Is couples therapy going to save my relationship?

The honest answer: Whilst couples therapy can help your relationship, you cannot lean in too much on the idea that it will "save" your relationship. Whilst one can hope that it does (there's no problem in hoping), it is important to be realistic of the various factors and complexities of relationship and power of therapy. Unfortunately, couples therapy is not a magic wand that can put a spell or magic dust on your relationship to save it or "fix it".

Some more truth about the potential of couples therapy, in regards to what it can't do:

• It can’t force someone to change if they’re not willing. Not even a therapist (yes, really) can change someone. That is just not how powerful a therapist is.

• It won’t erase deep incompatibility, abuse, or betrayal by itself. This requires real intentional work in therapy.

• It doesn’t "fix" a relationship without effort and work outside of the therapy sessions. It is not only about the 50 minutes a week you spend with your couples therapist, but also about what you do outside of it. Couples therapy isn't day care where you drop off your partner or your issues and hope that they're looked after and fixed.

However, there is some magic about couples therapy (not the magic wand type of magic). Here is what it can do:

• Help clarify what it really happening in your relationship. It can support both you and your partner to recognise and see the real issues underneath the surface. As we say, it's not about the dishes (arguments), it is about what's underneath the dishes (core pain, emotional patterns, unmet needs, unresolved resentment, personal histories, trauma).

• Improve communication in the relationship. Your couples therapist can help you learn to listen without defensiveness, attack or shutting down, and express your needs, fears and desire in ways that your partner can truly hear you. Couples therapy is a great place to improve communication skills. Communication IS the cornerstone of a healthy, functional and fulfilling relationship.

• Interrupt toxic, dysfunctional cycles. Sometimes we get stuck in toxic cycles with our partners - loops such as blame, stonewalling, escalation. Couples therapy can help you slow these cycles down, disrupt them so you can form better and healthier cycles that teach you how to repair. The first step is always to see the toxic cycle.

• Encourage and foster vulnerability in your relationship. Couples therapy can sometimes be the only place in which people feel safe enough to express all that is unresolved and built up - longing, fear, resentment, pain and hurt - these are things many couples don't know how to sit with or what to do about them.

• Support and encourage mindful decisions about your relationship. Couples therapy isn't there to keep you together or to separate you. Instead, it helps you make that decision from a place of awareness, groundedness and clarity, rather than reactivity and impulsivity.

Couples therapy can be a space for safety and vulnerability. It might not save the relationship, but it can work some other kinds of magic.

So, whether couples therapy can save your relationship perhaps isn't the right question to ask. Try looking at it this way...

Is couples therapy a space I am willing to go to?

Is couples therapy a place I am willing to show up and try, even imperfectly?

Do I have enough openness, trust and hope to rebuild and reinvent my relationship?

Do I think my relationship is too hurt or broken, and far from repairable?

Am I willing to be vulnerable in couples therapy?

Do I have enough openness in me to see what the art of possible is in my relationship?

Am I willing to do the work?

Sometimes, even if the therapy does not effect an outcome where the relationship continues, it can effect an outcome where you get closer to yourself, and aligned with all that that is true to you. It can bring you to you, instead of bring you closer to your partner.