I am sharing these five “secrets” (not really secret!) based upon my observations.  Whether heterosexual, gay or lesbian, how couples moves their relationship from an unhappy state into a more happier state have common features.

1) Couples spend quality time on their relationship.

At least by the time a couple begins to meet with me for couple therapy, the couple have stopped spending time on the relationship.

This is sometimes due to the fact that sometimes couple learn to not communicate for very good reasons – and by not spending time on the relationship those reasons can be kept under lock and key

Living together is not spending time on the relationship.  The relationship is that thing that the couple have created together (and sometimes begin to destroy together).  Learning what the relationship is for a couple (it can be different for each couple) is the first step. 

• Some couples set a “date” night once a week. 
• Some set a meeting night once a week to discuss their relationship.
• Some keep a “relationship” diary where both partners can write messages to the relationship about what’s going well (or not).

Sometimes a poorly relationship needs some focussed time spending on it.  It can simply be that the couple have forgotten that their relationship needs care, and for a while it needs to be nursed back into help.

2) Couples can hear each other’s communication.

One of the more frequent interventions I make in couple’s counselling is “What did you make of what your partner just said, there?”.

Couples who are in a distressing relationship can often answer “I don’t know”, or misunderstand their partner, or say things like “Well if he/she loved me I wouldn’t need to explain”.  These couples have have lost their skills in communicating.  It can be a very painful state to be in.

Inviting each partner to learn what the other partner is saying can be very helpful.  If a partner gets the communicate message wrong, it’s helpful for the partner to patiently teach the other what was meant (avoiding chastisement).

3) Couples can be comfortable when apart from the relationship.

Some couples have found they have unintentionally excommunicated all their friends to the point where only their partner exists in their world.  There may have been an unintended plan in doing this – I’m talking attachment styles.

When thinking about attachment styles (eg the early relationship of the infant to its caregiver) the infant may be secure; that when mum goes out of the room the infant will carry on playing, knowing at some level that mum will be back in a bit.  On the opposite scale, an insecurely attached infant will be greatly distressed when mum disappears for a little bit. For more on attachment styles, read “Attachment Theory – an Overview”.

Deeply felt insecurities may manifest in the relationship.  Jealously (“where were you all night?”), suspicion (“who are you seeing behind my back?”), are just two manifestations.

Having partners understand how each other attach in intimate relationships can help both partners appreciate where unpopular behaviour stems from (sometimes way back in the past).  Showing consistency (eg going out with the lads every Thursday night causes anxiety, but coming back home at an hour both partners agreed) can greatly help address initial change from insecure attachment to something more secure.  Secure attachment can handle unplanned behaviour (eg coming home late) where as insecure attachment may not.

4) Couples can share the truth / show authenticity.

No-one can tell when you’re lying.  Honest!

There are many reasons why people lie, and as a therapist one of the greatest demands on my practice is consistently authentic.  It’s essential that I demonstrate trust-able behaviour, consistent responses, holding boundaries agreed up front.  It’s a form of replaying the holding care that a care giver does (or should) when the infant is very small.

In the beginning, it’s likely that you and your partner were more truthful with each other than later in the relationship (ever heard of “pillow talk”, for example?)

Introducing inauthentic behaviour or telling lies will be felt at some level by our partner.  If you find there isn’t a place to tell the truth, maybe secret #1 might be the first place to address this.

5) Couples recognise their relationship as being unique.

When problems arise, everyone may have a say: your family, your friends, your partners family & friends, work colleagues, the people next door.  They’ve all been through it… but have they?

In couple therapy, part of my role is to provide an encouraging atmosphere of promoting the couple coming up with ideas and solutions of their own.  I don’t have any exercise that if performed correctly will cure the relationship’s problems.  I have no magic words that will make the unhappiness go away.  But what I do do is help a couple to realise that their relationship is pretty much unique and that they do not have to adhere to what society says is the behaviour of a happy relationship (see Secret #4!).

In society, we usually want to fit in, so we make our behaviour fit with everyone else.  We know that mum and dad never had a bad word and never argued.  We know that the couple over the road were married for 70 years and never spent an might apart.  Except … what people say about how their relationship works may not be quite the truthful story.

Helping a couple to disengage with what they think is supposed to be the right way to behave in a relationship, and helping them engage creatively and with inspiration with what they would both like in the way of relationship-behaviour can contribute greately to making their relationship work … after all, there’s no relationship quite like theirs.

