How to make couples therapy work
Couples therapy works when both partners treat it as a place to understand a pattern rather than to win an argument. In practice that means starting before things are desperate, being honest in the room rather than politely quiet, staying consistent once the novelty wears off, and doing something with what you learn between sessions. None of that requires you to be good at therapy. It requires you to keep showing up.
Most couples come to me with the air already thick — years of unspoken resentment, or one specific recent crisis. Therapy can absolutely help at that point. But the couples who get the most from it are rarely the ones in the greatest trouble. They are the ones who arrive with something still in reserve.
Before you book: what stops most couples starting
The hardest part of couples therapy is usually the forty-eight hours before the first appointment. Three things stop people, and all three are worth naming.
"We aren't that bad." Many couples wait until they are close to separating. In reality therapy is most effective when there is still fuel in the tank — enough affection and energy left to do the work. Waiting until the tank is empty makes the work harder, not more justified.
"The therapist will take their side." This is one of the most common fears, and often the reason one partner refuses. A couples therapist's client is the relationship itself, not one of the two people in it. Nobody is being assessed, and there is no verdict at the end.
"What will people think?" Across many Asian and Middle Eastern families, saving face quietly rules out asking for outside help. It helps to shift the frame. Seeking therapy is not an admission that the marriage has failed — it is an investment in the emotional infrastructure a family runs on.
What to bring into the room
Once you have booked, how you show up shapes what you get back.
Come as a curious researcher, not a determined prosecutor. The most useful shift I see in a first session is from "you always do this" to "I wonder why we keep getting stuck here." The first invites a defence. The second invites an answer. You are not there to establish who is right; you are there to work out why the same argument keeps arriving in different clothes.
Be honest, and be kind about it. Therapy is the one place where polite silence actively gets in the way. If you feel unheard, or a particular habit is wearing you down, the therapy room is the safe container to say so. That is what the therapist is there for — to keep the conversation productive rather than destructive. Couples sessions at our practice typically need ninety minutes precisely because both people need room to speak and be heard properly.
When the novelty wears off
The honeymoon phase of therapy tends to last three or four sessions. Then the real work starts, and resistance surfaces. This is normal, it happens to nearly everyone, and recognising it is half of moving through it.
It usually takes one of four forms.
Avoiding the difficult subject. Deflecting, changing the topic, or steering away when a past conflict or an old wound comes up. Avoidance is protective — it is trying to spare you discomfort — but it also prevents the exploration that makes the discomfort worth having.
Defensiveness and blame-shifting. Reaching for what your partner did rather than your own contribution. It is often visible before it is audible: avoiding eye contact, tightening posture, shallow breathing, and short, minimal replies.
Stonewalling and withdrawal. Shutting down or disengaging to avoid escalation. It brings relief in the moment, but over time it erodes trust and intimacy more quietly and more thoroughly than arguing does.
Minimal engagement. Turning up without really participating, or letting the between-session work slide. Scepticism is fine and often useful. Absence isn't.
Part of a therapist's job is to spot these as they happen and name them gently — not as failings, but as information. Resistance almost always points at a fear underneath it, and that fear is usually the most useful thing in the room.
Two habits protect you through this stretch. Schedule sessions like a board meeting — in a city as time-starved as Singapore, "fitting it in" reliably means not doing it, so block the time weeks ahead. And don't cancel because you've had a good week. Those weeks are the best possible conditions for therapy: with no crisis to firefight, you have the mental space to do preventative work.
It also helps not to sprint from a difficult session straight into a work call. Fifteen minutes together afterwards — a quiet coffee, a walk to the car — lets the session settle rather than evaporate.
The work between sessions
In my experience across individual, couples and family work, what happens between sessions is the single best indicator of whether things will shift. An hour and a half a week is not what changes a relationship. What you do with the other hundred and sixty-six hours is.
That work does not need to be elaborate. It is mostly experiments.
Thought experiments — noticing an assumption as it forms, and asking whether you actually know it to be true.
Behaviour experiments — trying the ten-minute check-in, or responding differently at the exact moment you would normally withdraw.
Keeping what works — and, with your therapist, letting go of or adjusting what doesn't.
Some of it will feel awkward or staged at first. That is what learning a new habit feels like from the inside; you are retraining two nervous systems to connect in an unfamiliar way, and the awkwardness fades faster than most people expect.
My aim as a therapist is not for couples to depend on the room. It is for them to leave with ways of solving problems outside it.
How long does it take?
Most of the couples I work with do six to ten sessions, usually weekly at first and spacing out as things steady. Some come back for a handful of sessions years later around a particular transition — a move, a new baby, a career change, children leaving home. That is not a relapse. It is maintenance, and it is what the couples who do best tend to do.
Couples therapy is not about finding a judge. It is about finding a bridge. Starting takes more courage than continuing does, and the couples who get the most from it are rarely the ones with the least to work on.
Frequently asked questions
Does couples therapy work if only one of us wants to go? It can, and it is worth starting even then. Many couples begin with one partner in individual sessions working on their own contribution to the pattern, and the other joining later once they have seen it is not an ambush.
How long are couples sessions? Ninety minutes, so both partners have proper time to speak. Individual sessions are usually sixty minutes.
How many sessions will we need? Most couples work through six to ten sessions. Complex or long-standing difficulties can take longer, and your therapist will talk that through with you rather than leave it open-ended.
Will the therapist take sides? No. In couples work the relationship is the client. The aim is to understand the cycle you are both caught in, not to determine who is at fault.
Geetika Malhotra is Director and Principal Psychotherapist at Balanced Life Psychotherapy & Counselling in Singapore. She holds an MA in Advanced Counselling and a postgraduate certificate in psychotherapy, and is certified in the Gottman Method and EMDR. She has practised for over eleven years with individuals, couples and families in Singapore and internationally. Contact us to book a session.
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