The Right Order for Lasting Relationship Change

Successful couples therapists deliver three things in order:

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1. Safety
2. Education and insight
3. Behavioral change

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Safety is foundational. We can’t learn when we are in fight-or-flight. The trick for the therapist is to make both partners feel safe simultaneously—no small challenge when one is on the attack. Creating safety is made even more complicated because couples typically wait six years after one partner (probably the pursuer) suggests going, so the unsafe cycle is firmly entrenched by the time the couple is with the therapist.

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Once the couple is safe enough to be open to it, education is delivering the right tidbit in the right way at the right time, opening up a new skill or a new way of seeing the situation. There’s no limit to the amount of possible waste here—even if the therapist nails the right message, we humans are really good at not hearing it. We are really good at justifying how we act or look at something, even if it’s not working for us.

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Behavior change is the last step. Once you have a new skill, a new way of behaving, or a new manner of perception, it has to show up in your actual life to get you a different result than what brought you to therapy in the first place. One or both of the partners has to change the way they are used to doing things.

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Looking at it this way, through a “Jobs to Be Done” lens, I can imagine some really interesting possibilities for delivering these three things more efficiently.

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Couples want to be healthy, but they are often waiting to go to the doctor until the relationship is very sick, sometimes nearly dead. I’m very grateful for the therapists that heroically heal and save the relationships that they can.

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I want to design an experience that helps couples be healthy by delivering these three things as cheap, accessible, preventative medicine. I want to help couples avoid getting too sick in the first place.

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