Why Couples Therapy Isn’t Just Individual Therapy with Two People in the Room

One of the things I’ve heard a few times over the years is people suggesting that couples therapy is just like doing individual therapy with two people in the room.

And that is absolutely not the case.

Of course, there may be elements of individual work that come into couples therapy, but that’s not our focus. We’re working with something quite different.

When I first started working with couples, I found this challenging myself. I struggled for quite a long time to find a way of working that really resonated with the couples I was seeing, and resonated with me as a therapist.

I’ve had what you might call the good, the bad and the ugly in my own journey with couples therapy!

Over time, I found an integrative way of working that has made a tremendous difference to my practice. It’s an approach based on differentiation, systemic family process and Gestalt, and really underpinned by strong relational practice.

And it’s this approach that I now teach through the Institute of Couples Therapy.

But I want to come back to something quite fundamental here, particularly for those of you who are working with individuals and perhaps thinking about moving into couples work.

What is actually different about working with couples?

Why this work matters so much

I think the impact couples therapy can have on a couple, and on a family, is tremendous.

I often say, and I don’t say it lightly, if the world ended tomorrow, who is the person you would most want to reach out to?

For most of us, it’s the person we are closest to. Our partner, our husband or wife, our child or close friend.

They’re the people we want to phone when we’ve got really good news, and the people we want to reach out to when we’ve had the worst news of our lives. The people we turn to for comfort, connection and support.

So when those relationships are struggling, it can make a tremendous difference to the quality of our lives.

And that, for me, is why good-quality couples therapy matters so much.

So, what are we actually doing differently?

Think for a minute about a couple coming into your therapy room.

You’ve two people sitting in front of you, often frustrated, often angry, sometimes really despairing. And they’re hoping that you, as the therapist, are somehow going to help them improve their relationship.

Where do you start?

Now, think about the work we do in individual therapy.

Obviously, there’s no one kind of individual client. People come to therapy with all sorts of difficulties and for all sorts of reasons.

But generally, in individual therapy, we’re working with the intrapersonal. We’re helping a person get to know themselves.

We’re supporting them in developing self-awareness, understanding their wounds, their pain, their trauma, and the experiences that have shaped them.

We might be exploring patterns that repeat, coping strategies that no longer serve them, or places where they feel stuck and unable to move forward.

As a humanistic psychotherapist myself, compassion, empathy, understanding, congruence and unconditional positive regard are all central to how I work.

We’re helping a person come back to themselves. To understand their feelings, their thoughts, what’s going on in their body, and to make sense of their own experiences.

That’s the intrapersonal. What’s happening within the person.

In couples therapy, the relationship is your client

Now, in couples therapy, you don’t have just one person. You have two.

And here’s the significant difference.

In couples therapy, the relationship is your client.

It’s not one partner. It’s not the other. It’s the relationship. That can be a difficult thing to get your head around. It certainly was for me when I started. Because you can’t actually see the relationship in the way you can see the two individuals sitting in front of you.

So how can the relationship be your client?

What we’re really working with is the relationship dynamic. What’s happening interpersonally between these two people. How they’re relating to one another, how they’re impacting one another, and what happens between them when difficulties arise.

That’s where our curiosity needs to focus.

Couples often come to therapy wanting to improve communication, improve connection, or find a way out of patterns they’ve become stuck in.

Very often, they’re trying to figure out how to navigate and negotiate differences between them. And quite often, each partner arrives thinking that if the other person would just do something differently, things would be okay.

If we approach this from an individual therapy lens, we might look at each person separately. What’s going on for this partner? What’s going on for the other?

And of course, understanding both individuals is important. But that doesn’t really take into account how they’re impacting one another.

One person’s behaviour impacts the other, which then has a return impact, and on it goes. It’s a co-created system.

And it’s that system we’re trying to understand.

It’s very easy to get drawn towards one partner

Something that’s really significant in couples therapy, and probably one of the most challenging things we do as couples therapists, is holding a neutral position.

Often, a couple will come into therapy and one partner’s behaviour is much more visibly problematic. They may be having angry outbursts, shutting down, withdrawing, or not being emotionally available in the way their partner is hoping for.

And it can be very easy, as the therapist, to get lured into thinking, “Well, that’s the problematic partner.”

Now, from one perspective, their behaviour may well be more problematic.

But in couples therapy, we’re also taking a systemic process lens.

We’re asking: How do these two people fit together?

If one partner isn’t emotionally available, how is the other partner manoeuvring around that?

Do they become angry? Do they shut down themselves? Do they collapse? Do they try harder and harder to reach their partner? Or are they able to say, “There’s a real issue here. I’m trying to reach you and I can’t. What’s going on?”

We’re trying to understand what’s happening between them.

And that’s a very different way of looking at the difficulty.

It doesn’t mean we’re ignoring problematic behaviour or that each partner has equal responsibility for everything that’s happening. But rather than getting caught up in who’s right and who’s wrong, we’re trying to understand the process that’s keeping the couple stuck.

That takes practice. It takes a lot of curiosity, and it takes an ability to notice our own responses as therapists.

The relationship dynamic comes into the room with them

There’s one more difference that I think is particularly important.

In individual therapy, a client may come in and tell you about something that happened yesterday.

Perhaps they were angry with their partner, upset with a family member, or struggling with a situation at work. They’re telling you about something that happened outside the room. They’re talking about it from a distance.

But in couples therapy, something quite different can happen.

You can actually watch the relationship process play out right in front of you.

You may see one partner become frustrated, the other withdraw, the first become more frustrated, and the second withdraw even further. The very thing they’re coming to therapy to get help with is happening there, in the room, with you.

And that’s incredibly valuable information for us as therapists.

We’re no longer only hearing about the difficulty. We have an opportunity to observe it, to understand it, and to help the couple begin to recognise what’s happening between them.

For me, that’s one of the really interesting and rewarding aspects of couples work. It also asks something quite different of us as therapists.

We need to learn to look beyond the individual stories, stay curious about the process, and hold both partners in the work.

A different way of seeing the relationship

I set up the Institute of Couples Therapy because I was seeing a real demand from two sides: couples looking for good-quality support, and therapists looking for professional, practical training in how to work with couples.

My own experience of struggling to find an approach that worked well for me has very much shaped how I now train therapists.

I know how challenging this work can be, particularly when you’re coming from an individual therapy background.

But I also know how rewarding it can be when you begin to understand the relationship as a system, rather than seeing two separate individuals sitting in front of you.

And I think that’s a really important starting point for anyone considering couples work.

Because couples therapy isn’t simply individual therapy with two people in the room.

It asks us to develop a different lens, a different understanding of what’s happening, and a different way of working with the people who come to us for help.

I’m curious, for those of you already working with couples, was this shift from an individual to a relational lens something you found challenging in the beginning?

I’d love to hear your experience.

Deepening your work in couples therapy

At the Institute of Couples Therapy, we support therapists who are beginning to work with couples, as well as couples therapists who want to deepen and strengthen their practice.

Our trainings focus on the real clinical moments that happen in the room: conflict, blame, stuckness, strong labels, resistance, safety, neutrality, and the challenge of staying steady while holding both partners and the relationship between them.

We also have the ICT Community, a supportive space for couples therapists that includes live case consultations, therapist discussions, and support from others doing this work.

Because couples therapy is deeply meaningful work, but it is also complex work. And it is not work we need to think through alone.