Couples Therapy

Support for couples who feel stuck

All close and long-term relationships have their ups and downs. Most of us change subtly (sometimes less so) over time. External pressures and challenging life events can mean that the ‘task’ of nurturing the relationship with our partner comes low on the long list of priorities.

For some couples, the result is distance and disconnection. For others, it’s conflict and chaos. Either way, we can find ourselves in a relationship that feels a million miles away from the closeness, intimacy, ease and trust we started out with. We can find ourselves thinking: “how on earth did we get here?”

Couples therapy provides a safe, supportive and constructively challenging space for you and your partner to find answers to that question and, importantly, find a new way forward.

Couples come to us for all kinds of reasons. Some are navigating a specific crisis such as a big life transition or an affair. Others have simply noticed a slow drift apart – the gradual loss of connection that’s hard to pinpoint but impossible to ignore.

Couples therapy offers you the opportunity to step back from the day-to-day of your relationship to get a new perspective and really understand what’s going on between you.

Sessions are designed around you as a couple. Depending on your individual situation and goals, couples therapy can involve:

• Working through disappointment, conflict and blame
• Understanding and changing the unhelpful behaviours that keep you stuck
• Successfully negotiating life stages and transitions from the arrival of babies to empty nests, menopause, loss and retirement
• Exploring the impact of childhood experiences on our adult relationships, including self-esteem, recurring patterns of relating and communication styles
• Learning how to identify and communicate your needs while learning to understand the needs of your partner
  

We offer support around a range of issues

Respect and recognition

Many couples experience problems when one or both partners don't feel respected or recognised for what they do.   Over time, resentment slowly but surely builds which, if left unaddressed, can cause either recurring arguments or a massive disconnect.

Care and closeness

Over time, relationships can become operational and transactional.   The daily challenges of work, raising children or caring for elderly parents can make it feel like there's nothing left in the tank to invest in your relationship.   The resulting slow drift apart negatively impacts our ability to connect emotionally and physically leaving us feeling rejected, lonely or taken for granted. 

Resetting how you communicate

Couples counselling offers a unique real-time opportunity for you to explore how you are actually speaking to each other.  Often we learn that what's been heard isn't the same as what's been said.  When a relationship breaks down, we can experience 'negative sentiment overdrive' where we assume our partner is about to criticise or belittle us.   This means we can both become defensive and conversations are likely to quickly escalate in to familiar but ultimately destructive rows.

Challenging life events

A bereavement, difficult pregnancy or fertility struggle, children leaving home, retirement, a career crisis or financial strain can test even the strongest relationship.   Couples often find they deal with serious life challenges in very different ways which can lead to one or both feeling lonely, frustrated or sad.

Attachment styles and patterns of relating

Helping you both gain insight in to how your childhood experiences can unconsciously influence how you relate to you partner and keep you stuck in unhelpful or unsatisfactory patterns.  Couples therapy provides a safe but constructively challenging space in which you can begin to recognise, understand and change unhelpful patterns. 

Identifying and articulating your needs

Often we find it hard to identify our needs let alone communicate them to our partners.  Sometimes we think our partners 'shouldn't need to be told' but this stance assumes a degree of mind-reading that simply doesn't exist.  Couples counselling can help you understand what it is you really need from each other and learn how to communicate this in healthy and productive ways.   

Couples therapy provides you and your partner with the time and space to pause, take step back and explore what's really going on between you.

When you come to couples therapy at Effective Psychology, you come together as individuals each with your own experience of what has gone wrong.

We work with both of those experiences at once. Not to decide who is right and who is wrong, but to help you understand how your partner is really feeling.   

Sessions offer you a safe space for honest conversations about your patterns of relating, what you're avoiding, what you want, and the 'positions' you both take when feeling emotionally under threat.

While it can feel uncomfortable at first to say out loud the things you've been avoiding saying, it can also be very healing - when this happens, things begin to shift and positive change becomes possible.   

All adult relationships are 'co-created' and couples therapy will help you understand what you and your partner are doing (often unconsciously) that's keeping you stuck.

You'll gain deeper insight into how you think, feel and behave so that you can break the cycle and handle conflict in healthier, more productive ways. 

The ability to have the conversations you've been avoiding and somewhere safe enough to say them.

A better understanding of each other. What the other person actually needs, rather than what you've each been assuming.

How our support works

Getting started is easy and straightforward. Here's how the process works. 

01   Your First Session

Your first session lasts ninety minutes to give you both plenty of time to explore what's troubling you.   We'll also look at goals for therapy - this could be anything from learning to communicate better to finding a way to separate amicably. 

The aim is to begin understanding the relationship as it is now, without rushing either of you.

02   Ongoing Sessions

We usually suggest beginning with six sessions before reviewing how the work is progressing.



Weekly sessions suit many couples, although fortnightly sessions can also work well where that feels more manageable.

03  Individual Support

Sometimes it becomes clear that one or both of you would benefit from individual therapy alongside the couples work.



This is not something every couple needs. Where it is appropriate and possible, it can give each person more space to understand their own experience and strengthen the work you are doing together.

04  Review

After six sessions, we'll review how you're both feeling, see what's changed, what still feels difficult, and what you both want from the next stage.

Some couples feel they have made the progress they needed. Others decide there is more they want to understand or work through. Whatever you decide, we are here to support you in making the choice that feels right for both of you.