Is it a bad sign if we need counselling?

No, and from everything I’ve seen in eight years, it’s rather the opposite. Couples who get support aren’t the ones where more is broken. They’re the ones who look at things earlier. The couples where nothing works any more often don’t come at all, or they come years too late.

Even so, I hear the question all the time, usually in the first session and usually with some embarrassment.

Where the shame comes from

From a calculation nobody says out loud and almost everyone carries in their head: a good relationship runs by itself.

That’s the core of it. If love is real, then it works. And anyone who needs support therefore either has the wrong person or doesn’t have themselves under control enough.

This idea is widespread, and it’s wrong. There’s no other area of life in which we see things this way.

Nobody is ashamed to go to the doctor. There you have a goal, namely health, and you make use of something that helps with it. Nobody says my body should have managed that on its own.

Nobody is ashamed of having a tax adviser, private tutoring or a coach. In all of these cases it’s considered smart to bring in someone who is better at something.

Only with relationships is it supposed to happen by itself. In exactly the area that radiates out into everything else in life.

What I see in couples who come

I tell couples this in the first session, and I mean it: the fact that you’re sitting here shows me how important this relationship is to you.

Counselling isn’t comfortable. It costs money, time and the effort of overcoming yourself. Anyone who finds that in themselves hasn’t given up. They’re doing the opposite.

And I see something else often too. It’s mostly the reflective couples who come. People who notice that they keep ending up in the same place, and who don’t simply want to put up with it. That’s an ability, not a shortcoming.

A word I avoid

I don’t say “getting help”.

The word carries something with it. Help is needed by someone who can’t do something. It assumes a deficit, and that’s exactly what isn’t true here.

What actually happens is something else: you’re getting what you need to reach a goal. Just as in any other area where you want to achieve something.

The difference sounds like hair-splitting and in practice it’s big. Anyone who believes they need help comes in with their head lowered. Anyone who gets support for a goal comes into the room differently. And how someone comes into the room changes what’s possible in the four sessions.

The sentences I hear most often

“We’re not the kind of couple who needs that.”

This sentence is mostly said by couples where there’s still a lot there. That’s exactly why it’s most worthwhile for them. Those who come early need less.

“Other people have real problems.”

That’s true in every area of life and is never an argument. That there are worse things doesn’t make your issue any smaller.

“If we can’t manage this on our own, surely that says something about us.”

It does say something, yes. It says you have a pattern that two people involved can’t see from the inside. There’s a simple reason for that: you’re both standing in it. Each of you only sees your own half, and always as a reaction to the other.

“What if it turns out we’re not compatible?”

That’s the real fear, and it almost always affects one of you more than the other. I don’t do compatibility analysis. Compatibility isn’t something you can measure, it’s something two people create together, or don’t.

Who you have to tell

Nobody.

In practice this matters more than it sounds. Many couples don’t hesitate because of the counselling, but because of the question of what the family will say.

You don’t have to tell anyone. Not your parents, not your friends, not your siblings. It’s your relationship, and what you do for it belongs to you.

If you do want to tell someone and need a sentence that doesn’t open up a discussion:

“We’re working on a few things at the moment. It’s going well.”

Nobody needs to know more than that.

If only one of you wants to

That’s the normal case, not the exception. In most couples, one person is the driving force.

The most important point here: scepticism isn’t an obstacle. It’s something different if one of you has already decided to leave and the sessions are only meant to prove it.

Where it’s not a question of shame

There are situations in which I’m not the right person, and I say so.

When violence is involved, physical or verbal. When one person is systematically belittled, controlled or kept away from their people. There’s no shared dynamic there that two people can work on, and couples work would be the wrong path.

Then safety comes first. In Germany, the helpline Hilfetelefon Gewalt gegen Frauen (violence against women) can be reached around the clock, free of charge and anonymously, on 116 016.

And if one of you has an illness that needs treatment, that belongs in therapeutic hands.

What I’d like you to take with you

Almost everyone asks the question in the headline. I like to turn it around.

What would it say about you if you noticed that you’ve been ending up in the same place for years, and did nothing about it?

You once chose this relationship. Doing something for it isn’t a weakness. It’s the part nobody talks about, because in films love always works by itself.