Couples therapy before things get hard: before the wedding or moving in

“Why would we go to therapy? We don’t even argue.”

They are sitting on the sofa with a laptop between them and a spreadsheet open: venue, photographer, music, guest list. The date is set, the deposit paid. They agreed on how many guests to invite from his side in ten minutes. They have not yet talked about whether they will have children, or when. Not because they are avoiding it, but because each of them takes it for granted that they are on the same page. Each in a different direction.

In Slovenia, couples therapy still has a reputation as the last stop. A couple goes when things are already bad — after an affair, after years of silence, when one of them is already packing a suitcase. Yet research has shown for decades that one of the best moments to work on a relationship is precisely when everything is still fine: before the wedding, before moving in together, before the first child. In this post I will write about what we know about preventive couples therapy, which conversations are worth having beforehand, and where prevention has its limits.

Why we wait until things are bad

At the start, a relationship looks like something that simply works. Being in love is a strong glue: it softens differences, increases patience and gives you the feeling that you will be able to agree on everything when the time comes. So therapy at this stage can seem almost like a bad omen. “If we need help already, what will it be like later?”

The logic is understandable, but it runs backwards. Later will be harder precisely because the patterns will have set. The way a couple argues, shares the work and handles disappointment takes shape in the first years of living together. Once it settles, it can be changed, but that takes more time and more pain. Prevention is like learning a language: it is easier at the start than at forty, when you first have to unlearn the wrong pronunciation.

The second obstacle is shame. Many people still experience therapy as an admission that something is wrong with them or with the relationship. I wrote about this in Why choose therapy even if “nothing is wrong with you”. The same is true for couples: you do not go to therapy because the relationship is broken, but because you care about it enough to want to understand it.

What research on prevention programmes says

The most researched preventive programme for couples is PREP (Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program), developed in the 1980s at the University of Denver by Howard Markman, Scott Stanley and colleagues. The programme teaches couples how to talk about difficult topics, how to argue without hurting each other, and how to become aware of the expectations they bring into the relationship.

Markman and colleagues followed couples who took part in the programme before marriage for several years and compared them with couples who did not. Four to five years later, the couples from the programme showed less negative communication and less relationship distress. A larger study by Stanley, Amato, Johnson and Markman, carried out on a random sample of several thousand American households, found that people who had taken part in any kind of premarital preparation reported higher marital satisfaction and roughly 31% lower odds of divorce.

That figure is encouraging, but it needs to be read carefully. It is an association, not a proven cause: people who choose preparation may already differ from others — they may be more committed, more open to talking. That is why the meta-analysis by Carroll and Doherty, which combined controlled studies of prevention programmes, also matters. It found that, on average, the programmes improve communication and relationship quality, with the effects clearest in the months and years immediately afterwards.

In short: prevention is not a magic vaccine against breaking up. But it is a well-researched way of giving a couple the tools before they need them.

Programme or therapy?

Prevention programmes such as PREP are often group-based and structured: a few sessions, exercises, worksheets, the same content for everyone. Couples therapy is something different. It does not only teach skills; it explores what lies underneath — why one partner shuts down around a particular topic, why the other feels panic at that moment, what each of you brings from your own family.

In relational family therapy, in which I am training, that is the starting point: two blank pages do not enter a partnership, two stories do. How your parents talked about money, how conflict was handled at home, who had the last word, how love was expressed — each of you brings all of this along and often does not even notice it until it collides with a different way. Preventive therapy is a chance to get to know these stories before you start arguing about them.

If you want to know what the beginning looks like, I described it in What happens in the first couples therapy session. Preventive therapy is usually shorter — a few sessions — and focused more on talking about the future than on repairing the past.

Unspoken contracts

In the 1970s the psychiatrist Clifford Sager wrote that each partner enters a relationship with a kind of unwritten contract: a list of expectations about what they will give and what they will receive. Part of this contract is conscious and spoken. Part is conscious but unspoken — “it’s obvious we’ll live near my family”. And part is entirely unconscious: the expectation that your partner will make up for something you did not get as a child.

Problems arise when the two contracts do not match and the partners do not know it. Each lives by their own and is convinced the other is breaking the deal. She thinks it goes without saying that housework is split fifty-fifty. He thinks it goes without saying that whoever earns more does less washing-up. Neither has ever said it out loud — and each is convinced the other is being unfair.

Preventive therapy is to a large extent work with these contracts. You do not have to agree on everything. You only need to know where you do not. The expectations table in the knowledge base can help with this.

Conversations worth having beforehand

The infographic above lists six areas where couples most often find themselves surprised. For each, there are a few questions worth opening up:

• Money. What was money like in your family? Was it a source of security, worry or arguments? Who will decide on bigger purchases? Do you have debts your partner does not know about?
• Housework. Who cooked, tidied and remembered birthdays at home? What seems “obvious” to you, and is it obvious to your partner too? It is often not only about who does what, but about who carries the worry that it needs doing.
• Children. Do you want children? When? What if it does not happen naturally? What kind of parents would you like to be — and what kind would you never want to be?
• Families of origin. How often will you see your parents? Where will you spend the holidays? What do you tell your parents and what not? I wrote more about this in In-laws and boundaries: families of origin in a relationship.
• Closeness and sex. How much time together do you need, and how much of your own? How will you say that you want something — or that you do not?
• Arguing. How was conflict handled at home — with shouting, silence, walking out? What do you do when you are angry? And how do you both know an argument is over?

