Your Partner Won't Go to Couple's Therapy, Now What?

Your relationship is clearly the problem in your life right now. Everything would be fine if only you did not have to deal with these relationship issues. Actually, they are your partner's issues but they're getting in the way of your happy life. You told him or her you want to go to couple's therapy and they refuse to go. Now what?

I'm not saying you should give up on couple's therapy but I am saying you may be able to get help regarding the relationship, even if you go to therapy alone.

The problem's in a relationship are never just the product of one partner's behavior. It is valuable to look at both the substantive issues as well as the way you approach conflict individually and together. Knowing problems in a relationship are never solely caused by one partner, dig deeper to find out your role on the path to healing your heart.

Be true to you. You are not perfect but love yourself not just despite this but because of this. You deserve to be in a healthy relationship. Even if you don't end up remaining in this relationship, learning about your own role in the break-up can help you to avoid making the same mistakes in future relationships.

When conflict arises how do you approach it?  Whether you decide to maintain the status quo and stay together, move toward divorce or separation, or commit to couple's counseling for a period of time during which separation and divorce are off the table, understanding your feelings about conflict and how you process conflict is essential.

Do you avoid conflict? If so, what are your typical behaviors for avoiding conflict? Are you afraid of conflict? What does your fear of conflict lead you to do?  Is your self-esteem threatened by conflict arising in your relationship?  Bring your attitudes about conflict into conscious awareness and see if there are major assumptions that are governing your life that influence your relationship.

You are the authority on your own feelings and memories. Are you open to sharing your feelings with your partner? Do you do so directly or make them guess how their behavior is affecting you?

There is an adaptive reason you that you feel is fostered by being in the relationship, even though things aren't good and your partner does not want to join you in getting help. It is time to figure out how you believe you are served by the relationship and whether or not the benefit is real and worth it.

Sometimes people remain in unhealthy relationships with people who are unhealthy so that they can blame their problems on the relationship and avoid looking at themselves. Sometimes people remain in unhealthy relationships because they only want to see things as they wish they were, rather than as they are, because they fear being alone or the pain that comes with a break-up. There are many reasons people remain in unhealthy relationships. Figure out how the dysfunction seems to be serving some objective.

You and your partner see things differently. Why do you think this is? Do you have access to different sources of information? Do you come from different cultural backgrounds? Are the costs of change different for each of you? What does your partner want to have happen at this juncture in the relationship?  Do they have realistic or unrealistic expectations?

Attachment refers to the way we approach our feelings and needs. How we communicate and how we resolve conflict in relationships is influenced by our overall attachment style.  Our process in this regard has grown from our early life interactions with our primary caretakers.

If we have learned to approach our feelings and needs in relationship from an insecure base, we experience fear in the relationship which triggers feelings of disconnection or a lack of feelings based on shutting down and becoming numb. Emotional vulnerability creates feelings of anger, jealousy, sadness, fear of abandonment or engulfment or fear of emotional connection. When our attachment style is less secure our window of tolerance of conflict and stress in the relationship shrinks and we become less able to respond to stress and conflict in a healthy way.

If we have learned to approach our feelings and needs in relationship from a secure base, we will not find it difficult to be authentic in the relationship with our partner or ourselves. The relationship with our partner emanates from a place of self-compassion and self-love. We respond to relationship stress with a greater window of tolerance.