What Is Couples Therapy?
Couples therapy is a form of psychotherapy designed to help romantic partners improve their relationship, deepen their emotional connection, and navigate challenges together. Whether couples are dating, engaged, cohabiting, or married, therapy provides a supportive space to explore patterns of communication, rebuild trust, resolve conflicts, and strengthen their bond. Guided by a trained therapist, couples can gain insight into each other’s needs and perspectives, learn healthier ways to interact, and develop tools for managing stressors or transitions in their lives. Couples therapy is not just for relationships in crisis; it can also be a proactive way to nurture a growing partnership.
Take the first step to learn more about how couples therapy can benefit your relationship. Contact Balanced Mind of New York for a free, 15-minute consultation.
Couples Therapy Versus Marriage Counseling (or Marital Therapy)
Couples therapy and marriage counseling (marital therapy) are essentially the same therapeutic approach, with the primary difference being that marital therapy specifically focuses on married couples, while couples therapy is a broader term that includes all intimate partnerships regardless of marital status. Both use similar therapeutic techniques to improve communication, learn healthier conflict resolution strategies, and enhance emotional intimacy.
What Type of Relationship Issues Can Be Addressed in Therapy?
Many couples believe that couples counseling is for people on the brink of divorce or about assigning fault to one partner. These myths about relationship therapy can discourage couples from addressing some of the more routine relationship challenges: differences in communication styles, unhealthy patterns of managing conflicts, or simply wanting a deeper connection with their partner. Couples therapy isn’t about identifying who is “right” or “wrong” in the relationship, but rather to help the couple explore their unique relationship challenges with a focus on strengthening their communication and relationship health.
Addiction
Couples therapy can help partners understand the role addiction plays in their relationship and develop healthier communication and coping strategies. By working together, they can build a supportive environment that encourages recovery and reduces relapse risks.
Balancing Work and Home Life
Therapists help couples establish boundaries around work commitments and develop strategies for sharing household responsibilities more equitably. Counseling addresses the strain of competing priorities and assists couples in making intentional choices about how they spend their time and energy together.
Communication Problems
Couples therapy provides a structured environment to learn effective communication skills, including active listening and expressing needs without blame. Therapists often teach specific techniques that help partners understand each other’s perspectives and break destructive communication patterns.
Conflict Resolution
Therapy teaches couples how to disagree constructively and find mutually acceptable solutions to recurring problems. Counselors help identify underlying patterns in conflicts and develop new approaches that honor both partners’ needs, emotions, and relationship expectations.
Emotional Distance
Therapy addresses feelings of disconnection by helping partners recognize attachment needs and develop greater emotional accessibility to each other. Counselors create opportunities for deeper emotional sharing and help couples rebuild their sense of partnership and friendship.
Extended Family Issues
Counseling helps couples navigate complicated relationships with in-laws and establish appropriate boundaries while maintaining family connections. Therapists support partners in presenting a united front when dealing with family pressures or interference.
Financial Conflicts
Therapy helps couples recognize the different values they hold about money. By engaging in nonjudgmental dialogue about financial health, couples develop collaborative approaches to financial management. Counselors facilitate difficult conversations about spending habits, financial goals, and the emotional meanings we attach to money.
Infidelity and Rebuilding Trust
Therapists help couples navigate the emotional injuries of betrayal by creating a safe space to process complicated feelings, such as betrayal and hurt, and rebuild trust gradually. The therapeutic process focuses on understanding the factors that contributed to the breach of trust and establishing new boundaries and commitments.
Intimacy and Sexual Concerns
One partner may identify lack of sex as a substantial complication in an otherwise seemingly healthy relationship. Counseling addresses barriers to physical and emotional intimacy by encouraging open conversations about needs and desires in a judgment-free environment. Therapists can help couples understand differences in desire, work through physical issues, or address emotional blocks that affect romance and a sexual connection.
