My Favorite Question To Ask Couples Therapy Clients
(3 min read)
When couples come to me for couples therapy services, they are often at a point where they feel “stuck” in their relationship.
Maybe they’re experiencing that “here we go again” feeling way more than they’d like. Or maybe they feel like their intimacy has plateaued for quite a while now. Or maybe they’re feeling disconnected and missing the way “it used to be.”
Frequently couples are feeling defeated, hesitant, disconnected, hurt, and quite often irritated with their partner.
They are often ready to explain to me how their partner is “making things harder” or not doing something “right” or even sometimes “the reason” why they’re coming to therapy.
These feelings and sentiments are completely natural and typical.
We’re tired of the other person’s behavior and ready for the therapist to witness just how difficult our partner is making things for the relationship. I totally get it. I don’t doubt the hurt and frustration is real.
I often quote esteemed couples therapist, Esther Perel, in my sessions. She so succinctly points out, “It takes two people to create a pattern, but only one to change it,” in her book Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence.
To me, the idea that it takes two people to make a pattern means that we live in relation to one another. One person’s “annoying” tendencies are not occurring in a vacuum, they are occurring in relation to something the other is/is not doing. It takes two to tango.
That’s why one of the most helpful tools I support couples with is identifying their “cycle of interaction”— the relationship between one person’s thoughts/feelings/behaviors and the other persons’s thoughts/feelings/behaviors.
But how do we even start mapping the couple’s “dance”?
Well, we start with ourselves.
That’s why my favorite question to ask couples is, “What’s the hardest part about being in a relationship with you?”
Just to clarify, it’s not, “What’s the hardest part about being in a relationship with your partner,” it’s about you—yourself.
It’s a moment for self-reflection around your part of the tango. It’s a moment for you to hold the mirror of accountability up to yourself and notice how you may be contributing to the stuckness.
It can take some real ego strength to hold the mirror up to ourselves. I encourage clients to do so with an open, non-judgmental attitude, as this will help clients be more curious about their behaviors and not shut down in shame.
We’re all wonderful and we’re all awful. We all have parts of ourselves that we’re not proud of. We’re imperfect humans having imperfect relationships.
So rather than starting off playing the “blame game” in couples work, I try to support clients in getting curious with themselves first. This often supports us in starting to map out the cycle of interaction, and it helps the couple begin to take accountability for their part.
It can be empowering to take responsibility for our parts in the cycle, and when we feel empowered we often start to take a different action and can get unstuck. Like Esther’s quote points out…it only takes one of us to change the pattern.
If you and your partner are tired of that “here we go again” feeling in your arguments or you both are yearning to shorten the emotional and physical distance between you two, reach out for a couples therapy consultation call.
You don’t have to stay stuck. Let it begin with you.
With care,
Chrissy