“Couples counselling works to prevent a couple from separating…”

The statement, above, is a common myth about couple counselling.  Some misunderstand couple counselling thinking that it’s focussed on keep a couple in their relationship. However, some of the aims of couple therapy are much more complicated than just a simple goal of staying-together. Sometimes a couple wishes to separate – and do so with anger and blaming – but because of the relationship’s responsibilities (e.g. children) a couple may need to separate amicably.  That’s not an easy process – for obvious emotional reasons – but the couple can benefit from a professional’s experience in helping relationships to end with negotiated friendliness – or at least a respectful-enough amicability.

Talking from a systemic/family-counselling approach (which is my core framework for couple’s therapy), the focus of couple counselling will be to follow what the couple wish from therapy; some couples will wish to work to keep their relationship together, other couples will wish to separate, and many couples will not know which they want and may change their minds (sometimes several times) during therapy. All of these are legitimate states for couples.

So, yes, couple counselling can help a couple to separate … and, if the couple wishes, and with some effort on everyone’s part, it does.

What is Couple Counselling?

My name is Dean Richardson and I’m a qualified systemic/psychodynamic couple counselling therapist.

Talking from a systemic approach, couple counselling is a therapy that works with a couple’s relationship, rather than offering therapy for two individuals. 

What does this mean? For example…

Example of a system: partner ‘A’ arrives home from work, partner ‘B’ has been at home all day.  Both partners want to be asked how their day went, but neither partner is willing to give the other partner the time to listen to them first.  An argument ensues.

In systemic therapy, the couple counsellor would learn about this system by listening to the couple report their problems with examples.  The counsellor would help the couple learn about this system and with their agreement would support the couple in hypothesising how the system could be changed.

The couple counsellor does not impose normative views nor offer corrective suggestions (‘what another couple would do is …’) but works with the couple to help them be creative to come up with ideas on how they might change the behaviour for themselves.

The Assessment Sessions – finding the focus of the counselling work.

The focus of a couple’s therapy will be what the couple want to change about the relationship including their behaviour within their relationship. My role as a couples counsellor includes working with couples whose focus for their couple counselling work is to not stay together.

In the assessment for couple counselling, the couple and I will discuss what the couple wants from counselling … and separation is a legitimate option for couples entering therapy.  Sometimes the decision to separate is made at the beginning of counselling, sometimes it’s made during counselling. Either is a legitimate option for couples therapy

Separating Amicably.

Few couples want to separate amicably.  There may be emotional pain and a wish to not be seen as the one who caused the breakup – “it was the other person’s fault” may be a comforting thought, but it may also not be accurate.

However, a couple’s relationship may have created responsibilities – there is more than the couple themselves to consider.  There may be children involved and other family responsibilities to negotiate. 

Using a divorce lawyer is one option to help the couple negotiate – but couple counselling is also an option.

The counsellor’s position is to remain neutral during the therapy and by not taking sides he is ethically able to help the couple notice imbalances in their behaviour.  This can be a helpful resource to a couple who are trying to remain balanced (very difficult to do at times) during their separation..

Separating / Staying together / Unsure?

I have worked with couples who wish to work to stay together, and with couples of wish to separate.

I have also worked with couples who, at the time of the assessment and for several months after, did not know what they wanted to do with their relationship.  Part of the counselling process there was to discover what our focus for the therapy was going to be.

Also, the focus that is agreed upon in the assessment is not set in stone.  Sometimes, during the course of counselling, one (or both) partner(s) may change their mind … or begin to find their voice … and begin talking about wishing to separate. Vice versa, a couple wishing to separate can change their minds during the therapy. In these situations a review of the original focus is perfectly legitimate and the counsellor will assist the couple to manage the changing of minds.

When mixed-agendas appear (partner “A” wishes to stay together, partner “B” wishes to separate) the couple counsellor will assist the couple in working with those differing agendas to find a focus that the couple can agree upon.  When a couple change their mind and wish to change their focus of their work (ie separating instead of staying together, and vice versa) the counsellor will help the couple work with that change too.

Couple Counselling & Divorce.

Couples who have engaged in marriage or a civil-partnership may decide that they wish to formally separate.  Of course, solicitors will be involved for the legal matters but the couple can still meet weekly with me to discuss matters about their separation.  It is often the case that an individual wishes to leave a relationship by “saving face” … and there can be pressure to denigrate their partner (because doing so helps the individual to appear or feel better than the partner).

Couples counselling can assist with the separation processes so that both partners leave the relationship in a neutral (perhaps even friendly – though not essential) position.

Advice on Separating.

