I love that you’re even asking about this, because most couples only come back to therapy when things have fallen apart again. And by then, they’re in crisis mode, and we spend half the time just trying to get them back to where they were before they left.
Here’s how I think about it. You wouldn’t go to the gym for six months, get strong, and then never go back and expect to stay strong. The relationship is a living thing. It needs tending. Maintenance sessions are that tending.
What maintenance sessions are actually for, in my experience, is not fixing problems. It’s more like a tune-up. You come in, you check the temperature of things. Are you still reaching for each other when you’re scared? Are you still turning toward each other, or have you quietly started turning away again and just not noticed yet?
Those drifts happen slowly and without drama. That’s what makes them dangerous.
In my practice, I usually suggest couples come back every six to eight weeks after they’ve done the main work. Some couples do quarterly. Some do once a year, almost like a relationship checkup. There’s no single right answer. What matters is that you build in a rhythm of intentional reconnection before things get hard, not after.
Think of it this way: when you’re in weekly therapy, you’re building new muscles. New ways of fighting fair, new ways of talking about hard things, new ways of staying connected when life gets messy. But muscles atrophy without use. And more importantly, old patterns have a sneaky way of creeping back in when we’re not paying attention.
What I see in the couples who do this well is that they start to treat the relationship itself as something worth protecting. They’re not waiting for a crisis to give it attention. They’re investing in what’s working, tweaking what isn’t, and catching problems while they’re still speed bumps instead of roadblocks.
The magic of maintenance sessions isn’t in the big breakthroughs. It’s in the small course corrections. Maybe one of you has been feeling a little disconnected but hasn’t said anything. Maybe you’ve fallen back into some old habit around conflict or intimacy. Maybe life stress is starting to pull you in different directions and you need to realign.
These are the kinds of things that are easy to address when they’re fresh, but turn into relationship-threatening issues when they marinate for months or years.
The healthiest couples I’ve worked with are the ones who act like they’re on the same team even when things are going fine. Maintenance sessions help reinforce that partnership. They’re saying, “This relationship matters enough to keep investing in it, even when it doesn’t feel broken.”
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Figs is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 16+ years of experience working with couples. He’s the co-founder of Empathi, host of the “Come Here to Me” podcast, and author of an upcoming book on relationships and the systems that shape how we love.
Read more: What to Expect in Your First Couples Therapy Session
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