There is an essential ambivalence in anyone coming to therapy. It can be described as two messages contained in every request for help, one explicit, one more hidden: please help us, but do not ask us to do anything differently.

This is not resistance, manipulation, or control. It has nothing to do with not being ready for change. It is what my late supervisor, David Fourie (1996), described as ambivalence, and it is an inherent property of human systems.

There are two sides to it.

On the one hand, there is the desire to change. The frustration. The experience of being stuck. The recognition that the more we try to fix things, the worse it gets. The sense that the pattern is larger than either person, and that nothing we do seems to shift it. This is not abstract. It is lived. People realise that what they are doing is not working, but cannot stop doing it.

On the other hand, there is the pull to continue doing what has always been done.

Systems conserve themselves. They continue doing what they are already structured to do. Not because of intention, but because of how the interaction is set up. The very behaviours that create the problem are the same behaviours that keep the system stable. They are familiar, predictable, and immediately available under pressure. This is why the same responses return, even when something different is most needed.

This can be seen directly in the interaction. A partner says they want things to change, and moments later responds in the same way that has kept the pattern in place. Not because they are unwilling. The behaviour that maintains the interaction and their expressed intention exist in non-intersecting domains. There is no available alternative in that moment, and wanting to do something different is not the same as being able to do it.

Part of this shows up as the belief that if only the other person would change, everything would improve. But this misses the point. A relational system takes two people to maintain it, and both are participating in the pattern, whether they see it or not.

Ambivalence is not located in the individual. It describes the co-existence of an experiential layer and a structural layer that do not intersect and cannot be collapsed into one. There is no blame in it. No question of readiness. In that sense, we are never “ready” for change. The system continues in the only way currently available to it.

This is also why insight, intention, and willpower have limited effect. A person can see the pattern clearly, want something different, and still find themselves doing exactly what they intended not to do. What is available in the moment overrides intention. There is no contradiction.

Change happens when the system can no longer continue as it has. When pressure builds to a point where the existing pattern cannot be maintained. Often this takes the form of a crisis or a threshold where continuing in the same way is no longer possible. And then something shifts.

Therapy does not create this ambivalence. It works within it. The task is not to resolve it directly, but to create conditions where a different interaction can occur despite it, where the sequence is interrupted at the point where it would normally continue and something else becomes possible before it completes itself.

This often means working at the level of the pattern, even when this appears to contradict what is being said. Experience shifts when the interaction that produces it shifts.

This requires a different stance. Pushing for change often strengthens the pull to remain the same. Aligning with either side reinforces the pattern. The work is to stay with the ambivalence as it appears in the interaction and to intervene in what happens next.

What this means for me as a couple therapist is that I assume ambivalence from the start. It does not mean people do not want change. It means that within the current pattern, they are not yet able to do something different when it matters.

The task is not to push harder, but to work at the point where the pattern is produced. To create moments where a different response becomes possible, even briefly, and to build from there.

The desire to change and the ability to change are not the same. This is why the work is not about agreeing on difference or providing explanation, but about creating a different interaction in the moment through direct intervention. A new behaviour only becomes available once it has been experienced, not because it has been understood or intended.