Couple counselling can be helpful when a couple decide to end their relationship and need help in separating out the emotions and building blocks that originally joined them together.

My qualification is in systemic and psychodynamic couples counselling (similar to the training that Relate (ex “Marriage Guidance Council”) counsellors receive.  Therefore, I do not give advice nor directions on how to separate.

Instead I help facilitate the couple in finding their own solutions to how they wish to separate.

I do this by remaining neutral in the relationship and being curious about many things.  This can help the couple in discovering new information about their relationship, how they operate, and how things go wrong.  With such discoveries, the couple can put into place difference behaviours that can be helpful in relieving some of the distresses of separating.

Are you a couple thinking about counselling?

Read my page on Couple Counselling.

See my Contact Me page to send me a message to arrange an initial no-obligation appointment for an assessment for counselling.

Dean Richardson offers couples counselling in Portsmouth and Southsea (Hampshire) and online via Skype.

We thought our relationship was at its end - thank you for helping us choose what we wanted to do.

Contact Dean Richardson

Introducing Couple Counselling.

What if curiosity could take your relationship somewhere better?

Whatever type of relationship you’re in: intimate, marriage, living together, straight, LGBT, mixed-orientation, platonic … the choice to come into couples counselling may be the most courageous one you and your partner or friend make together. 

Dean Richardson will introduce you to, and help you both through, the couples counselling process.

Couple Counselling is for a pair of adults (same or different genders) who have a form of adult relationship (intimate, marriage, platonic, business-related or personal-related) and who are struggling with dissatisfaction about how the couple relate to each other.

Couple counselling is not just “marriage counselling”.  Whilst it can be idea for marriages, couple counselling is a systemicSystemic therapy is a branch of psychotherapy that works with families and couples in intimate relationships to nurture change and development. It tends to view change in terms of the systems of interaction between family members.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_therapy & psychodynamicPsychodynamics is the theory and systematic study of the psychological forces that underlie human behavior, especially the dynamic relations between conscious motivation and unconscious motivation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychodynamics form of therapy, and it’s useful for all forms of couple relationships.

Deciding if Couple Counselling is for you.

Do any of these situations seem familiar?

How Couple Counselling can help.

Sometimes couples can find their relationship behaviour has gotten stuck in unsatisfactory or unhappy patterns.  Couples who cannot get themselves out of these patterns may find psychodynamic & systemic couples counselling suitable in helping perturb the patterns.

It’s a common misunderstanding that people think couples counselling is aimed at making couples stay together.  The couples therapist actually follows what the couple wishes from their therapy; meaning that if the couple wish to work to stay together then the counselling will help the couple to figure that out how this may be achieved.  Alternatively, if the couple wishes to separate then counselling will help the couple to figure out how best they may separate. A couple who is undecided / in disagreement can use the couples counselling process to assist them in figuring out a compromise of what they both might wish to do.

The couple doesn’t have to know how they’ll achieve what they want (very often the couple think that they’ve tried everything) – the couples therapist has the skills to help with this.

What’s Involved in Couple Counselling.

Initially, the couple meet with Dean Richardson for an assessment for couples counselling.  This usually takes four sessions:-

• Session 1: all three of us meet to discuss an overview of what is needed from counselling.
• Session 2: one partner meets with Dean separately.  This is to discuss their perspective on the couple relationship, and to discuss some personal history.
• Session 3: the other partner meets with Dean separately as in session 2.
• Session 4: all three of us meet again to discuss what we have learned in the previous sessions, and to begin to set a focus about what the couple counselling should address.

Subsequent sessions are lead by the couple, with the therapist offering observations and therapeutic hypotheses on the relationship to help both partners learn what might be going on.  With new information the couple can make informed choices. 

A main intention is to help disturb the  relationship’s unhappy behaviour patterns by being curious and interested on the relationship system (what the relationship is doing), learning & finding new information and allowing inspiration to address what we are learning plus being creative with solutions that the couple will come up with themselves.

The process encourages more space for thought and inspiration – allowing the couple’s relationship to become unstuck again.

Responsibilities in Couples Counselling.

Care when perturbing relationships.

Sometimes, couples don’t communicate for very good reasons.  Their non-communication can have purpose – whether it may be to protect the relationship, protect feelings, or is a way of avoiding further conflict.  When couple therapy begins to stick its nose into the relationship, more unhappiness can be brought out than before the therapy began.  The couple’s relationship can feel worse before it can feel better.

Why Separating Couples use Counselling to Break-Up.

