Why couples therapy is not the right help when there is violence

“He said he’ll come if we go together. That on my own I’ll just turn everything against him again. It’s not that bad, really — he only gets angry when I provoke him. If I learned to talk differently, everything would be fine.”

This is a request that therapists who work with couples will recognise. The person making it wants something completely understandable: for things at home to stop, for their partner to listen to someone, for a third person in the room to help, for the two of them to love each other again. And couples therapy seems like exactly the right place for that. After all, it exists for relationships that aren’t working. Doesn’t it?

When there is violence in a relationship, though — physical, sexual, emotional or economic — couples therapy is not an appropriate form of help. Not because the couple is “too broken”, and not because therapists don’t want to help. But because a shared room is not safe in that kind of relationship, and because the very frame of couples therapy says something that isn’t true when there is violence. In this post I explain why, what helps instead, and where the rare exceptions lie that the profession debates.

First, though, something that has to come at the very beginning: if you are in danger right now, call 112 or the police on 113 (in Slovenia). If you need to talk, the SOS helpline for women and children affected by violence is available on 080 11 55 (in Slovenia), and the mental health crisis line Klic v duševni stiski on 01 520 99 00 (in Slovenia, every day from 7 pm to 7 am).

How often this happens

Violence in intimate relationships is not a rarity that happens “somewhere else”. In 2021 the World Health Organization published an estimate that more than one in four women aged 15 to 49 who have ever been in a relationship — 27 per cent — have experienced physical or sexual violence from a partner at least once in their lives. That estimate doesn’t even include the forms that leave no bruises: constant humiliation, control over money, phone and friends, threats.

This leads to a simple but uncomfortable conclusion: among the couples who come to therapy because of “arguments” or “poor communication”, there are some where those words hide violence. Often nobody mentions it. The person using it doesn’t see it or plays it down. The person experiencing it is afraid of what will happen if they say it — or has grown so used to the idea that it is their own fault that they no longer recognise it as violence. I wrote about how that belief takes root in Self-image after abuse: when you believe it was your fault.

That is why professional guidance for work with couples has stressed the same thing for more than twenty years: before couples therapy even begins, the therapist must check with each partner separately whether there is violence and fear in the relationship. Michele Bograd and Fernando Mederos proposed exactly this back in 1999 — and the principle hasn’t changed since.

What couples therapy assumes

To understand why this form of help doesn’t work when there is violence, it helps to look at what it rests on. Couples therapy assumes a few things that in an ordinary relationship we don’t even notice, because they are taken for granted:

• That both people can speak freely in the room. That nobody weighs every word against what will happen in the car on the way home.
• That both are roughly equally strong. Not in everything and not always, but enough that neither has a hold over the other that could be used as a threat.
• That both share responsibility for the pattern. That arguments go round in a circle to which each brings their own part — as I described in The Four Horsemen in relationships.
• That emotional openness is safe. That the vulnerability you show in a session won’t later be used against you.

In a violent relationship, none of these four assumptions holds. And when therapy starts building on foundations that aren’t there, it doesn’t just fail to help — it can do harm.

The first reason: safety after the session

The most important reason is the simplest. A session lasts as long as it lasts, and then both of you go home. If in the session you said what goes on at home — what he said to you, how he grabbed you, how afraid of him you are — you said it in front of the person who has the power to punish you for it.

People who live with violence know this better than anyone. So in joint sessions they often say nothing at all. Or they do speak, and then pay the price at home. In Trauma and Recovery, Judith Herman wrote that the first condition for any recovery from trauma is establishing safety — only then does everything else follow. Couples therapy in the presence of violence reverses that order: it asks a person to open up before their safety is secured.

Even when there is no outburst after the session, something quieter can happen: your partner later reminds you of what you said, mockingly repeats your words, or “warns” you that next time you’ll speak differently. The therapy room becomes one more place where you have to be careful.

The second reason: the message that you share responsibility

Couples therapy is a systemic way of working. It sees the relationship as a whole, in which one person’s behaviour responds to the other’s. For most couples this is an enormously helpful perspective — instead of hunting for someone to blame, the couple learns to see the circle they are both caught in.

With violence, however, this very perspective is dangerous. When the couple sits together and we talk about “your pattern”, the person using violence hears confirmation of their story: she contributes too; if she didn’t provoke me, I wouldn’t get angry. And the person experiencing violence hears confirmation of their fear: it really is my fault, I just have to change.

That story is exactly what keeps violence going. Evan Stark, who described the concept of coercive control in his book of the same name, emphasises that violence in an intimate relationship is often not a single outburst but a pattern of control that gradually strips the other person of their freedom. You’ll find a short explanation in the knowledge base under violence in a relationship. The person who uses that pattern is responsible for it — regardless of what the other person said, did or forgot to do. An argument has two participants. Violence has one person who chooses it.

The third reason: the therapist can unwittingly become part of the game

People who use violence are often very convincing in the room. Calm, reasonable, worried about their partner, sometimes even funny. The person experiencing violence, by contrast, may be tense, confused, tearful or angry — and from the outside looks like the “more difficult” of the two. That is no accident: this is what a person looks like who lives in a constant state of alert.

If the therapist doesn’t recognise the violence, they may unwittingly side with the one who seems more composed. Or they may try to be “neutral” — which in a relationship with unequal power is not neutrality at all, but quiet support for the stronger one. It helps to know how manipulation works: it isn’t a lie that’s easy to catch, but a shifting of the frame in which the conversation takes place.

In relational family therapy, in which I am training, we pay a great deal of attention to how patterns from home repeat themselves in the therapy room. That is precisely why a shared room is so risky when there is violence: the pattern of control doesn’t stop at the door, it repeats itself in front of the therapist too.