You do not have to agree on everything. Some differences will stay forever. But a difference you know about is something you can live with. A difference that takes you by surprise after five years quickly starts to feel like a betrayal.

Sliding or deciding

Scott Stanley, Galena Rhoades and Howard Markman described a phenomenon they called sliding versus deciding. Many couples never consciously decide to live together. First a toothbrush stays at the partner’s place, then a few clothes, then it seems silly to pay two rents. And one day they realise they live together without ever really having talked about whether they want to and what it means to them.

The researchers found that couples who began living together before an engagement or before a clear shared decision about the future reported, on average, lower relationship quality than those who moved in together after getting engaged. The explanation is not moral. It is practical: once you share a flat, a pet and a lease, breaking up is much harder, so a couple may stay together out of inertia rather than by decision.

If you have already slid into living together, nothing is lost. A decision can also be made afterwards: through a clear conversation about why you are together and where you are heading. That is often one of the first topics in preventive therapy.

Arguing is not a bad sign

Couples before a wedding are often proud that they do not argue. That can genuinely be a good sign. But it can also mean that they have not yet started talking about the difficult things.

In his long-term research, John Gottman found that about 69% of conflicts in couples are perpetual: they stem from differences in temperament, values or needs and are never fully resolved. Happy couples differ from unhappy ones not by not having these conflicts, but by how they talk about them — with curiosity, humour and respect rather than criticism and contempt. You can read more about the patterns that predict trouble in The four horsemen of the apocalypse in relationships.

So preventive therapy does not try to get rid of arguments. It tries to make them safe. A couple learns to notice when a conflict is escalating, how to take a break without the other experiencing it as abandonment, and how to come back to the conversation. Along the way it often turns out that they are not arguing about what they think they are — as I wrote in It is not about the washing-up. The rules for arguing in the knowledge base can help too.

What such a conversation can sound like

Let us go back to the couple from the opening. In the second session I asked how each of them imagined the first year after the wedding. The conversation went something like this (a composite, not a real person):

“I imagine we’ll travel a bit first. Children in about five years.”
“Five years?” She turns to him. “I’m thirty. I thought we’d start straight after the wedding.”
“We never talked about it.”
“Because it seemed obvious to me.”
“What happens inside you when you hear that he imagined it differently?”
A long silence. “I’m scared. That I won’t have time.”

It was not an argument. It was two unwritten contracts meeting for the first time. And instead of meeting in three years’ time, between two night shifts and the purchase of a flat, they met in a room where there was enough time for each of them to say what lay behind their plan. Behind hers, the fear of time running out. Behind his, the memory of parents who had him very young and often spoke of it as a sacrifice.

They did not agree on an exact year. But they agreed to talk about it again in six months — and that neither of them would ever again assume that something was “obvious” to the other.

Exercise: an evening of expectations

You can do this exercise today. It takes about an hour, and you need two sheets of paper.

1. Each of you completes five sentences on your own: “In five years I imagine that …”, “Money, for me, is …”, “When I am angry, I need …”, “From your parents I expect …”, “Something I do not want to repeat in a relationship is …”
2. Swap sheets and read without replying straight away. Underline whatever surprised you.
3. Each of you names one surprise and asks: “Can you tell me more about that?” Do not correct or persuade.
4. Write down one difference you want to keep talking about. Just one.
5. Agree on a date when you will come back to it — in a week or a month, not “some time”.

If you need more prompts, you will find them in the knowledge base under questions for a couple’s conversation.

Where prevention is not enough

I want to be honest here, because it is easy to write too enthusiastically about prevention programmes.

The effects are not large and do not last for ever. Thomas Bradbury and Justin Lavner, who reviewed research on prevention programmes, pointed out that the effects are often modest, that they diminish over time, and that programmes work best for couples who are already on a good path anyway. Prevention is not a guarantee. It is good provisions for the journey.

Prevention cannot replace a decision. If one of you has serious doubts about whether you want this relationship, preventive therapy is not a place where anyone will talk you into it. But it can be a place where the doubt is said out loud and taken seriously. Sometimes the best outcome of preventive therapy is the realisation that marriage is not the right decision right now.

Some problems need more. When there is violence, control, addiction or serious mental distress in the relationship, preventive sessions are not enough. If you feel threatened in your relationship, call the SOS helpline for women and children victims of violence on 080 11 55 (in Slovenia) or, in an emergency, 112. For serious mental distress, turn to your GP or a psychiatrist. I described when it is time for proper couples therapy rather than prevention in When to start couples therapy.

You do not have to go to therapy. Many couples talk through everything I have listed perfectly well on their own — on long walks, with a good book, or with questions like the ones in the exercise above. Therapy is one path, not the only one. But it is welcome when you notice that you avoid certain topics, or that every conversation about them ends in a dead end.

What to remember

• The best time to work on a relationship is often when everything is still fine — before the patterns set.
• Research on prevention programmes (such as PREP) shows better communication and relationship quality; premarital preparation was linked to roughly 31% lower odds of divorce.
• Each of you brings an unwritten contract of expectations into the relationship — they do not have to match, but you need to know where they do not.
• Decide to share a life rather than sliding into it; a decision made later still counts.
• Prevention is not a guarantee and does not replace a decision — it is good provisions for the journey, not a magic formula.