“I can’t take it anymore, me neither, we’re drained, we can’t even talk to each other, not even look at each other… he/she doesn’t listen to me, he/she keeps saying the same things,he/she will never change, I know it, he/she wants me to change but he/she… doesn’t move,so what do we do? Do we end it? Do we keep going?”
“1 + 1 = 3”: when the couple becomes a system in its own right
Chaque couple est une création singulière, vivante et mouvante. Il ne se résume pas à deux individualités, mais forme un véritable système : une “troisième entité” née de la rencontre de deux histoires, deux psychés, deux langages, deux corps, deux mondes. Cette idée de “1 + 1 = 3”, chère à Jacques Salomé, exprime bien cette réalité systémique :
il y a moi, il y a toi… et il y a le couple que nous formons ensemble, ce lien qui nous unit.
C’est cette « personne là » que je rencontre en thérapie, depuis plus de dix ans, aux côtés de couples de tous horizons : hétérosexuels, homosexuels, bisexuels, queer, jeunes ou expérimentés, issus de cultures similaires ou multiples, «primo-accédant» ou recomposés. Chaque couple a ses codes, ses silences, ses douleurs, ses forces et bien sûr ses mystères. Chacun vient avec une demande, parfois implicite : comprendre ce qui ne fonctionne plus, communiquer différemment… ou prévenir ce qui pourrait se briser.
Mais venir consulter en couple, ce n’est pas demander une autopsie. C’est au contraire choisir la vie, vouloir la transformer et par là même oser se transformer.
C’est s’offrir un espace pour revisiter la relation et s’y repositionner — individuellement et ensemble.
Why consult? And why now?
Many couples seek help when they’re on the edge of the breakup.
It’s human: as long as things “hold together,” we keep going. And yet, coming to therapy before the storm can be an act of preventive care, an act of relational maturity. It allows you to explore tensions, unspoken issues, and expectations before they become unmanageable.
Here are some contexts in which couples therapy can be beneficial:
- Recurring conflicts with no constructive outcome, everyone sticks to their positions.
- A loss of connection, desire or complicity.
- A triggering event (birth, bereavement, infidelity, illness, professional change, etc.).
- A disagreement of values, culture or lifestyle that becomes burdensome.
- A need to revisit the founding bases: loyalties, commitments, projects, limits.
- A desire to understand each other better, even outside of conflict.
- Wanting to separate without difficulty, writing a story of fertile lovelessness
The couple, a living cell exposed to storms
The couple, as a system, is a living cell evolving within a changing environment, subject to external winds and tensions. Some storms can be felt approaching, but not always. Some crises stem from within: differences in pace, misunderstandings, value conflicts, sexuality…
Others are external: extended family, work, children if there are any, illness, moving house, or encounters that might break the implicit or explicit commitment, etc.
The systemic model encourages us not to look for someone to blame, but rather to observe how the system operates. When a storm hits, it’s not always the other person who is the problem, nor even myself… it’s the type of relationship we’ve built and the way we function together. So, understanding what’s not working is also a step toward what can be reinvented.
The couple's dance*: between the need to belong and the desire for singularity
A couple lives between two sometimes contradictory poles:
- The need for belonging, fusion, intimacy, security.
- The need for singularity, autonomy, independence, freedom.
As Mony Elkaïm — a key figure in systemic therapy — points out, the couple is often caught in a double bind:
“Be close, but let me be free,”
“Show me that I matter to you, but don’t be dependent on me .”
It is within these tensions that invisible loyalties sometimes resurface — a concept notably explored by psychiatrist Iván Boszormenyi-Nagy. We are often loyal to our family history without even knowing it, repeating certain patterns or refusing to repeat them… but without having learned any alternatives.
Therapy allows these loyalties to be brought to light — these inherited or internalized injunctions — and gives the couple
a margin of freedom.
What I propose: a space for listening and transformation
My support is part of brief systemic therapy, which means:
- That we look together at the relationship in its context (family, professional, cultural, and its forms of intimacy, etc.).
- That we explore interactions together and not mistakes.
- That I work with the couple, and not for them, nor for one or other of their components.
- That we aim for change, movement, more than intellectual understanding of the past.
I am neither arbiter nor judge. I am a third-party facilitator, who observes the dynamics, questions loyalties, reformulates the underlying demands, helps decode the emotional languages.
My goal as a therapist is to create a climate conducive to discussion and to conflict resolution, a secure space where everyone can express themselves without fear, rehear the other differently, experiment with new postures, and sometimes, accept to transform themselves so that the relationship can evolve.
Some preconceived ideas to deconstruct:
→ “Couples therapy is for couples in crisis.”
False. It’s a space to grow together, even when things are going well. It is more effective to intervene before communication is completely broken down.
→ “It’s always one of the two who ruins everything, and my partner doesn’t communicate”
In systemic therapy, there is neither a guilty party nor a non-communicator. It’s not one partner or the other who is to blame — it’s their interactions. If the relationship jams, it’s partly because the communication between them is symmetrical. Just as “one cannot not communicate,” as Paul Watzlawick, one of the founders of the Palo Alto systemic model, used to say: “in any human interaction, something is being said — even in silence.”
→ “Talking is useless, it makes things worse.”
It’s not about talking more, but about talking differently. With structure, attentive listening, and a kind, clear therapeutic framework. And talking is often not enough — it’s also about finding together the resources to act differently.
→ “If we love each other, it must be simple.”
Love is a driving force, not a guarantee. The couple is a constant learning process, a dialogue between differences that requires tolerance, flexibility, courage, and sometimes outside help.
Conclusion: Choosing Consciousness Over Survival
Consulting a couples therapist, coming to talk about your relationship together, is perhaps also and still an act of love and above all a sign of courage because no one knows, and least of all the therapist, which direction will be taken and where it will lead you. It’s not an admission of failure. It’s an act of responsibility, a way of saying to each other:
“We are better than our current dysfunction.”
It’s offering the relationship a chance to evolve, before exhaustion and before saying to yourself:
“If I had known…”
Every couple has their challenges. It is not their existence that poses a problem, it is the way of crossing them. And it’s completely legitimate to ask for help to learn how to dance better together, without stepping on each other’s toes.😉
You are welcome
If you feel the need to take stock, to be heard, to listen to each other more calmly within a framework that respects everyone, to be supported in this complex adventure that is life as a couple, don’t wait until you’re standing at the edge of the cliff. Come while there is still life, connection, desire.
I welcome you where you are, I follow you where you want to go —
without judgment, without a magic formula, but with the desire to walk a part of the path with you toward a more conscious, more flexible, more living connection. The model of brief and systemic therapy offers you a new interactional strategy and will provide you with tools to alleviate or even dissolve what causes so much suffering in your relationship.
∗“the couple’s dance” in reference to the eponymous work by psychiatrist Serge Hefez