What to Expect in Couples Therapy: A Guide to Your First Session

Coming to couples therapy can feel different from coming to therapy on your own.

You aren't only wondering what the therapist will think of you. You may be wondering what your partner will say. Whether the therapist will understand your side. Whether you'll be blamed for what has gone wrong. Or whether the session will simply become another place to have the same argument you've already had many times at home.

Those are understandable concerns.

At SoCal Narrative Therapy, we want the first session to begin somewhere different.

We aren't interested in deciding which person is the problem. We want to understand what has been happening to the relationship between you.

What Happens in Couples Counseling?

Most couples arrive with a story about what has gone wrong.

Often, they have been living with the difficulty long enough that each person has also developed explanations for why it keeps happening.

He doesn't listen.

She doesn't trust me.

He shuts down.

She criticizes everything I do.

Those conclusions make sense. When something happens repeatedly, we naturally try to explain it.

The difficulty is that eventually our explanations can begin determining what we see.

If I have become convinced that my partner doesn't care, I may start noticing every moment that confirms it and have a much harder time seeing anything that complicates that conclusion.

Couples therapy gives us a place to slow this process down.

We want to understand what has been happening between you without reducing either person to an explanation of who they are.

What Should I Expect in the First Couples Therapy Session?

We will want to hear from both of you.

We will want to know what brought you to therapy and what has been difficult. But we also want to know something that can easily get lost when a relationship is struggling:

Why does this relationship matter enough that you are here?

After all, the fact that something hurts often tells us something about what we value.

If you are devastated by the distance that has developed between you, what does that tell us about the closeness you want?

If an argument keeps hurting, what are you hoping your partner might understand?

If trust has been damaged, what does your response tell us about what trust means to you?

The first session isn't simply an assessment of everything that has gone wrong.

It is the beginning of discovering what the two of you might want to create together.

Will the Couples Therapist Take Sides?

This is one of the most common concerns people have about couples therapy.

Our job isn't to decide who wins.

But that doesn't mean couples therapy should make every action equivalent or suggest that both people are always equally responsible for everything that happens.

We take relationships seriously enough to believe that how we affect the people we love matters.

One of the ideas that shapes our work at SoCal is something we call Relational Accountability.

In simple terms, it means becoming more able to consider our lives and actions through the experience of the other person.

Instead of only asking:

“Why can't my partner understand what I am trying to say?”

we may also become curious about:

“What is it like for the person I love to experience me this way?”

That isn't about blame.

It's about creating the possibility for responsibility, understanding, and a different kind of relationship.

Is Couples Therapy About Learning to Communicate Better?

Sometimes couples tell us, “We need to learn how to communicate.”

Maybe.

But we're reluctant to assume that communication skills are the problem.

Most couples who come to see us already know how to communicate. They probably communicate quite effectively with coworkers, friends, children, and often with each other—until certain conversations begin.

That makes us curious.

What happens in those particular moments that makes it so difficult for the two of you to be the people you would rather be with one another?

Perhaps fear enters the conversation.

Perhaps one person begins protecting themselves from rejection while the other begins protecting themselves from criticism.

Perhaps an old hurt starts speaking louder than what is happening in the present.

Perhaps each person becomes so occupied with being understood that there is very little room left to understand.

If we simply teach a communication technique, we may never discover any of this.

We want to understand what gets in the way of the relationship you would rather have.

What Do We Talk About in Couples Therapy?

We talk about whatever has become important to your relationship.

But we don't want the problem to have the entire conversation.

If you tell us about an argument, we may want to understand what happened. We may also become interested in why something mattered enough to argue about.

If you tell us you've become distant, we will want to understand the distance. But we may also become curious about what each of you misses.

If trust has been broken, we will take the hurt seriously. We may also want to understand what trust has meant in this relationship and what would need to happen for something different to become possible.

This can gradually change the conversation from simply describing what is wrong to discovering what the two of you care about enough to want to protect, repair, or create.

You May Discover Things About Your Partner You Didn't Know

One of the things we hope can happen in couples therapy is surprisingly simple:

You become interesting to each other again.

Long relationships produce familiarity. Familiarity can be wonderful, but it can also create the illusion that we already know everything there is to know about the person beside us.

We begin anticipating their answers.

We know why they did what they did.

We know what they're going to say next.

Problems become particularly good at producing this kind of certainty.

Therapy can interrupt it.

A question your therapist asks your partner may lead them somewhere neither of you expected. You may hear a story you've never heard before. Something you've interpreted one way for years may suddenly look different when you understand what it meant to them.

We don't think the goal of a long relationship is to finally know everything about another person.

There should always be more to discover.

How Should We Prepare for Our First Couples Therapy Session?

You don't need to prepare an argument for why you're right.

You don't need to make a list of everything your partner needs to change.

And you don't need to agree beforehand about what the problem is.

There is one question that might be worth considering, though:

If couples therapy genuinely helped us, what would I hope became more possible between us?

You don't even need to have the same answer.

Your answers give us somewhere to begin.

How Long Does Couples Therapy Take?

There isn't a standard answer because there isn't a standard couple.

Some people come to therapy with a particular difficulty they want to address. Others discover that what brought them in is connected to experiences and patterns that deserve more time.

We don't believe therapy should continue simply because couples therapy is supposed to take a certain number of sessions.

An important part of our work is regularly asking whether the conversations we are having are making a difference in your life together.

What Is Couples Therapy Like at SoCal Narrative Therapy?

We don't have a model for the kind of relationship you are supposed to have.

We're much more interested in discovering the kind of relationship the two of you want to have.

That means we want to understand what matters to each of you, what has gotten in the way, what your relationship has already survived, and what each of you wants to become more able to offer the other.

Sometimes that means taking responsibility.

Sometimes it means hearing something differently.

Sometimes it means recovering parts of the relationship that have been obscured by years of difficulty.

And sometimes it means discovering possibilities neither person knew existed before the conversation began.

That's what we want couples therapy to make possible.

Not teaching you how a relationship is supposed to work, but helping you discover how you want yours to work.