Couples Therapy in Milton Keynes

What the Arguing Is Usually About

Almost never the thing you are arguing about.

In practice the same causes come up again and again, and they are worth naming, because recognising which one you are in changes what you do about it.

You never learned to talk to each other under stress. Most of us were never taught. So when there is money trouble or a job going wrong or someone is ill, we do not have the tools, and instead we lash out or go quiet or stop listening. And when one of you is stressed it lands on the other, and what is actually happening gets missed entirely.

You want the same thing and are coming at it from different angles. Generally both people's intention is the same. Different backgrounds, different families, different values, and the same goal looks like two opposite arguments.

Expectations neither of you said out loud. Each of you has a set of ideas about what your role is and what theirs is. Then they do not meet an expectation they were never told about, and you feel let down or resentful.

That one has a shape I use with couples all the time. It is like putting landmines down and waiting for them to step on one, except you never told them the landmines were there. And then they step on it, and you both go up.

Waiting for something to arrive and fix it. If we move house, things will be better. If we have a baby, that will bring us back together. I see this often, and it rarely works the way people hope, because the external thing does not touch the internal one. What usually happens instead is more pressure, and then the let-down of the expectation on top of what was already there.

Something outside the relationship pressing on it. Money, work, family. The pressure is external but it comes out inside the relationship, and because neither of you can articulate it, it turns into either the fight or the silence. The silence is the one people underestimate. It builds a void.

Jealousy and insecurity, usually older than this relationship. It comes from history, from what happened before, sometimes from growing up. One person needs constant reassurance, the other is drained by giving it, and being permanently mistrusted wears through even a good relationship.

Different communication styles. One of you can name a feeling and the other genuinely cannot. Then one feels guilty for not managing it and the other feels frustrated that it is not happening, and both of you are stuck.

A power struggle. Which is win or lose, and in a relationship, when it goes to win or lose, you both lose. Nobody benefits from that.

Intimacy, which almost nobody raises first. It is embarrassing, or it makes you feel exposed, so it gets avoided instead. One goes up to bed and the other stays downstairs until they are asleep, and that becomes the arrangement. It is generally far easier once it is said out loud than it is while it is being avoided.

The Other Things That Help

Stay Calm, or at Least Notice When You Have Stopped Being Calm

As the emotion climbs you get blinkered, and eventually you are not responding to what was said, you are responding to the feeling. Then it is fight, flight or freeze. You go quiet, or you fire back, or you walk out. None of those resolve anything.

Nine times out of ten the actual issue is smaller than it becomes. The size comes from history. Every previous niggle arrives to join in over something mundane.

Talk About Yourself, Not About Them

Brené Brown has a phrase I use constantly with couples: “the story I'm telling myself is...” So instead of “you make me feel unattractive”, which is an accusation and will get you a defence, it is “the story I'm telling myself when you say that is that you don't find me attractive”. Same information, no attack.

She has written a lot that is worth your time. Atlas of the Heart if you want somewhere to start.

Stay on the Issue and off the Person

What are you actually trying to sort out? The money, the mother-in-law, the thing that was said. Deal with that, not with the accumulated history.

Be Generous About How Badly It Comes Out

If your partner is worse at this than you are, give them room. What they are trying to say is probably the right thing, arriving in the wrong shape.

Find the Middle

You will not always agree and you do not need to. The question is where you can both give, rather than going to separate corners and waiting for the bell so you can start again.

Stop, If You Have To

If you have both escalated past the point of being rational, call it. Not a walkout, a pause: this is not getting us anywhere, let's take an hour, let's agree a time to come back to it and how we're going to do it. You have to still be conscious enough to do it, because past a certain point of anger you are not.

Does Couples Counselling Actually Work

There is a solid evidence base for it. The clearest single source is Alan Carr's review in the Journal of Family Therapy, a UK author in a UK journal, updating earlier reviews and concluding that systemic couple and family interventions are supported for relationship distress among other things.

What that does not mean is that it saves marriages, and anyone quoting you a success rate is inventing it. What the research supports is that structured work on a distressed relationship helps more often than not.

What I would add from the room rather than the literature: it is not always something you can be successful at. But often it is, and it really is worth trying.

If You Are Already Thinking About Separating

Couples work is not about keeping two people together.

Sometimes the honest outcome is that you separate, and doing that with some understanding of what happened, and without wrecking each other on the way out, is a legitimate and worthwhile result. Particularly if there are children, because you are going to be dealing with each other for a long time either way.

Something worth saying either way, because it applies whether you stay or you don't. A relationship is at its healthiest when it adds to a life that already means something, rather than being asked to rescue one that doesn't. That is a lot to put on another person, and it is usually where the resentment starts.

If you already know which way this is going, divorce and separation counselling is the page for that, and it covers the version where only one of you wants to talk to anybody.

So you do not have to arrive certain you want to fix it. You have to arrive willing to look at it.