The Provocateur: ‘Couples counselling kills marriages’

After her own experience ended in divorce, Sarah* urges couples not to seek therapy

‘so, how are things?’ Each time, those four words at the start of our therapy session would make me feel sick. James* was always first to answer. ‘Um, OK,’ he’d say. ‘ Things are a bit better.’ We both knew this was a lie but somehow it felt like the right answer, what we thought our counsellor wanted to hear. But it wouldn’t take long before the truth would surface and a dissection of our increasing misery would ensue.

When we started couples therapy, we’d been married for seven years, together for 10. It was my idea to go and I felt positive. Therapy wasn’t a last resort to save our marriage – our relationship was solid and we both believed in it. We’d just had a few hiccups and needed guidance dealing with them. We’d be one of the success stories. I could tell our therapist thought so too, initially. How naive we were.

When James and I met, he was only 24, while I was 30 and ready to meet ‘the one’. Despite this, he was the one who pursued me. We were at different stages in our lives – I had a full-on job as a PR director, while he was still figuring out his career – but it didn’t faze him, and he was as keen to marry and start a family as I was.

We had two girls, bought a house in the country and went through the usual stresses of parenthood. Our home was mostly happy. Until it wasn’t. James stayed home with the girls for the first year, as I was the main breadwinner, but it soon became clear that he wasn’t happy. He began to yell at me for almost everything; he wore the same clothes every day, grew his hair long, bought a motorbike. I felt like he was having an early midlife crisis at 30.

The phrase ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ springs to mind when I look back at what led us to therapy. Was James’s long hair and motorbike just something that happens to men who’ve settled down prematurely? Were our arguments just symptomatic of the classic seven-year itch? Were our wedding vows simply being stretched to their limit at that point? I’ll never know, because what we embarked on with our counsellor did so much damage that by the end our marriage was irreparable.

Therapy was like a Pandora’s box; once we opened the lid, more stuff kept flooding out. One of the biggest dangers of therapy is that, rather than dealing with one problem at a time, you start to unpick a situation, and bring up past hurts and painful childhoods. It’s a lot of emotion and it’s overwhelming. It’s like picking at a scab continuously, until the wound is permanently exposed and unable to heal. It became evident that James was resentful about all aspects of our life.

His revelations knocked me for six; I had no idea he was feeling this way – and each time he spoke out, our therapist agreed with him, which empowered him. That was another problem. It was starting to feel like two against one.

As six sessions turned to 12, then 24, the tidal wave of revelations continued.

in therapy, i heard things from the man i loved that i could never un- hear

At one session, James said, ‘Looking back, I wasn’t ready to get married or have kids.’ I stared at him in utter disbelief, not recognising the man in front of me.

The 10 years we’d been together hadn’t been without struggles, including fertility treatment – but he was as thrilled as I was when I finally conceived. Then, aged two, our elder daughter was diagnosed with an immune deficiency, which meant a host of doctor’s appointments and special dietary needs – but we were a team. However, after probing by our counsellor, it seemed that wasn’t the case. I was hearing things from the man I loved that I could never un-hear.

Of course, every situation is unique. Human relationships – no matter how highly professional and trained one party (the counsellor) may be – are nuanced and subject to individual chemistries. But I now believe that had we not let this third party analyse our relationship we might have just ‘got on with it’, been terribly British and swept things under the carpet. James could have got it all out of his system on long motorbike rides and I could have channelled my frustrations into something other than navel-gazing. We would have been able to ride out this storm holding on to each other.

The cynic inside of me also can’t shake off the feeling that of course the counsellor kept probing – the more you come back, the more money they make. Did we really need 18 months’ therapy?

I also worry about how many other couples who are experiencing bumps in the road might fall into the trap that we did. In the age we live in, therapy, if you can afford it, is regarded as the solution to everything. It’s a dangerous indulgence. Had we had these problems 50 years ago, we would have stuck it out.

So would I recommend couples therapy? Definitely not – it ruined my marriage. I don’t blame our counsellor; she was clearly intelligent and highly experienced. Yet seeing her made all our deeply embedded issues come rushing to the surface with such speed and intensity that they became a ticking time bomb.

Since our split, I am very much single, focused on my daughter’s health and my children’s happiness. It will be a long time before I seek out another relationship. My family and friends have been supportive and are great listeners – that is enough. No matter what, though, if I do have another great love, I will never, ever go to couples counselling again.