Should We Go to Couples Therapy or Break Up?
One of the hardest choices a person can make in their life is to find a partner to be with forever. The pressure surrounding that decision can be intense. It can seem like there is a ticking clock, that everyone you know is getting married or having kids, friends and relatives keep checking in about that person you're dating... And it's not like there is a clear-cut criteria for the number of fights per month that are acceptable or guidelines for when a person is "right" and when a relationship is "healthy". The result is that many people who are uncertain about their relationships don't know whether they should continue to hold on, or if it is time to let go.
When this happens, New Yorkers often start to look for a couples therapist in Manhattan but, depending on where things are in the relationship, it couples therapy can seem like a big step. The question we get most often from couples in our initial calls is "Does couples therapy make sense or should we just break up?"
We work with couples who are struggling with exactly this decision. One of the biggest misconceptions people have that can really prevent them from having a happy relationship is that they believe they need to know whether they want to stay together before couples therapy. The reality is that anxiety about the future of a relationship is a great place to begin to ask what it is that you want in a relationship, and whether this relationship is giving it to you.
Is Couples Therapy Available If We Are Just Dating?
You don't need to be married, engaged, or even living together to benefit from couples therapy. Couples therapy can be especially useful for those who are dating and feel very serious about the relationship, but are struggling to make it work or to figure out if this is someone to build a future with.
Even two terrific people who would otherwise be great for each other can find themselves in recurring arguments, needing to work through trust issues, and disagreements about commitment, marriage, and children. And, meeting a person who you love does not happen in a vacuum - it happens when parents are aging, when people are graduating, or moving, or starting new careers, and the tumult of these moments can make you feel emotionally off balanced and fights feel easier. Even though it can feel gigantic, dating is a part of life and has to exist alongside all the other irritants and difficulties - you don't stop feeling overworked and burned out just because you're arguing with your partner.
Working with a couples therapist in Manhattan is designed to help both parties better understand your differences and identify patterns that create conflict, so that you can gain clarity on what they want from the relationship and whether they're compatible long term. Lexington Park Psychotherapy also offers pre-marital therapy for couples planning on getting married and wanting to develop a deeper connection and understanding of their partners values around specific topics.
How Do You Know If Your Relationship Is Worth Saving?
People often evaluate their relationships by whether they're in love. This is obviously understandable - you should, after all, love and feel loved in your relationship - but love alone is not a particularly useful measure. It is unfortunate, but strong relationships take more than love to work and deep commitment require both people to understand that.
There are several theories about what is most important in a relationship and (almost) all of them have something important to contribute. The Gottman's explain three features essential to healthy couples: First, there is a "magic ratio" of 5:1 positive interactions to negative interactions during a conflict (outside the conflict the ratio jumps to 20:1); second, in healthy relatioships, partners are attentive to the everyday ways that their partner attempts to connect and respond to them positively; third, more important than whether a couple fights is how well and how quickly they repair that fight.
The Gottman's provide a very helpful clinical framework, but in our clinical experience, the single most important thing that tracks long-term relationships is the ability to change together with good will. Consider how you would react if you were dating a person now who is an adventurous eater... but becomes a vegetarian two years into your relationship - how would you react? Would you support them? How? Would they feel on their own with it? Would you feel you had to become vegetarian to support them? Or, consider, you and your partner are very active people who love to run, but after a few years, one of you injures your knee and cannot be as active as you anymore - what happens to the relationship then?
Long-term relationships are just that - long. And they need to be able to do more than withstand these issues, they need to become stronger. That happens when both partners lean into each other fully, not just enough to satisfy the other person, but fully.
When Is Couples Therapy Worth Trying?
One of the strongest and most common reasons to consider couples therapy is the arguments are frequent and/or do not get resolved. Fights come up and end, perhaps with apologies and accountability, but in a week the same issues come up and you find yourself having the same fight over and over again.
Many people get stuck in relationship counseling because their therapist gets caught up in trying to resolve your fights. That can seem helpful to some couples - like all that is needed is for the therapist to adjudicate on a fight so that your partner can see the light of reason. However good couples therapist should go deeper, helping you to identify the deeper reasons why these patterns emerge, what the fights represent, what each of you is actually communicating. Until those issues are identified, the fights will recur because they remain at the level of manifest problems and not at the level of the deeper issues that are sustaining them.
Another major reason why couples seek relationship counseling in NYC is because each partner argues in different ways: one person wants the dispute to be resolved in a single sitting, the other feels overwhelmed and needs time to process; one approaches things hyper-rationally, the other comes at the situation by how it makes them feel. Although it is trite, communication is important in relationships because it is the means through which you interact with your partner.
Fortunately, healthy communication is a skill that can be taught. It can be difficult when emotions are high and anxieties about the relationship are intense, but learning how to communicate through hard discussions is an essential skill.
Can Couples Therapy Help Us Decide Whether to Break Up?
Couples therapy does not have to begin with the assumption that the relationship could continue and couples do come to therapy to decide whether they should stay together or break up. This is sometimes known as discernment counseling. If you're considering breaking up, a couples therapist can help you examine what you feel is missing, whether you've communicated those things to your partner, and what you've already done to try to fix things. Therapy is not designed to persuade you to stay together at all costs, it is intended to help you figure out what works for your life and whether the two of you work for each other.
Couples Therapy in Manhattan at Lexington Park Psychotherapy
Figuring out whether you should stay in a relationship is hard, and it is even harder when both options seem to involve losing something important. If staying means living the rest of your life having fights every week that never get resolved, constantly living feelin uncertain whether you can trust the person or if they will ever trust you, or feeling unhappy and overlooked, the relationship can start to seem toxic. However, if leaving means giving up someone you truly love, a shared home, a sense of connection that you've never had, a hope for the future, the decision to break up can be a source of anxiety and breaking up can hardly seem like an improvement.
At Lexington Park Psychotherapy, our team understands how momentous this choice can be. We have worked with hundreds of couples in NYC figure out whether they are right for each other or whether it is time to break up and, if it makes sense to keep trying, to examine the difficulties in your relationship, understand the patterns that sustain them, and consider what changes would be necessary for the relationship to become satisfying again.
