“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
Every couple is a unique, living, and evolving creation. It cannot be reduced to two individuals; rather, it forms a true system: a “third entity” born from the meeting of two stories, two psyches, two languages, two bodies, two worlds. This idea of “1 + 1 = 3”, dear to Jacques Salomé, beautifully expresses this systemic reality:
there is me, there is you… and there is the couple we create together, this bond that connects us.
It is this “person” that I meet in therapy, for more than ten years, alongside couples from all walks of life: heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, queer, young or experienced, from similar or diverse cultural backgrounds, first-time couples or blended families. Each couple has its own codes, silences, wounds, strengths, and, of course, its mysteries. Each comes with a request, sometimes unspoken: to understand what is no longer working, to communicate differently… or to prevent what could eventually break apart.
But choosing to seek couples therapy is not asking for an autopsy. On the contrary, it is choosing life, wanting to transform the relationship and, through that process, daring to transform oneself.
It is offering oneself a space to revisit the relationship and find a new position within it, individually and together.
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 come into play, a concept explored in particular by psychiatrist Iván Boszormenyi-Nagy. We are often loyal to our family history without realizing it, reproducing certain patterns or trying not to repeat them, but without having learned an alternative.
Therapy helps bring these loyalties, inherited or internalized expectations, into the open, giving the couple greater freedom to create new ways of relating.
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 wherever you are in your journey, and I will accompany you wherever you wish to go, without judgment, without magical solutions, but with the genuine desire to walk alongside you toward a relationship that is more conscious, more flexible, and more alive. The brief systemic therapy model offers a new way of interacting and provides practical tools to ease, or even dissolve, the patterns that cause so much suffering in your relationship.
∗“the couple’s dance” in reference to the eponymous work by psychiatrist Serge Hefez