What To Expect From Couples Counselling

Most people booking a first couples counselling session are picturing something between a courtroom and an interrogation. Someone will be found at fault, probably them, by a stranger with a notepad.

We are Richard and Helena Boyd and we have run a couples practice in Perth since 2005. This page describes what a couples counselling session actually involves, what the research honestly shows about whether it works, and the situations where we would tell you not to book one. Some of what follows corrects figures repeated on nearly every other page about this.

What Couples Counselling Actually Is

Couples therapy is a structured conversation with a third person in the room whose job is the relationship rather than either of you.

That last part is the bit that surprises people. A couples therapist is not an adjudicator and is not there to decide who is right. The unit being worked with is what happens between you, which means the counselling process is aimed at relationship dynamics rather than at finding fault. Most of the work involves noticing negative patterns as they occur, slowing them down, and building a deeper understanding of what each person is protecting when the pattern runs.

Relationship counselling and couples counselling mean the same thing in ordinary use. Family counselling and family therapy are broader, bringing in other family members where the difficulty sits across a household rather than between two people, and a family therapist works with that wider system.

Before You Book, One Important Exception

There is a situation where joint sessions are the wrong setting, and it belongs near the top of a page like this rather than buried at the bottom.

Couples counselling is generally not appropriate where there is family violence or coercive control. Australian professional guidance is that joint counselling is usually contraindicated in these circumstances, for a straightforward reason. You cannot speak freely in front of someone who is using control against you, and what gets said in the room can be used against you afterwards. Individual counselling is the safer starting point, alongside a specialist service.

If that is your situation, please call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732, the Women’s Domestic Violence Helpline on 1800 007 339 or the Men’s Domestic Violence Helpline on 1800 000 599. In an emergency call 000. This is why we speak with each partner separately before beginning couples work, and it is not a formality.

What Happens In The First Session

The first session is mostly us listening and asking basic questions, and it is less exposing than people expect.

Both partners present is the usual arrangement for an initial session. We will ask what brought you now rather than a year ago, what each of you would want to be different, and something about your family history and how conflict was handled where each of you grew up. We will set ground rules, mainly that neither of you gets talked over and neither of you gets diagnosed by the other. We will explain confidentiality and its limits, which the section below sets out properly.

You do not need a clear idea of the primary issues before you arrive. Plenty of couples open with some version of not knowing how to describe it, and that is workable material rather than a problem.

Our sessions run 55 minutes. Worth knowing that couples sessions are commonly longer elsewhere, since many counsellors run 75 or 90 minute first appointments to give two people room. Relationships Australia, for instance, runs a 90 minute first session when partners attend together.

What Happens In The Sessions After That

The initial session gives a picture. What follows is the actual work, and it settles into a rhythm fairly quickly.

A typical couples therapy session takes something from daily life and slows it down. What did each of you hear. What did each of you assume the other meant. Where did it turn. Two people rarely come away from the same experiences with the same account, and holding both without ranking them is much of the therapeutic process. Active listening gets taught a great deal and matters less on its own than whether each of you can sit with the other’s perspectives long enough to feel heard. The aim is not better arguing technique so much as the ability to say a vulnerable thing without the other person hearing an accusation, to manage conflict without it running away, and to make and accept repair attempts once things have gone wrong.

We commonly suggest something to try between sessions. In individual therapy research, clients who engage with between session tasks tend to do somewhat better, with a correlation of about .26 across 23 studies, though this has not been tested specifically in couples work. Treat homework as useful rather than proven.

It is also standard practice, and built into most established models, to meet each partner individually during assessment. We will tell you in advance how we handle anything raised in an individual session, because Australian codes do not set a single rule on it and you deserve to know ours before you start.

How Long Couples Counselling Takes

You will read that couples therapy averages 12 sessions. There is no primary source for that figure anywhere, and the real numbers are less tidy.

In the largest study of couple therapy in routine practice, covering 877 clients, the average was 23 sessions, with a range from 2 to 150. Some couples come for a handful of appointments. Others work for a year or more. What that spread tells you is that anyone quoting a standard course length is guessing.

You will also read that many couples notice improvements within 3 to 6 sessions. That has no source either, and the research on early sessions points the other way. About a third of couples are already off track by the third session, and couples who are off track early benefit considerably less. That is not a reason for pessimism, it is the reason we ask you directly whether this is helping rather than assuming it.

On the related myth, couples wait six years before getting help is also unsupported. When researchers measured it across 270 people entering therapy, the average was 2.68 years from the problems starting, and most came within two years.

What The Research Actually Shows

Here is the honest picture, which is better than nothing and worse than the marketing.

The average couple completing therapy in controlled trials ends up better off than about 80 per cent of comparable couples who received no help. At the end of treatment roughly half recover, about a fifth improve without fully recovering, a fifth are unchanged, and around one in eight are worse. Gains are not guaranteed to hold. At five year follow up about a third remain recovered.

You will see 75 per cent success quoted widely. It traces to a 1999 meta analysis of four trials of a single model, three of them run by that model’s own founders, then generalised to couples therapy as a whole. That inference does not hold, and a page that opens with an inflated number is not a page to trust with the rest.

One more correction worth making. Communication difficulties are often called the number one cause of relationship breakdown. Communication problems is certainly the reason most often given, named by 33 per cent of men and 23 per cent of women in a national Australian survey of 650 divorced people. But a reason given in hindsight is not a demonstrated cause. Research following more than 4,000 couples found communication mostly moves with relationship satisfaction rather than driving it. Better communication skills help, and improve communication is a reasonable goal, but communication issues are rarely the whole story underneath relationship problems, and the relationship issues sitting beneath them usually need naming too.

