You know, this is the question I’ve been asked more times than I can count, usually by someone sitting across from me who’s already half-convinced it won’t work.
So let me give you the honest answer, and I’ll start with the research because I think it matters. Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, the model I work from, the one built by Sue Johnson, has some of the strongest outcome data in the field. When couples go through 12 sessions, 86% show significant improvement. And when researchers check back two years later, 75% of those couples have held onto their gains. That’s not me selling you something. That’s peer-reviewed research.
But here’s what the numbers don’t tell you. What actually makes it work.
The biggest thing, the single biggest shift that has to happen in the room, is what I call moving from I-consciousness to we-consciousness. Almost every couple that walks through my door is convinced that their partner is 100% of the problem. They come in as the world’s foremost expert on everything wrong with the other person. And I get it. When you’re hurting, that’s the story that makes sense.
But here’s the thing. If you’re hurting, your partner is hurting. If you’re reacting badly, they’re reacting badly. Every single time. The equation is that consistent.
What I have to do, before anything else, is help both people get up above their own experience, take a kind of drone’s eye view of what they are co-creating together, and see the system. Because most couples in distress are running around with a can they think is full of water. It’s actually gasoline. And everything they’re intuitively doing to fix the problem is making the fire bigger.
Therapy becomes successful the moment a couple stops seeing each other as the enemy and starts seeing the cycle, the pattern between them, as the thing they’re up against together. That’s when we can start moving toward what I call Sovereign Us, which is the state where both people feel like they’re on the same team, protecting the relationship rather than protecting themselves from each other.
You can’t get there by assigning blame. You get there by showing both people the tragic, sometimes almost comic, loop they’re stuck in together, and helping them feel enough safety to step out of it.
That’s what makes it work. Not techniques. Not communication scripts. That shift in the room, where two people who were at war start to grieve the same loss together.
That’s 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.
Read more: What to Expect in Your First Couples Therapy Session
