From “Rethinking Couples Therapy: The Hard Questions and The Nuts & Bolts” teleclass with Esther Perel and Terry Real. The full teleclass series is available for purchase here.

Therapists inform their therapy based on the context they live in, and the values they bring to their ideas and ideals of coupledom.

These are my existential and clinical assumptions that inform my work.

I believe that life is complex. This belief gives me a lot of tolerance for ambiguity. I don’t always believe the answers are clear. Through this, I am able to do a lot of work by keeping people in a situation of ambivalence and have a lot of patience for that. This is especially important when working with infidelity.

I also vacillate between a world view of truth is subjective and couples’ work takes place within a social construct on one hand. And then I also adhere to a view of fact is a fact (i.e. poverty is poverty). I want to understand when something is a social construct and a subjective truth, and when something is clear cut, factual.

People hold contradictory and powerful emotions toward people they love. Someone can simultaneously hate and love their partner. They can experience both aggression and connection towards a person. These emotions can change day by day. I will search for the other side that supersedes the emotion and feeling of today. For example, when a patient comes in angry and tells an angry story, I will get them to tell the happier side. I look at the dialectic between love and anger, as interdependent emotions.

I am beginning to reject the concept of failed marriage. The common belief is that a marriage that ends is deemed a failed marriage, and only marriages that last until the couple dies are considered a success. Many relationships last for decades and accomplish a lot. I believe saying goodbye and end a marriage does not necessarily mean failure. One of my couples in therapy wrote to each as they were giving back their rings that, they both were grateful to what they had build together and that they will always cherish it. Ending like that, with appreciation for what they had in the past, may be a new way to look at divorce.

I no longer take for granted that a couple is monogamous and that monogamy is a matter only of sexual exclusiveness. This helps me be clear and comfortably ask questions about sexuality as an integrated part of couples therapy.

I pay attention to see what I avoid, what intimidates me, where are my discomforts and where in my body I feel them. If I feel emotions (i.e. discomfort, envy, etc.) it is important to notice and track them.

When you invite couples to talk about something that clearly is not be part of your world? How do you respond? (position of authority, looking for the problem in it, emphasize relationship and trust, ask questions about it, etc)? I now look at whether I invite people to talk to me about aspects of their life that differ from mine. If they do, do I address that in a way that benefits me, or benefits the couple?