Marriage and couples counselling

Marriage counselling is therapy where the relationship is what is being worked on, and both partners are in the room. That sounds obvious and it is the thing most people get wrong about it: the psychologist is not there to decide which of you is right.

What actually happens is slower and more useful than a verdict. A session works on the pattern — the particular loop the two of you fall into, the point at which a conversation reliably turns, and what each of you is trying to protect by doing what you do next. Most couples arrive able to describe the argument in detail and unable to describe the loop, because you cannot see a loop from inside it. Naming it is a great deal of the work.

Sessions are structured. There is an agreement at the start about how the room will be used — including that one person does not get the floor for fifty minutes, and that what is said in here is not to be used as evidence later.

What it is not: it is not arbitration, it is not a ruling on who is at fault, and it is not a service that will tell you whether to stay married. A psychologist who did any of those things would be exceeding what a psychologist is for. It promises no outcome of any kind — not reconciliation, and not separation. Whether couples work is what is indicated for your situation is a clinical decision made after an initial session, not a choice you have to make from a website.

Marital Psychotherapy is one of the nine service areas PHC names, and on this site it is this page. The two labels describe the same work and are kept together deliberately: two pages competing for the same query would serve neither reader. Where a couple is not married, the work is identical and the label is the only thing that changes.

PHC is an assessment-first practice. Nobody begins couples work here because they asked for it by name — they begin it because an initial session found it was what the situation called for.

1. An initial session.We ask what has been going on, for how long, and what it is costing each of you. Where the picture needs more than a conversation, emotional assessment and symptom screening decides which further tests, if any, are clinically warranted — for either partner.
2. A psychologist matched to what that found.Psychologists at PHC are not assigned on availability. Assignment is based on speciality, your presenting needs and clinical fit. Preferred psychologist gender is one of the six details we ask for when you book, and for couples work it is worth both of you agreeing on it first. If the fit is not right, tell us and we will move you to someone else.
3. 50-minute sessions, in clinic or online.A standard session is 50 minutes. Some sessions are held with both of you and some individually, where your psychologist judges that useful; you are told which and why rather than finding out on the day. If a session runs over and your psychologist has the time, you can extend by an hour at an extra fee — you are told what that is beforehand. Minor overruns of one to five minutes are not charged.
4. Reviewed as it goes.What you are working on is revisited rather than assumed. Where the difficulty widens beyond the two of you — in-laws, children, a household rather than a couple — family psychotherapy may be the better unit of work. Where the difficulty is sexual, sexual psychotherapy is a separate service at PHC and your psychologist will say so plainly rather than talk around it.

At PHC, couples work is for married and unmarried couples, at any stage — early difficulty, a long pattern, a specific event, or a decision one or both of you is trying to make.

If only one of you wants to come, come anyway. This is the most common question on this page and the answer is straightforward: one person can be seen on their own about a relationship, and it is often where couples work starts. You will be working on your part of the pattern rather than on your partner, which is less satisfying to hear and considerably more useful. What we will not do is treat an absent partner, or accept a description of them as an assessment of them.

It is not the right service for everything. Where there is abuse in the relationship, joint sessions are not the appropriate setting and PHC will say so rather than proceed — see spousal abuse. Where screening points to something in one partner that needs individual work or psychiatric input first, you will be told that plainly.

Not sure whether this is us? Contact us anyway. We will tell you directly whether we can help, and refer you elsewhere if we cannot.

Each of these has a page of its own explaining what PHC does about it. Which route applies to you is decided at the initial session.

• Marital conflict
• Family difficulties
• Anger difficulties

These are three of the presentations couples work is used for at PHC, not all of them. See every condition we work with.

No psychologist's supplied profile names marriage or couples counselling as a modality they practise, so this page does not print a name. That is a deliberate omission and not an oversight: every clinician card on this site is drawn from what that clinician wrote about themselves, and we will not manufacture one.

What we can tell you is what is true of the whole team. Every psychologist at PHC holds a minimum postgraduate qualification in clinical psychology and completed over 800 supervised clinical hours before joining. Who you would see is decided at the initial session, matched on speciality, presenting needs and clinical fit — and several of our psychologists do name relationship and marital concerns among the areas they work with, which you can read on their own profiles.

See every psychologist at PHC.