Life Transitions
Therapy provides support during major life changes such as having children, career shifts, or retirement, helping couples adapt their relationship to new circumstances. Counselors help partners navigate changing roles and expectations that often accompany significant life transitions.
Medical Illness
Couples therapy provides a space for partners to navigate the emotional and logistical challenges of managing a medical illness together. It strengthens teamwork and emotional support, helping both partners adjust to new roles and stresses.
Mental Illness
Through couples therapy, partners can learn to manage the effects of mental illness on their relationship and build empathy and patience. Therapy also teaches communication techniques that reduce conflict and foster mutual understanding.
Parenting Disagreements
Counseling supports couples in developing a unified parenting approach while respecting individual parenting styles and backgrounds. Couples therapists help parents identify shared values to create consistency for children while managing differences in disciplinary approaches.
Unresolved Trauma
Unresolved trauma can significantly impact how individuals relate to their partners, often leading to misunderstandings, emotional distance, or reactive behaviors. In couples therapy, a trained therapist helps partners recognize how past traumatic experiences may be influencing present dynamics. By creating a safe environment, the therapist guides the couple in exploring these deeper emotional wounds, fostering empathy, compassion, and meaningful communication between partners. Through trauma-informed approaches, such as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy, couples can learn to communicate more openly, regulate emotional responses, and support each other’s healing process, ultimately strengthening their emotional connection and resilience as a team.
Benefits of Couples Therapy
Couples counseling offers significant benefits by providing a structured, neutral environment where partners can address relationship challenges with professional guidance. A trained couples therapist helps couples develop better communication skills, resolve conflicts constructively, and gain deeper understanding of each other’s needs and perspectives, ultimately strengthening their emotional connection and intimacy.
Beyond addressing immediate problems, couples therapy can equip partners with valuable tools for long-term relationship maintenance, including improved empathy, effective listening techniques, and healthy boundary-setting. The process often leads to personal growth for both individuals while reinforcing their commitment to the relationship, resulting in greater satisfaction, trust, and resilience as a couple.
Types of Couples Therapy
There are many therapeutic approaches that are well-established for couples therapy. The couples therapist will work with you to identify your specific needs and may recommend one or more of the following therapeutic approaches:
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) for Couples
EMDR is a trauma-focused therapy that can be integrated into couples work when past trauma is impacting the relationship. It helps individuals reprocess distressing memories, reducing their emotional charge, which allows for more grounded, present-moment interactions with their partner.
Schema Therapy for Couples
Schema Therapy identifies long-standing emotional patterns (schemas) developed in early life that affect how individuals behave and react in relationships. By recognizing these patterns, couples can develop more supportive ways of responding to each other’s emotional triggers and unmet needs.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for Couples
CBT helps couples recognize and change unhelpful thought patterns and behaviors that contribute to relationship distress. It emphasizes problem-solving, setting realistic expectations, and practicing positive communication techniques.
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)
ERP can be adapted within couples work when obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is part of the relationship dynamic, especially with a therapist trained in both ERP and couples counseling. It helps reduce unintentional partner accommodations, such as providing constant reassurance, that reinforce OCD behaviors. Through ERP, couples learn to navigate these patterns together, with the non-OCD partner offering support during exposures and promoting healthier responses. This collaborative approach not only reduces symptoms but also builds empathy, trust, and relationship resilience.
The Gottman Method
This approach is based on decades of research and focuses on building friendship, managing conflict, and creating shared meaning. Couples learn practical tools for improving communication, reducing defensiveness, and fostering connection.
How Do I Pay For EMDR Therapy?
Balanced Mind of New York is a private pay practice and does not accept insurance. We believe in providing individualized, high-quality care without the restrictions or limitations often associated with insurance-based treatment.
If you have out-of-network benefits, we’re happy to provide a superbill upon request, which you can submit directly to your insurance provider for potential reimbursement. Please consult your provider to understand your coverage and eligibility for out-of-network mental health services.
We accept Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express, and HSA/FSA cards.
To learn more, please contact Balanced Mind of New York.