That’s a question I get a lot, and it matters more than most people realize when they’re sitting in pain and just want help fast.
Here’s how I think about it.
Couples therapy and individual therapy are not interchangeable. They’re not even competing. They serve fundamentally different purposes, and choosing the wrong one at the wrong time can actually make things worse.
When couples therapy is the right room to be in:
If you and your partner are stuck in a painful cycle, what I call the Waltz of Pain, where one of you is pushing harder for connection and the other keeps pulling back, and both of you are hurting and neither of you can figure out why the same fight keeps happening over and over, that’s couples work. That’s relational. You can’t fix a dance by coaching only one dancer. The cycle lives between you. It needs to be seen and worked with together.
The goal of couples therapy is to get you both to what I call Sovereign Us. That’s the place where you stop fighting each other and start fighting for each other. Where the relationship itself becomes the thing you’re both protecting. You can’t build that alone on a therapist’s couch by yourself.
When individual therapy has to come first:
And here’s where I need to be direct with you, because this matters a great deal.
If there is any domestic violence, coercion, threats, financial control, or a genuine risk of someone’s physical safety, couples therapy is not appropriate. Full stop. It is not the right tool. In those situations, the systemic framing I use, where we look at how both people are contributing to a painful cycle, that framing can actually cause harm. It can inadvertently suggest that someone being abused is somehow co-creating their own abuse. That is not okay and it is not what the work is for.
In those situations, individual therapy comes first. The nervous system needs to stabilize. The window of tolerance needs to expand. Safety has to be established before any relational repair work can even begin.
There’s also another scenario worth naming. If one partner genuinely cannot or will not engage in mutual vulnerability, if they feel no distress about the dynamic and have no interest in shared accountability, then couples therapy hits a wall. You need two people willing to step into the discomfort together. If that’s not available, individual therapy can help you get clear on what you’re dealing with and what you need.
The simple way I hold it:
Couples therapy heals the space between you. Individual therapy heals the space inside you. Sometimes you need both, running alongside each other. Sometimes you need one before the other. But knowing which room you’re walking into, and why, that clarity alone can change everything.
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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.
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