Our couples therapists only conduct one type of psychotherapy at a time to prevent conflicts of interest. Your couples therapist is focused on a treatment plan that is beneficial to you and your partner. For the couples therapist, your relationship is the “patient.” The therapist cannot hold any information shared by one partner as confidential from the other partner.

Your individual therapist may provide some couples sessions to stabilize your relationship in a crisis situation. Once the crisis has passed, your individual therapist will refer you to a couples therapist for continued couples treatment.

You or your partner may be seeing other therapists while participating in couples therapy. If you would like your couples therapist to speak with your individual therapist, please sign a release of information to allow your therapists to communicate with one another.

Couples systems therapy may be most helpful if you and your partner are experiencing a stressful life event or a crisis together. This stressful event may be a difficult life transition that you and your partner are going through, significant conflicts between you and your partner, or a painful loss.

Couples therapy can have many different outcomes depending on the goals of the partners involved. Examples of different goals are:

• A mutual desire by both partners to work toward a deeper, more loving, and satisfying relationship
• Conflict resolution in which one partner wants to leave the relationship and the other partner wants to save the relationship
• Divorce counseling where a couple has mutually decided to divorce and want to work toward a civil co-parenting relationship with their minor children

Whatever the goals that you and your partner have, your couples therapist is here to help you and your partner find a new way of relating to one another.

Couples therapy is not a primary form of treatment and is recommended in addition to individual therapy and perhaps other types of therapy such as group therapy and medication management.