Couples Therapy - What's in it?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: Ms. Vargas, when is it worth fighting for his partnership?
Karen Vargas: When you see a perspective for the partnership. Fighting always makes sense when you realize that despite all the difficulties, the affection is still very strong. Even if children are involved, the motivation is often great: we have to get it somehow.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: How Can Couple Therapy Help?
Vargas: The partners describe their wishes and needs to the therapist within a framework that is largely kept free of allegations and verbal abuse. So the other person can absorb what he has never heard so clearly. In this way, the partners formulate their expectations and work out a concrete assignment to the therapist.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: So you help the couple talk to each other.
Vargas: In a way, yes. When couples come to me, the communication between the partners is usually disturbed. They tend to either withdraw more and more from each other or to constantly argue so loudly that they no longer hear the other one. Then, when one partner talks to the therapist, the other automatically learns how to move it. To spend an hour with each other, as in the session with the therapist, some often do not even manage in two weeks of their everyday life.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: Let's take the classic of the relationship crisis: the couple has lived apart. How can it live together again?
Vargas: A couple is living apart because one does not know what the other person thinks and feels. The communication between the partners is usually disturbed in this situation, joint activities have fallen asleep. In therapy, the couple re-approaches, begins to talk and re-connect - the first step in rejoining. Sometimes I give couples "homework" - for example, to do something together or to set times that they reserve for conversation.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: What are the odds that such a couple will stay together?
Vargas: It's already a positive signal when a couple goes into therapy. That is, they are actively striving to improve something. They do not want the therapist's confirmation that they should part, but they are sad or desperate because their relationship does not work out the way they want it. They want to improve their situation together. The success of a therapy lies in the hands of the partners. They do the work, the therapist initiates and structures.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: When did you think a relationship finally failed?
Vargas: When a partner says: I do not want anymore. Often, with the couples who come into the therapy, one partner is not sure that he or she wants to do the other a favor or is hoping for something different. Often couples in this situation have ambivalent feelings: on the one hand, they gain hope, on the other hand, they fear that they can not cope with the problems. In therapy, they can get to the bottom of their feelings and realize if they want to continue the relationship. If not, the therapy can also help to deal with it emotionally.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: Can a therapy reunite a couple that has already separated?
Vargas: If both have any hope that they would like to walk a common path in the partnership, they can be helped by the therapist to understand their previous failure. But the motivation really has to come from both partners. You can not force anyone into a therapy.
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A couples therapy is not paid by the health insurance. The prices are usually between 70 and 120 euros for a one-hour session. Meetings with the therapist take place as needed, usually every two weeks or a month. The number of sessions a couple takes varies greatly - the duration of therapy ranges from a few months to a year or more.
Karen Vargas is a couple and family therapist in Hamburg.