How it sounds in practice

A short scene of the kind that can happen at first contact (composite, not a real person):

“I’d like to book couples therapy. My husband has finally agreed.”
“Thank you for writing. Before a joint session I like to talk to each partner separately. Is that all right with you?”
“Why separately? It’s about the two of us.”
“Because there are things that are sometimes easier to say without the other person in the room. Can I ask you something? Are you ever afraid of him?”
A long silence. “Not always. Only when he drinks. Or when he can’t find things that I’m looking for.”
“Thank you for telling me. Then I’d like to help you find something that is meant for you first.”

There is no diagnosis in this scene and no judgement. Just a question that has to be asked in private — and an answer that changes which kind of help is right.

I also need to say something about myself here. I am a therapist in training under supervision in marriage and family therapy, not a specialist in working with violence. When I notice signs of violence while working with a couple, my task is to take it seriously, consult my supervisor and point the person towards services that are trained for this. Not to do that work myself.

What helps instead

If couples therapy isn’t the right starting point, that doesn’t mean there is no help. It means the help is split into two separate paths — each with its own purpose.

For the person experiencing violence, the first step is safety and support that is meant for them alone: counselling services for people affected by violence, the SOS helpline (080 11 55 in Slovenia), the social work centre, the police if needed, and, when home is no longer safe, a safe house or crisis centre. An overview of where to find each of these in Slovenia is in Where to get help with abuse in Slovenia: a map for the first step. This is also where individual therapy has its place — somewhere you can speak without fearing who is listening.

For the person using violence, there are specialised programmes that work on responsibility for the violence, not on “better communication”. In Slovenia some are run by non-governmental organisations; the social work centre can tell you where the nearest one is. If you recognise yourself on the other side of this description, When you recognise yourself as the one who is violent is written for you.

Only when the violence has long stopped, when the person who used it has accepted full responsibility and when the other is no longer afraid can the question of joint work on the relationship be raised — if both of them truly want that. By then it is a different kind of therapy from what it would have been at the start.

Where the profession isn’t unanimous

It’s only fair to say that the question isn’t quite as black and white as the title might suggest. There is a serious debate about it in the field, and a few nuances are worth knowing.

The sociologist Michael P. Johnson pointed out that “violence in a couple” is not a single phenomenon. He distinguishes between what he called intimate terrorism — violence that is part of systematic control over a partner — and situational couple violence, where arguments occasionally escalate into pushing or a blow without one partner systematically controlling the other. The two forms have different causes, follow a different course and call for a different response.

Building on this, a group around Sandra Stith developed special programmes for couples where violence is rare and mild, nobody is afraid of the other and both want to stay together. These programmes include careful separate screening of each partner, ongoing safety checks and clear agreements about when joint work stops. The early research was encouraging — but this is a specialised way of working with very carefully selected couples, not ordinary couples therapy.

It doesn’t follow that “there’s only a little violence with us, so couples therapy is fine”. Telling these forms apart is a demanding professional assessment that a couple can’t make on their own — nor can a therapist without specialist training. If you are afraid of someone at home, that is not situational violence. Fear is the most reliable sign that a shared room is not the right path.

And one more thing: this post doesn’t say couples therapy is dangerous in general. Most couples who argue, even loudly, are not in a violent relationship. For them couples therapy is valuable — I described how it can be done safely in How we argue safely in couples therapy, and when the right time for it is in When to start couples therapy.

Exercise: a space that is only yours

This exercise is not a test that will tell you whether your relationship is dangerous. No exercise can do that. It is meant to help you create a small space where you can think about your relationship without your partner beside you. If you are afraid at home, only do it when it is safe — and rather call than write.

1. Find a safe moment and a safe device. A time when you are alone, and a device your partner has no access to. If they check your phone, notes on paper that you keep elsewhere are safer.
2. Write down three things you wouldn’t dare say in a joint session. Don’t explain or justify them. Just write them down.
3. Next to each one, write what you fear would happen if you said it. The answer will tell you more than any definition.
4. Call someone who is there only for you. You can call the SOS helpline (080 11 55 in Slovenia) anonymously, even just to ask what is going on. You don’t have to be “sure” that it is violence.
5. Choose one person outside the relationship you can tell how things really are. Not so that they take action, but so that you are no longer the only one who knows.

If only one of you wants therapy

Sometimes it happens the other way round: the partner who uses violence suggests couples therapy, hoping the therapist will “rule” in their favour, or to show goodwill. Sometimes the suggestion is sincere, sometimes it is part of the same pattern. Either way, couples therapy must not become a condition by which someone proves they are trying, and it must not become a stage on which the control continues.

If you are wondering whether it makes sense for only one of you to go to therapy, read When only one of you wants therapy. When there is violence, the answer is clearer than usual: individual support for the person experiencing violence is not “half” of couples therapy. It is the right place to start. And setting boundaries in such a relationship isn’t something you need to learn so that the relationship gets better — it is something the violence won’t allow you, however skilfully you set them.

What to remember

• When there is violence in a relationship, couples therapy is not an appropriate form of help — because a shared room isn’t safe and because the frame implies a shared responsibility that doesn’t exist.
• Responsibility for violence lies with the person who uses it. Provocation, tiredness or alcohol don’t excuse it.
• Help runs along two separate paths: safety and support for the person experiencing violence, a specialised programme for the person using it.
• The profession distinguishes between forms of violence, but specialists make that assessment — fear of your partner is a sign that the joint path is not the right one.
• In danger (in Slovenia): 112 or 113. To talk: SOS helpline 080 11 55, Klic v duševni stiski 01 520 99 00.