There’s a saying in Traditional Chinese Medicine along the lines of if you get sick, fire your doctor. A doctor’s role is to keep you healthy, to prevent sickness from occurring in the first place. I wish people would take the same approach with couple’s therapy rather than leaving it until the last minute when the relationship is on the line, the love is gone, and both partners can barely speak to each other. If only they’d seen a therapist sooner when times were better.
It’s strange when you think about: you exercise to stay fit and healthy, you take your pet to the vet for its annual check-up and, hopefully, yourself to your GP for your annual bill of health too. You take your car in for a regular service (I know in the previous post I said I hate that analogy. I still do, but it’s apt here…) With all that in mind, why would a wait until your relationship is on the rocks before getting therapy?
One reason people don’t seek therapy is because we often don’t feel the need if there is nothing obviously wrong. Another reason is the stigma, particularly in Australia, around seeing a counsellor or therapist. If you’re in therapy, then it must mean something’s wrong with you or your relationship. Nothing could be further from the truth! In European countries, many people see personal therapists as part of their ordinary course of life. Many do it for growth, insight and personal development as much as they do to heal old wounds or injuries. And many see relationship therapists for the same reason.
Reasons to get therapy
The main reason to go to a therapist is to help you identify any problems that might arise and prevent them from happening in the first place. Your relationship might be going great, you and your partner might manage things well, but every relationship has its own stress points. If unchecked, during times of tension, those stress points can flare up and become festering sores and, if untreated, blow a relationship apart. By then, it might be too late to save the relationship, or it may require an immense amount of work to repair it. As the old saying goes: a stitch in time saves nine!
Relationship therapy can also be a profound way to get insight into your relating style. Your relating style includes your attachment (how you form emotional bonds with others), your arousal levels (how you manage stress), your communication patterns and your love and apology languages. Relationship therapy also helps you gain insight into your partner and what makes them tick. I’m sure you already know what makes your partner tick on some level, but the process of therapy develops what is called theory of mind, which is the ability to construct an idea about how others think and feel about the world. When we can see the world through our partner’s eyes, our capacity for empathy and the ability to manage conflict increase.
Paging Dr Freud!
There’s a stereotype that therapy is about lying on a couch talking about your mother or father. Modern therapy has moved on from those days except…well, in relationship therapy, things will likely arise from your family of origin. There’s nothing wrong with this; in fact, it’s natural. Nature doesn’t re-invent the wheel. Or the human. It does things as cheaply and efficiently as possible. Each generation isn’t unique; it’s just a new version of the previous one. Many of our relationship patterns and behaviours were inherited from our family of origin. So, if you’ve ever found yourself doing something and realised, with some embarrassment, you’ve just copied your parents, you now know why. Therapy can help identify those patterns that you’ve inherited so that you don’t end up repeating them.
New paradigm relationships
Relationships are changing. Up until 100 years ago, very few people married for love. Relationships and marriage were made on alliances and security. Women had little choice in who they married, relationships were arranged to suit families rather than the individuals, and financial motivations ruled over love or affection.
Relationships based on love and mutual attraction are relatively new in our world. And we’re still learning how to do them well and leave behind the baggage of years gone by. With this new paradigm of relating comes the opportunity to supercharge what it means to be with another person. Evolutionary relationships are so-called because they allow for both partners’ mutual personal, material and spiritual growth. These days it’s possible to have partnerships like used to exist only in romances and fairy tales. But to get to that point, it’s necessary to do the inner work first. As a wise person once said, if you want to fly, you need to keep your feet on the ground. Therapy can help you work out the basic interpersonal issues, so you take your relationship to the next level.
Therapy is fun
Seriously! Where else can you go and poke around in your psyche and your relationship’s edges and see how it all fits together. And, if you’re not in the position of having to save the relationship, then therapy can be like a date for you and your partner, where you get to go and talk about how deeply you love each other for an hour or so. My partner and I see a therapist for our personal and mutual growth. Afterwards, we like to go for a nice meal or get take-out and talk about anything that came up. For us, it’s like a night on the town, but instead of spending money at the pub, we’re doing something for our relationship.
Conclusion
Don’t want until everything is on the line before seeing a therapist. Saving a relationship is stressful and requires a lot of time and energy to repair. Time and energy that could be better spent happily relating. You also run the risk of losing everything. There’s no shame in relationship therapy or seeing a therapist, just as there’s no shame in growing your relationship, gaining personal insight or knowing who you (and your partner) are. If you are in a relationship and committed to that relationship, getting some form of relationship therapy is a no-brainer!
Reach out is you think that couples therapy might help create greater relationship growth and depth.