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You're not asking this question casually. Nobody googles "is couples therapy worth it" out of idle curiosity. You're asking because something between you has shifted and you can't shift it back. Because the arguments have a quality now that they didn't used to have. Because you're lying next to someone you chose and wondering when choosing stopped feeling like enough.
So let me try to answer honestly, which means the answer isn't simple.
Most people arrive at couples therapy with an image of what it's going to be. You'll sit on a sofa, explain your side, the therapist will explain to your partner why you're right, and then they'll give you some communication exercises to practise at home. Maybe a worksheet. Maybe a rule about using "I feel" statements instead of "you always" statements.
That's not what I do. And honestly, if that's what couples therapy was, I'm not sure it would be worth the money either.
The techniques-based version of couples work assumes the problem is that you're communicating badly. Learn to communicate better, problem solved. But most couples I see aren't struggling because they lack communication skills. They're struggling because what's actually happening between them is something neither of them fully understands. The communication breakdown is a symptom, not the cause.
You don't need someone to teach you how to fight more politely. You need someone to help you understand why these particular fights keep happening, why they escalate the way they do, why the same wound keeps getting reopened no matter how carefully you try to avoid it.
Here's what most couples don't realise when they walk in: you're not just two individuals with a disagreement. You're two people whose entire histories are colliding in ways neither of you chose or fully controls.
The way you react when your partner withdraws isn't just about them withdrawing. It's about every time someone important went quiet and you were left trying to work out what you'd done wrong. The way they shut down when you raise your voice isn't just about your voice. It's about what raised voices meant in the house they grew up in.
You've each brought an entire unconscious world into this relationship. And those worlds are interacting constantly, beneath the surface of whatever you're arguing about on any given Tuesday evening. The argument about the dishes isn't about the dishes. It never was. But neither of you can see what it's actually about because you're too busy being hurt and defensive and right.
Psychodynamic couples therapy is about making that unconscious interaction visible. Not so you can blame your childhoods for your problems, but so you can stop being blindsided by reactions that seem disproportionate to the situation. So you can start to see the difference between what's happening now and what it reminds you of.
I should be honest about this. Most couples don't come to therapy when things first start to feel difficult. They come after months or years of things going wrong. After the same argument has been had so many times that both people have their lines memorised. After resentment has hardened into something that feels permanent.
By the time you're in the room, the damage is real. Trust has been eroded. Things have been said that can't be unsaid. One or both of you has started to wonder if this is it, if this is as good as it gets, if you'd be happier alone.
This doesn't mean it's too late. But it does mean the work is harder than it would have been two years ago, and I think you deserve to know that. Couples therapy isn't a rescue operation that swoops in and fixes everything in four sessions. It's slow, uncomfortable work that requires both of you to look at things you'd rather not look at.
The couples who arrive early, who come when things are starting to feel wrong rather than after everything has collapsed, tend to do better. Not because their problems are smaller, but because the defences haven't had as long to calcify. There's still enough goodness between them that the difficult conversations feel survivable.
If you've waited, that doesn't disqualify you. It just means the work will take longer, and you'll both need to be honest about whether you have the patience and willingness to do it.
Let's talk about what you're actually asking. A hundred pounds a session. Weekly. For months, probably. That's real money. Depending on your circumstances, it might be money that requires sacrifice elsewhere. You deserve honesty about what you'd be paying for.
You're not paying for advice. I'm not going to tell you what to do about your relationship. I'm not going to pick sides, and I'm not going to give you homework.
What you're paying for is a space where the truth can exist between you.
That sounds abstract, so let me make it concrete. In most struggling relationships, there are things that can't be said. Not because they're unsayable, but because every time one of you tries to say them, the other person's defences activate and the conversation derails into the same circular argument. The truth gets buried under reactivity.
A hundred pounds buys you fifty minutes where someone is holding that space steady. Where the truth doesn't have to be managed or deflected or turned into a fight. Where the thing that's been sitting between you, unsaid, can finally be said without the room catching fire.
Whether that's worth a hundred pounds depends on what that truth is and what happens when it finally gets spoken. Sometimes it saves the relationship. Sometimes it ends it. Sometimes it does something more complicated than either.
Here's what nobody who's selling couples therapy will tell you: sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes the relationship is over and what you're doing in the room is discovering that, together, with someone who can help you face it.
That might sound like failure. It isn't.
One of the most valuable things couples therapy can do is help two people separate without destroying each other. Without the children becoming weapons. Without the divorce becoming a war that leaves everyone, including people who didn't choose to be involved, damaged for years.
If you've been together a long time, if there are children, if your lives are woven together in ways that can't be cleanly cut, then how you end matters enormously. The difference between a separation that happens with understanding and one that happens through mutual annihilation is significant. Not just for you, but for everyone around you.
I don't say this to be bleak. I say it because if the only acceptable outcome of couples therapy is staying together, then you're not actually free to be honest in the room. You'll perform progress. You'll say what you think the therapist wants to hear. You'll avoid the real conversation because the real conversation might lead somewhere neither of you is ready to go.
The work requires the possibility that it might end. That's what makes honesty possible.
When couples therapy works, it doesn't look like what you'd expect. It's not a dramatic breakthrough where everything suddenly makes sense. It's quieter than that.
It looks like one person saying something they've been afraid to say for years and the other person hearing it without immediately defending themselves. It looks like recognising, for the first time, that your partner's most irritating behaviour is actually their way of managing a fear you never knew they had. It looks like understanding that the thing you've been fighting about for a decade was never really the thing at all.
It looks like two people who had stopped being curious about each other becoming curious again. Not because someone taught them a technique, but because they finally understood enough about what was happening between them to see each other clearly.
This doesn't happen quickly. The patterns you've developed together took years to build. They're reinforced by everything you've each brought from your histories, by the particular way your defences interlock with each other's vulnerabilities. Untangling that takes time and patience and a willingness to be uncomfortable.
The couples who do well in therapy aren't the ones who love each other the most or fight the least. They're the ones who can tolerate not knowing. Who can sit with the discomfort of seeing themselves clearly without running from it. Who are willing to discover that they might be part of the problem, even when they arrived certain the problem was entirely the other person.
I'm not going to promise that therapy will save your relationship. I don't know if it will. Neither do you. Neither does your partner.
I'm not going to promise it will be comfortable. It won't be. Seeing yourself clearly rarely is. Hearing what your partner actually thinks, rather than what they've been saying to keep the peace, is not a pleasant experience. Being asked to consider that your version of events might be incomplete is genuinely difficult.
I'm not going to promise it will be quick. If someone offers you couples therapy that fixes everything in six sessions, they're not offering you therapy. They're offering you reassurance, and reassurance is not the same thing.
What I can tell you is this: something is happening between you that neither of you fully understands. It's driving the arguments, the distance, the loneliness, the resentment. It's been happening for a while and it's getting worse. And it will keep getting worse until someone helps you see what it actually is.
Whether that's worth a hundred pounds a week is a question only you can answer. But the question you're really asking isn't about money. It's about whether things can be different. Whether the person lying next to you can become someone you recognise again. Whether you can become someone they recognise.
The honest answer is: maybe. Depending on what you're both willing to look at. Depending on how much truth the relationship can hold. Depending on whether you want to understand what's happening or just want someone to make it stop.
If you want someone to make it stop, I'm not the right therapist.
If you want to understand what's happening, that's where the work begins.
