HEY BABY, LET'S DO THERAPY
Forget waiting for marriage — neurotic New Yorkers are inviting their dates to sessions with the shrink
SETH Weiser, a consummate ladies’ man who knows how to wine and dine his women, had an intriguing proposition for his girlfriend of six months: He tried to get her on the couch — the therapist’s couch.
The 40-year-old bachelor from the Upper West Side has romanced the women in his life with whirlwind weekend beach jaunts and homemade dinners, but he can’t deny that his favorite date is couples’ therapy. “I usually insist that girls I date come to therapy [with me] after a few months. Usually if there are any issues, it’s better to take a preemptive strike.”
When the girlfriend refused to join Weiser in therapy, he broke it off with her.
“Her take on it was that you should never need to go to therapy before marriage, [that if ] your relationship is that f - - ked up, you shouldn’t even bother getting married. She was like, ‘Why do we need therapy so soon?’ She didn’t really understand.”
But Weiser says he’ll continue to ask future girlfriends to join him on the couch.
“All of my serious relationships — maybe five — have been subjected to therapy,” says Weiser. “If you can’t work through these problems now, you can’t get married. For me, it’s an absolute must before marriage. It comes down to coping with stress in the marriage.”
While couples’ therapy has long been a mainstay for marrieds on the brink of divorce, more pairs are hitting the psychiatrist’s couch before they even think about tying the knot. Hollywood couple Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard have openly confessed to seeking guidance when they began dating in 2007, long before they wed in 2013.
And New Yorkers are following suit. Midtown-based therapist Jonathan Alpert says he’s seen a spike in unmarried couples at his practice.
“I see two to three premarital couples a week. Ten years ago, I’d see half that,” he says. “It’s not uncommon, and it’s not a bad idea at all.”
For Weiser, bringing a date to his therapist is more important than bringing her to meet Mom and Dad — even if it leads to the destruction of fledgling romances.
When Weiser took a girlfriend of six months to therapy last year to address communication problems, the therapist helped Weiser see the light: “[My girlfriend] would get upset if she got criticism about her communication skills. By the third session, she exploded. We realized through therapy that we’re just too similar, and we broke up.”
Another time, Weiser’s therapist actually suggested he break up with a girl after bringing her to a few sessions.
“I loved this girl and wanted
to marry her, [but] my therapist said, ‘I don’t say this a lot, but there are some people who are not compatible, and you need to take that into consideration.’ He actually dissuaded me. I broke up with her soon after.”
Still, Weiser doubles down on the importance of going to couples’ therapy with someone you’re dating.
“Ultimately, most of us are dating for marriage, and the hurdles you’re going to [face] are very difficult,” Weiser says. “If you can deal with those hurdles and see ahead of time that it’s just not going to work, I’m convinced it will lower the divorce rate.”
Some dating couples have become evangelists for premarital therapy, claiming it saved their flailing relationships — and are now married or are on their way to the altar.
Bailey Griscom is still basking in the afterglow of her West Coast wedding in September to the love of her life, Kieffer Katz — a feat that may not have hap- pened without the help of their therapist three years ago.
“We were fighting a lot and having trouble listening to each other,” says Griscom, 27, who works in cancer research. The couple, who lived in Boerum Hill at the time, were struggling to adapt to life as a couple in the real world after recently graduating from college. The pair decided to seek help at Katz’s insistence.
“I was pretty resistant to the idea, [because] I didn’t know anyone else who’d gone to therapy before they got married who didn’t break up,” says Griscom.
For his part, Katz, a 29-year-old who works in marketing, considered the move do-or-die: “We needed to re-establish how we interacted with each other. We had to find our common ground of how to look at the world.”
The couple attended therapy for a handful of months, during which time Katz was diagnosed with ADD, a breakthrough for the couple, who struggled with communication and now had an explanation.
“I think it’s unfortunate people wait until they’re in a marriage, as a last resort,” says Griscom. “Going to therapy when we were younger was way better [at giving] us tools not to ever get to that point. It’s like treating a disease early, before it metastasizes.”
For Stephanie Corriera, it helped her and her boyfriend of five years, Daniel Gonsales, determine what the next steps would be in their relationship.
“We were in a rough patch last year and at a crossroads of where to go,” says Corriera, a 36-year-old aesthetician, who was technically engaged but stalling on following through with any tangible plan. “Were we going to take the next step?”
The Yonkers-based couple sought the counsel of Gary Katz, a Midtown therapist, who for a year worked through the couples’ “blockages.”
“Without him, I probably would have been the same person I used to be in the past, never putting myself in Stephanie’s shoes, or thinking what she was going through. I always put myself as the victim . . . not taking into consideration my partner’s feelings,” says Gonsales, who works in the hotel industry.
And the proof is in the pudding: “It brought our relationship to another level. We grew so much as individuals and as a couple,” says a beaming Corriera, who is now planning a spring 2017 wedding with Gonsales.
But not every therapist encourages couch time too soon.
“There’s a bit of a stigma: ‘If you have to go to counseling now, is your relationship doomed?’ ” says Alpert. “People shouldn’t rush to therapy just because there’s an issue. The first approach should be to try to work on it as a couple. Running to a therapist might catastrophize or pathologize things unnecessarily. It might also set up an unhealthy pattern of dependence whereby a couple leans on a third party to help solve their issues, rather than trying to do it on their own.”
And, as one New Yorker points out, even finding a great therapist doesn’t guarantee your relationship will end in a happy union — and often times, it might be the exact opposite.
“I think successful therapy can lead to a breakup. Therapy helps you see reality, and strip away the fantasy,” says Allen Salkin, a journalist who has insisted on therapy with two former flames — one of whom he broke up with post-therapy. “All therapy is an act of desperation. Nobody goes to see a therapist unless they’re in pain — and that goes for couples. Successful therapy can mean the relationship ends. A therapist isn’t supposed to save a doomed relationship — not every relationship is salvageable.”
“[Couples’ therapy] might set up an unhealthy pattern of dependence.” — Jonathan Alpert, therapist