One of the things I hear fairly often in my work is some version of this: “Maybe you should do individual therapy first, and then we can do couple therapy later.”

On the surface, this sounds reasonable. Even thoughtful. As if sorting oneself out individually is a necessary prerequisite for working on the relationship. But when the primary difficulty lies in what happens between two people, I strongly advise against this sequence.

If the problem is relational, then the unit of work needs to be the relationship itself. What is struggling is not one person in isolation, but the interaction between two people and the patterns that organise it. Starting with individual therapy often bypasses the real-life conversations and interactions that keep the relationship as it is.

Individual therapy necessarily works from a single frame. That frame includes the partner, but it remains one person’s organised experience of the relationship. Over time, that perspective can become clearer and more internally coherent. It also develops blind spots. What often takes shape is what I think of as a caricature: an internalised version of the other person shaped by hurt, repetition, and interpretation. It isn’t a lie, and it isn’t created deliberately. It is limited because it is restricted to one part of the pattern, and therapy organised around that single frame can further consolidate it.

The difficulty is that this consolidation can harden meaning. The intentions, motivations, and inner world of the other person become more settled and less flexible. What feels like understanding is often a narrowing rather than an opening. The relationship itself remains untouched. Anyone who has worked with couples will recognise the moment when the partner who has been described for months finally enters the room. The discrepancy can be striking. What has been worked with is not the relationship, but one person’s experience of it.

Couple therapy works differently. It does not privilege one perspective over the other. It works with what happens in real time, between two people, under emotional pressure. The caricatures are exposed by contact. Patterns that stay abstract in individual narration become visible as they unfold. Escalation, withdrawal, misattunement, and repair are not analysed after the fact; they happen in the room.

This doesn’t mean individual therapy has no place. Sometimes it is essential. But sequence matters. When the injury, the stuckness, and the distress are relational, starting with individual work can unintentionally stabilise the very pattern people are hoping to change. “Work on yourself first” sounds wise, and in some contexts it is. But when the problem lives between you, the work usually needs to start there.