The Methods You Will See Named

A professional counsellor should be able to explain what they use and why. Here is what the named approaches are actually worth.

Emotionally Focused Therapy has the strongest research base of the branded models, though independent reviews find smaller effects than the developers’ own analyses did. The Gottman Method draws on John Gottman’s extensive observational research, but the method as a treatment has not been tested in an independent randomised trial, which is a different thing from the research being good. Imago relationship therapy has one small randomised trial of 30 couples that found improvement in satisfaction with very little clinically significant recovery.

What comes through across the literature is that structured approaches perform similarly to each other. That is a reason to choose a relationship counsellor you can be honest with rather than to shop for a brand.

What Qualifications Actually Mean In Australia

This is worth understanding before choosing anyone, because the reassuring language on most websites does not mean what it appears to.

Counselling and psychotherapy are not registered professions in Australia. There is no legal minimum qualification for relationship therapy and the titles are not protected. You will see claims that couples therapists typically hold a master’s or doctoral degree, and that is a description of the United States rather than here. A diploma is sufficient for entry level membership of the Australian Counselling Association. Certification from the AAMFT, which also appears on Australian pages, is a United States credential tied to United States licensing and carries no standing here.

What you can actually check is registration on the ARCAP register and membership of PACFA or the ACA, along with the level, since the levels differ substantially in required client hours and supervision. Ask directly. A good therapist will answer without getting defensive.

Confidentiality And Its Limits

Most pages say your sessions are completely confidential. That is not accurate, and the inaccuracy can cost you.

What you tell us stays in a confidential space, with three exceptions. We may disclose with your consent, where there is serious risk to your safety or someone else’s, or where the law requires it. On child abuse specifically, we are not mandatory reporters under the Children and Community Services Act 2004, since that duty applies to a defined list including registered psychologists, doctors, nurses, teachers and school counsellors. Like any adult in Western Australia we can and will report concerns about a child’s safety, and we will act on serious risk regardless of whether we are compelled to.

The point most people are never told is that confidentiality is an ethical duty rather than legal privilege. Counselling notes are not privileged and can be subpoenaed in family law proceedings. Statutory protections exist for court approved family counselling and family dispute resolution, and they do not automatically extend to private couples counselling. Worth holding in mind when deciding what goes on the record.

When Only One Partner Wants To Be There

Not everybody arrives with a shared intention, and that is a recognised situation rather than a reason to give up.

Where one partner is leaning out and the other is leaning in, there is a structured approach called discernment counselling, running to a maximum of five sessions and consisting mostly of individual conversations. Its purpose is clarity rather than reconciliation, and the three possible outcomes are staying as you are, separating, or committing to a defined period of couples therapy with separation off the table. In its published series of 100 couples, 47 per cent chose therapy, 41 per cent chose to separate and 12 per cent kept things as they were.

Counselling does not always aim to keep people together. Helping two people separate clearly, particularly where children are involved, is a legitimate outcome and sometimes the kinder one. Individual therapy alongside or instead is often the right call, and one partner attending individual counselling can shift a relationship on its own.

What This Looks Like In Practice

These are composite examples drawn from our couples work, with identifying details changed.

A couple in their thirties arrived after one of them read about dysfunctional patterns online and recognised their weekly argument. The pattern was real. What neither had noticed was that it started the same way each time, roughly forty seconds before either of them thought it had.

A couple in their fifties came in with communication difficulties as the presenting complaint. Both were articulate and neither had trouble expressing themselves. The difficulty was that fifteen years of unraised grievances were being expressed through the topic at hand rather than directly.

Frequently Asked Questions

The questions people ask us most often before booking.

Does A Couples Counsellor Take Sides?

No, and the structure prevents it. The relationship is the client rather than either person, so we are not the therapist for one of you against the other. What we will do is name a pattern honestly, and that can feel like siding with someone when it lands closer to one person on a given day.

Can You Attend Counselling If Your Partner Will Not?

Yes. Individual counselling for relationship difficulties is common and useful. You cannot change another person from the chair, but you can change your side of a pattern, and patterns usually shift when one participant stops running their half of it.

Is Couples Counselling Covered By Medicare?

No. There is no Medicare item for couples or relationship counselling in Australia, and rebates under the Better Access scheme cover individual sessions with specific provider types for a diagnosed condition. We are psychotherapists rather than registered psychologists, so we do not offer rebates. Relationships Australia WA offers counselling on a sliding scale based on household income.

What If You Are Not On The Same Page About What You Want?

That is common enough to have its own approach, described above. Being at different points is not a disqualification. It is usually more workable when said out loud in the first session than when one of you spends six sessions concealing it.

Getting Started In Perth

If you take one thing from this page, make it that couples counselling is less exposing and less conclusive than people imagine. Nobody delivers a verdict. Two people get a supportive space, a safe space to say difficult things, and some practical tools for talking about what has become impossible to talk about at home.

The realistic version is this. Therapy gives you a safe environment and new tools, and roughly half of couples who complete it recover, with a real minority who do not. People tend to arrive expecting either rescue or blame and get neither, which is usually a relief. What makes the difference is less the method than whether both of you can be honest in the room, and whether you keep showing up for a while after the relief of finally raising it. Couples who do tend to end up doing things differently rather than merely understanding them better.

If this part of your life has stopped improving on its own, positive change usually starts with one appointment rather than with a decision about the whole relationship. Booking a first session is not a commitment to anything beyond the next session.

We see couples in person at our Inglewood rooms and online across Western Australia, within and outside business hours, with evening and Saturday morning appointments and no referral needed. Call us on 1300 956 227, book a session, or read more about our couples counselling.

This page is general information and is not professional medical advice or a diagnosis. If you are distressed, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14, or 000 in an emergency.