During the initial years, a couple’s relationship will go through a process of joining and blending.  When one partner decides that they wish to leave the relationship, the separation can be experienced as terribly painful.

The relationship may have introduced assets – children, pets, possessions, property; the couple will have to decide how to manage the division of what the relationship has created.

In couple counselling, the couple can find a safe, secure place in which to discuss how the relationship divides the assets, and discuss the responsibilities of managing children and pets.

Does Couple Counselling Work?

An important question might be: “Will couple counselling work for me and my partner?”

I’m wring from a systemic & psychodynamic point of view to couple counselling.  A relationship gets into trouble because of what the partners are both contributing to the relationship-conflicts.  It may seem that just one partner is doing all the trouble-making, but I would also suggest to you that it takes two partners’ combined behaviour (whether conscious or unconscious) to bring a relationship onto conflict.

There has to be reasons for the conflict to occur – even if the reasons are not understood.

Couple counselling aims to help the partners perturb the conflict (actively get on the way of stuff going wrong, so that they can introduce stuff going right).  This can have an important consequence: whatever the reasons for the conflict being introduced will also be effected by the conflict being removed.

It’s perfectly legitimate to begin couple counselling without knowing if it will be successful or not.  The process is an investment in your relationship, and like any investment: what you get back may be more – or less – than you had hoped for.  But, unlike investing in a third-party (like stocks and shares) you’re investing in your relationship … something that you and your partner have an influence upon … and by involving an experienced couple counsellor you are not doing this alone.

What Couple Counselling isn’t suitable for.

Long Distance Relationships.

Skype logo © Skype

Couples who are separated by distance – but who still need couple counselling – may find Dean Richardson’s Skype Couple Counselling Service useful (read more…)

•  A couple who have separate mutually-exclusive agendas cannot be helped by this process (albeit the couple may wish to discuss their separate agendas with a view to finding a common goal).
• Families – couple counselling is not family therapy (ie groups of more than two people).
• Adults who wish someone to change their partner to their satisfaction.  Couple counselling is a mutual process that will involve both partners.
• Domestic Violence – excepting if both couples wish to change the violent relationship.
• One partner coming to help the other / has nothing to contribute to the work – couple counselling involves both partners.
• One partner was not informed about the other partner’s desire to come to couple counselling – both partners have to wish to take part in the process.

What do to next…

 If both of you are interested in potentially receiving couples counselling (systemic/psychodynamic model), contact Dean Richardson to make an appointment for an assessment.

If you are in a relationship – regardless of either of your sexualities – and you are having relationship problems after an HIV test gave a positive result then contact Dean Richardson today to arranging a no-obligation initial session to see if couples counselling could be helpful for both of you.

It has not been unusual for a couple – gay, lesbian or straight – to come to see Dean Richardson for private couples counselling after one (or both) have been diagnosed as HIV-positive.

• Sometimes the couple counselling is about dealing with the shock of receiving a positive diagnosis.
• Sometimes the counselling is about dealing with trust issues raised by one partner being diagnosed.
• Sometimes the diagnosis is cathartic in releasing other matters that have been delayed – but now need someone to help the couple discuss.

Whatever the core reasons of seeking couples counselling, Dean is a qualified and experienced couples counsellor who works with couples that have received a positive HIV diagnosis (amongst many other couple relationship reasons for counselling).  His couples counselling service in Portsmouth can help a couple negotiate their way through difficult problems resulting from HIV diagnoses.

The GU clinic may give you and your partner support after an HIV positive diagnosis, but longer term therapy is available privately through meeting with Dean.

Arranging a Couple Counselling appointment.

You don’t need to be referred to Dean via your local GUM clinic, nor your doctor, you can make your own appointment directly. Initiating private counselling is totally up to you both and can be arranged very quickly. 

Dean is a systemic and psychodynamic qualified couples counsellor that is ideal for assisting a couple in finding their own newly inspired solutions to their own relationship conflicts. Dean’s couple counselling is a confidential service that can compliment the medical treatment that you will continue to receive through your GUM clinic and/or your doctor.

Before therapy commences in earnest, a couple is invited to an assessment.

An assessment allows the couple to give an overview of their relationship problems to the therapist, allows the therapist offers some helpful, information-gathering questions, and allows all three the opportunity to discuss if they can work together to achieve the focus discovered and set by the assessment.

Sometimes the assessment can be enough to dislodge the couple into continuing the work on their own. Sometimes the couple proceed into counselling.

If the couple and therapist agree not to proceed into therapy a referral may be made to another therapist.

Click for full details about an assessment for couples counselling.