What Do I Do If My Partner Doesn’t Want to Come to Therapy?

What do you do when you want to go to couples therapy and your partner doesn’t? You have a few options. 

The first is to explore with them why they don’t want to come. There is a lot of stigma around couples therapy that might be holding your partner back. Are they nervous that the therapist will take sides? Or they have a hard time talking about their feelings? Or they are worried that it is just the last stop before splitting up? To those I would say; a good therapist won’t take sides, they will balance the room and try to help you each have a deeper understanding of yourself and each other; a good therapist helps you learn how to talk about your feelings in a way that can enhance all your relationships, not just your intimate partner relationships, and that’s a thing worth learning. The last concern is common and real, sometimes the goal of therapy is to uncover the truth, not just to mend relationships, and sometimes the truth of it is that a relationship has run its course. Often times people come to therapy too late and they just want to say they “tried everything” before calling the relationship off.  And to that I would say please come to therapy before you NEED it. There is so much good work to be done to help strengthen a relationship before it falls apart. 

The second is to go by yourself, there is a lot of good work you can do alone to have a better relationship and then you can teach your partner your new tools in a setting that is more comfortable to them. 

And third, you can accept things the way they are and continue to carry on.

If you have been wanted to go to therapy I will say, go now, mend the little cracks before they become giant crevasses. Little cracks are much easier to mend. Make your appointment today.