Even after more than twenty years in clinical practice, I still find it striking how often couple therapy is treated as something extra—an optional skillset added to an individual therapist’s toolkit. But working with couples isn’t a variant of individual therapy. It’s a fundamentally different discipline.

Individual therapy focuses on a person’s internal world: history, emotion, cognition, identity. Couple therapy focuses on the living system between two people. It’s about what happens in real time—the choreography of language, tone, affect, and silence that forms the emotional architecture of a relationship.

A couple therapist isn’t working with two individuals; they’re working with a dynamic. The session becomes a living laboratory where emotional regulation, attachment history, and communication patterns collide. The therapist must be fluent in managing multiple nervous systems, tracking escalation, stabilising emotion, and restoring safety—all without collapsing into one partner’s narrative.

This requires a different kind of attention. A couple therapist must think systemically, intervene experientially, and stay emotionally grounded in the face of high intensity. They don’t just analyse; they direct traffic. They don’t just interpret; they interrupt.

So when we talk about “learning a new approach,” we’re missing the point. Doing couple therapy well isn’t about adding a few new techniques—it’s about retraining perception. You have to think relationally, not individually; see patterns, not people; and tolerate the ambiguity of being in a system that’s always moving.