Why Couples Therapy Doesn’t Work for Some People
Thursday, July 17, 2025.
Couples therapy has a PR problem.
On Instagram, it’s all throw pillows, card decks, and holding hands on matching yoga mats. On Reddit, it’s stories of miraculous turnarounds:
“We went to three sessions, and he finally got it.”
Or: “She stopped bringing up 2017 after our therapist said I wasn't the villain.”
But let’s be honest. Sometimes it doesn’t work. Sometimes it’s 50 minutes of paid bickering, trauma-informed homework that nobody did, or one partner weaponizing every insight for rhetorical sport.
So: why does couples therapy fail?
Here’s the answer no marketing agency wants to give you:
because it’s not therapy that’s broken — it’s what we bring to it.
And often, what we bring has been shaped not just by childhood or trauma — but also, in part, by the particular psychodynamics of American culture.
Myth #1: Therapy Will Fix Your Partner (and You Get to Keep Your Ego)
This is the foundational fantasy. The big lie. The bargain we whisper under our breath as we book the first session:
"Maybe the therapist will convince them I’m right."
But good therapy isn’t about refereeing arguments or assigning moral superiority. It’s about helping each person face themselves, often for the first time — and not flinch.
But this is a tough sell in the culture of curated selfhood — where sometimes being “authentic” has become more important than being responsible, and “living your truth” can sound suspiciously like “refusing to grow.”
The Bader-Pearson model calls this differentiation — the holy grail of relational maturity. It’s not about agreeing. It’s about tolerating anxiety without flipping out or checking out.
And if that question — “What’s my part in this mess?” — makes your skin crawl, you’re not broken. You’re just culturally American.
We were raised on cowboy myths, not mutuality.
Myth #2: Insight = Change
American culture excels at insight. We consume it. We curate it. We caption it under moody selfies. But we’re terrible at doing anything with it.
Knowing why you yell, dissociate, or turn into a sarcastic porcupine under stress is not the same thing as doing anything about it.
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), one of the most evidence-backed couples therapy models, shows that emotional safety precedes insight (Johnson, 2008). Not the other way around. When you feel attacked, you shut down — even when you “know better.”
But in the American therapy marketplace, we often confuse branding our wounds with healing them.
We think:
“I know I have anxious-preoccupied attachment. That should count.”
“I know I have ADHD — that explains everything.”
And it does. But not enough.
Change lives in the unsexy moments:
Apologizing when it’s hard
Sitting through silence without storming out
Staying in the room when shame screams “RUN”
The culture rewards the story. But relationships survive in the practice.
Myth #3: All Therapists Are Created Equal
Let’s rip off the Band-Aid: not all couples therapists are good at couples therapy.
Many are trained in individual work and bring those tools into a relational battlefield — where they often backfire. As Bader and Pearson (1988) put it,
“You can’t treat a relationship as two parallel individuals.”
But the American marketplace often rewards therapists who are soothing, agreeable, and marketable.
It reliably punishes those who challenge power dynamics or interrupt clients’ well-rehearsed victim monologues.
If your therapist:
Avoids conflict.
Refuses to call out relational patterns concretely.
Spends too much time being squishy; that is, they are too often validating when they should be confronting.
…you’re not in therapy. You’re just in customer service with a license.
Myth #4: If It Gets Hard, It’s Not Working
In a consumer culture where you can return shoes for a bad vibe, the moment therapy gets painful, many couples bounce.
And yet, pain — the kind that breaks through numbness — is often the first real sign of healing.
It means you're touching the thing you’ve been avoiding. That’s not failure. Perhaps that’s an epiphany.
Real couples therapy doesn’t always feel like a spiritual retreat. It sometimes feels like black mold being torn out of a wall.
It stinks. It’s ugly. But now you can both can breathe.
American Culture: The Third Partner in the Room
Here’s what no one tells you on couples therapy TikTok:
You’re not alone in the room.
Even if your therapist practices solo and your marriage has two members, there’s a third partner seated quietly in the corner.
It’s American culture — and it shapes the relationship in ways we rarely name.
Hyperindividualism: means we assume our needs should never be compromised, even in committed relationships.
Limbic Capitalism: teaches us that vulnerability should always feel good — that we should cry and be held, but not necessarily be challenged to change.
Consumer Logic Turns Therapy into a Product: If this isn’t improving my relationship in 3–5 sessions, is it really worth it?
Couples therapy fails when we try to use it to optimize a personal brand, rather than heal an intimate bond.
So Who Doesn’t Benefit From Couples Therapy?
Let’s name it. Some couples hit an invisible wall. Here's why:
Unacknowledged Addiction
If one partner is still in active denial or secrecy around substance use or compulsive behaviors, therapy is a maze with a missing floor. You fall through every time you try to build trust.
Unilateral Therapy
One partner is “all in.” The other is there because they got threatened with divorce. That’s not therapy — that’s a sort of hostage situation.
Personality Disorders in Acute Phase
Partners who display narcissistic or borderline tendencies may benefit from therapy — eventually.
But when they’re in acute dysregulation, couples work may inflame rather than soothe.
Weaponized Insight
Some clients become experts at using therapeutic language to attack:
“You’re gaslighting me — remember what she said last week?”
That’s not healing. That’s rhetorical warfare.
Cultural Narcissism
When both partners are more invested in being “right,” “seen,” or “validated” than in becoming emotionally available and accountable — therapy becomes a narcissistic performance.
What Makes Couples Therapy Work?
When both partners:
Take radical responsibility for their emotional reactivity.
Are willing to be seen — and interrupted.
Accept that growth will be destabilizing.
Show up even when their inner child doesn’t want to.
And when the therapist:
Knows how to manage a system, not just two partners.
Doesn’t collude with one partner’s charisma or suffering.
Can call out the dance without blaming the dancer.
Final Thought: Therapy Doesn’t Work for People Who Don’t Want to Know Themselves
This is not a moral judgment. It’s a clinical reality.
Couples therapy will not work if you come to be proven, not to be transformed.
It’s not a place to win. It’s a place to unravel — then rebuild.
If that sounds hard, it is.
But also, if you and your partner can stay in the room — not perfectly, but sincerely — there’s a lot more hope than you think.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Bader, E., & Pearson, P. (1988). In quest of the mythical mate: A developmental approach to diagnosis and treatment in couples therapy. Brunner/Mazel.
Gottman, J. M., & Silver, N. (1999). The seven principles for making marriage work. Harmony Books.
Johnson, S. M. (2008). Hold me tight: Seven conversations for a lifetime of love. Little, Brown Spark.
Tatkin, S. (2011). Wired for love: How understanding your partner’s brain and attachment style can help you defuse conflict and build a secure relationship. New Harbinger.
Twenge, J. M. (2006). Generation Me: Why today's young Americans are more confident, assertive, entitled--and more miserable than ever before. Free Press.
Lasch, C. (1979). The culture of narcissism: American life in an age of diminishing expectations. Norton.