflict if they really love each other. None of those assumptions are helpful. Even more importantly, none of them are true.
As a couple, you should have conflict because you both aren’t the same person. You didn’t grow up in the same family of origin, have an experience of the same triggers, or hold the same expectations about life and relationships. That’s the perfect storm for conflict. It’s what you do when you find yourselves in conflict that says everything about the relationship moving forward.
The majority of communication problems come in the midst of conflict. You should be experiencing frustration and disagreement. You likely did not or could not model what to do when feeling defensive, shut down, or overwhelmed.
What Therapy is Really Like
I tell my clients that most of us did not take a couples communication class in high school. Couples therapy is where you go to learn how to be better partners. It’s not about blaming, finding fault, or laying down criticism.
Couples therapy is about helping you to learn and practice the tools that help you achieve a better relationship. Couples therapists also work to remove the idea that being in conflict is bad or that you are doing something wrong because you disagree. Your therapist can figure out where you experience stumbling blocks in your approach to conflict and how you deal with your physiological responses. They can also evaluate your repair attempts after conflict.
What is My Therapist Assessing For?
When therapists refer to assessment, they need a chance to enter your world and spend some time understanding how you interact with each other and where the pain points are. Assessment for a couples therapist is two-pronged. It involves the therapist identifying each of your respective personalities, needs, and what triggers you. It involves understanding how these layers impact you as a couple when you come together. A therapist is a neutral party. So it’s also important for them to evaluate the dynamics created as each of you works to have your needs met in the relationship. The therapist uses assessment to get a sense of unhelpful behaviors.
The Oral History: Telling ‘The Story of Us’
Gottman Method-trained therapists conduct a structured and thorough assessment of the couples they work with. In the first session, you will meet with your therapist and convey an oral history of the relationship. You will talk about a number of things like how you met, memories of dating, experiences becoming parents (if applicable), and each of your subjective realities about the difficulties and successes you have experienced as a couple. This time together helps the therapist start to understand the journey that you’ve been on together prior to coming to therapy.
Typically the therapist will ask you to talk about a topic in your relationship that has been difficult to resolve. While this might feel uncomfortable to do in front of someone who is essentially a stranger, this step is important. It allows a Gottman Method-trained therapist to identify which of the core skills you may need to learn or fine-tune. Most couples who can demonstrate patterns of conflict (which we typically refer to as The Four Horsemen) are better supported in couples therapy. Unproductive patterns are often at the root of feelings of being misunderstood and emotionally disconnected.
The next part of the process will involve your therapist assigning you to complete an online survey called GottmanConnect. This is individual (no cheating or looking at your partner’s paper). It will cover in-depth questions that provide an additional history that is important to help the therapist evaluate your current relationship status.
Vent Sessions
You will each have an individual session with the therapist without your partner present. The point of this session is not to keep secrets from each other. It gives each of you space to talk to the therapist without having to filter it for your partner. I lovingly call these individual sessions the “vent session” in my practice.
Therapists know you love your partner. However, there needs to be time to talk to the therapist one-on-one to share your worries and hopes for what therapy can accomplish. This is also a time for you to build your own relationship with the therapist so you can feel secure that they understand you and will be your advocate during the course of your work together.
The Evaluation and Treatment Plan
When you come back together in the fourth session, the therapist will present their assessment of the strengths (because all couples have them) and areas of growth. This evaluation is not meant to make you feel embarrassed or worried about your relationship status. The relationship assessment session is a way to let the therapist present their treatment plan or road map about the goals they have for you. A treatment plan will have measurable steps that you can refer back to as you learn and implement new tools and behaviors.
A Final Thought on Assessments
Taking the first few sessions to share in assessment sessions may initially feel like a waste of time or energy when you are in pain and want to jump into the “work.” However, the pay-off is worth it.
The Gottman Method helps you feel confident that your therapist understands the dynamics of your relationship. When a therapist recommends the use of a Gottman intervention or tool, you know your therapist chose it because they are thinking about who you are as a couple and how it will be beneficial.
Making the initial investment of being open and vulnerable with the assessment process can create the groundwork for a more positive and long-lasting outcome to couples therapy. So, find a Gottman Method-trained therapist in your area and get started on the relationship you always wanted.
Are you currently looking for a Certified Gottman Couples Therapist to use research-based approaches to help your relationship? The Gottman Institute is seeking couples to participate in an international outcome study on Gottman Method Couples Therapy. Learn more here.
