What happens in couples therapy? Your first session, step by step

Booking a first couples session is rarely an easy decision. Sometimes you have been having the same argument for months. Sometimes ordinary conversations have become harder to hold without tension. Sometimes something happened that shook your trust in each other.

It can also look different. There are no rows, and no single event you could point to as the start of the crisis. There is a sense that there used to be more closeness between you, and that you now live side by side more than together.

Either way, the thought of couples therapy comes up, and questions follow. What happens in the first session? Will the psychologist decide who is right? What do we have to talk about? Do we have to commit to therapy straight away?

Here is what to expect.

Couples therapy is not about establishing who is right

This is one of the most common worries before a first session.

The psychologist is not a judge and does not rule on who is responsible for the problems in a relationship. The point of the session is to understand what happens between the two of you.

Couples often turn out to be stuck in a repeating pattern. One person pushes harder for a conversation because they feel ignored. The other withdraws because they feel attacked and want to avoid another argument. The more one withdraws, the harder the other tries to get a response. Research on conflict between partners describes this as the demand and withdraw pattern (Christensen and Heavey, 1990).

Over time both people can become convinced that the problem is mainly the other person's behaviour. So in a consultation we look not only at what each person does, but also at the mechanism that forms between you.

What happens in a first couples therapy session?

The first session is a consultation. You come together, and it lasts 60 minutes.

The psychologist will want to find out what brings you in and how each of you sees the current situation. You may be asked, among other things:

• what made you get in touch now,
• how each of you would describe the main problem,
• how long the difficulties have been going on,
• how your arguments usually unfold,
• what you miss most in the relationship,
• what you have already tried,
• what each of you expects from the sessions.

What matters is that both people have room to give their own account.

You do not need to arrive with a ready diagnosis of your relationship, or to know exactly what you want to work on. Putting the problem into words is often one of the first goals of a consultation.

How the sessions continue, how often you meet and how we work is described on the service page: couples therapy in Poznań and online.

"What if we start arguing in the room?"

This is a common worry, and nothing unusual.

If you are coming because certain subjects are hard to discuss without conflict, there is no reason to expect that walking into the room will switch that off.

What is more, the way you begin talking to each other in front of a psychologist can be a useful source of information. In research on couples it was the course a conflict takes, rather than the number of disagreements, that was linked to how relationships later fared (Gottman and Levenson, 1992). So it is not only about what you argue over, but about what happens between you when you disagree.

The psychologist's job is to stop the conversation at the right moment, name the mechanism at work and create conditions in which both people can be heard.

Do you need to prepare for the first session?

You do not need to bring documents or write out the history of your relationship.

It is worth spending a moment on three questions beforehand:

• What is hardest for me in our relationship right now?
• What do I want more of between us?
• How will I know the sessions are actually helping?

Your answers do not have to match. One person may mainly want fewer arguments, the other may miss closeness. One may want to rebuild trust while the other is wondering whether they want to stay in the relationship at all. Those differences are material for the conversation too.

What do couples come to a psychologist with?

There is no single right moment for a consultation. Couples get in touch when they notice, among other things:

• constant arguments about similar things,
• difficulty communicating,
• feeling misunderstood,
• emotional distance,
• a lack of closeness or difficulties in their sex life,
• jealousy,
• broken trust or infidelity,
• differences over raising children,
• strain after the birth of a child,
• conflicts about money, the division of chores or wider family,
• major life changes,
• a question about the future of the relationship.

You do not have to wait until the relationship is close to ending. A consultation can also be a place for a couple who are still close but can see a problem they find harder and harder to handle on their own.

When couples therapy is not the right kind of help

There is one situation in which we do not start with joint sessions: abuse in the relationship, whether physical, sexual, psychological or economic. A joint session can increase the risk to the person experiencing abuse, because what they say in the room has consequences once they are home. We start instead with individual support or crisis intervention.

If you need help now:

• 112: the emergency number, when the situation is dangerous.
• 800 120 002: Niebieska Linia, the national helpline for people experiencing domestic abuse. Free, 24 hours a day. Consultations in English on Mondays, 6 pm to 10 pm.
• 800 70 2222: Centrum Wsparcia, the national crisis helpline for adults. Free, 24 hours a day, in Polish.

Does couples therapy mean our relationship is in a bad state?

No. Getting in touch with a psychologist says mainly that you have noticed a difficulty and decided to look at it.

What matters is not so much whether you have conflicts, but how you enter them, how you respond to each other's feelings and how you come back into contact after a hard conversation.

The goal of therapy is therefore not a relationship in which nobody argues. Recognising your own pattern and responding in a way that does not deepen the conflict is a more realistic aim.

What if my partner is not convinced?

Both people do not have to arrive at a first consultation in the same frame of mind. Often one person initiates the appointment and the other agrees to come but stays sceptical. They may be worried about being judged, about discussing private matters in front of a stranger, or about the psychologist taking their partner's side. Those worries can be said out loud in the session.

It is a different matter when one person does not want to take part at all. Couples therapy cannot be run without a minimum of willingness from both people. If your partner will not come, there is still an individual consultation: a place to look at your own situation and at what you can realistically affect in the relationship.

Do we have to start therapy after the first consultation?

No. A first session is also there for you to check whether this way of working suits you.

Once the psychologist has an initial picture, they may suggest further consultations or regular therapeutic work. Sometimes it turns out that a different kind of help fits better, for example individual therapy for one of you.

Something less technical matters as well: whether both people feel they can speak freely about difficult things with this particular specialist.

You do not need to know how to fix the relationship to come

Couples often reach the room because they have already used up their own ideas. They talked. They tried letting things go. They promised each other the next argument would go differently. They tried spending more time together, or the opposite, giving each other more space. After a while the same problem comes back.

The first step does not have to be answering the question of how to fix it. Before that comes understanding what is actually happening between you, and why, despite good intentions, you keep arriving at the same place.

Couples therapy in Poznań

At Centrum Psychologiczne Oddech we offer consultations and couples therapy for repeating conflicts, distance, broken trust and difficulties with closeness. Sessions take place at our practice in Poznań and online, in Polish and in English.

A first session is a place to get to know your situation and work out what form of further work would suit you. You do not need to know where to start.

This article is educational. It does not replace a psychological consultation or an individual assessment of a particular couple's situation.

Author: Karolina Zawrotniak, psychologist, sexologist and psychotraumatologist, founder of Oddech. She works within a cognitive behavioural approach, is a member of the Polish Association for Cognitive and Behavioural Therapies and has her work regularly supervised.

Sources:

• Christensen, A., & Heavey, C. L. (1990). Gender and social structure in the demand/withdraw pattern of marital conflict. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59(1), 73–81. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.59.1.73
• Gottman, J. M., & Levenson, R. W. (1992). Marital processes predictive of later dissolution: Behavior, physiology, and health. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63(2), 221–233. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.63.2.221