In speaking with various couples who are undergoing conflict and difficulties in their relationship, I am often asked whether or not they should try to attempt couples counseling (or therapy) as a last gap solution to save their relationship. I think I have caught myself suggesting couples therapy as a stock solution, but then I later I reflect and wonder does relationship therapy really work? Is it always the right idea to suggest couples therapy for a couple in distress or does couples therapy sometimes makes the situation WORSE?

Worse? How can speaking to a trained professional make things worse? First thing to understand is that psychology and psychotherapy is not as concrete and clear as medicine. Sure, there is a lot of gray area decisions to be made by your doctor, but your doctor’s training is more science and evidence-based than that of your psychologist or psychotherapist. That is because the  the “science” of the mind is very ambiguous and uncertain, in some ways almost closer to philosophy than science. For example, what exactly is consciousness, what is free will, how exactly is personality formed and developed, what is the relationship between genetics and personality, if any? These are all questions which are fundamental to understanding the mind, yet are still unanswered. Further still, most of these questions are tackled as much by philosophers as by scientists. My point in all of this is that your psychologist’s or psychotherapist’s training is probably much more humanistic than is the scientific training of a doctor. As a result, I would argue that personal life experience is much more important to the success of a therapist, versus strictly academic training, than for virtually anyone else in the helping profession.

What this means is that, in order to be effective, your couples therapist has to have a lot of PERSONAL experience with relationships, both in dealing with the positive and negative aspects. I’ve seen and heard way too much about “clueless” therapists who try to engage their patients through a “by the book” approach, and of course, failing miserably, because although they have the book learning to be a therapist, they don’t have the personal life experience to be able to properly empathize and understand their patients on a fundamental level. So, in effect, you get lots of therapy where the therapist treats the patient by a formula, and doesn’t really understand what the patient is thinking or feeling. I repeat, because of its ambiguous humanistic nature, the best gauge of a psychotherapist’s ability to help a couple is whether or not the therapist has the PERSONAL LIFE EXPERIENCE that would enable that therapist to empathize with the couple.

To add insult to injury, the kind of training that therapists get is often not conducive to couples therapy. Most therapists have a generalist education, and many have not received and are not required to receive a specific training with couples, so end up learning through “trial and error.” In fact, William Doherty, an established couples therapist writes: “The result is that most therapists learn couples therapy after they get licensed, through workshops and by trial and error. Most are individual therapists who work with couples on the side. Most have never had anyone observe or critique their couples work. So it’s not surprising that the only form of therapy that received low ratings in a famous national survey of therapy clients, published in 1996 by Consumers Reports, was couples therapy. The state of the art in couples therapy is not very artful.” For more information about this specific topic, click on this fascinating link where a psychotherapist reveals the pitfalls of couple’s therapy.

I’m not trying to dissuade anyone from taking couple’s therapy, since it really can help certain couples in the hands of an experienced and savvy therapist. However, just because someone is a licensed therapist and has worked with couples before doesn’t necessarily mean that that person has had the proper life experience or even proper formal training to be able to properly help you. And in those cases, your relationship may even be worse off. Perhaps another thing to do is to make sure that your potential therapist has the proper post-graduate training, for example traning at an institute that specializes in couples therapy or has a specific license called LMFT (Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist.) Best advice: If you feel that you would be a good candidate for relationship therapy because you cannot learn to communicate well and keep the peace on your own, then do extensive research on your prospective therapist before committing to a lengthy treatment. And if the person doesn’t seem to know what they are doing, chance are they probably don’t.