At the very start of the process, there is a question that has to be answered clearly: is this actually couple therapy?

Two people may book a joint appointment and arrive in the same room, but that does not mean they are there for the same reason or with the same intention. Very often the process begins in response to a specific event or breach. In many cases, it is initiated under pressure, demands, or threats from one partner.

It is therefore necessary to establish what has brought the couple, and what has brought each individual. Without that clarity, the work is already compromised.

More fundamentally, couple therapy depends on a set of structural conditions that allow the interaction to be worked with directly. These are not practical preferences. They are requirements. The absence of coercion, sufficient engagement in the relationship itself, and a shared willingness to participate are essential before the therapist proceeds with the process.

If these conditions are not present, the interaction cannot be engaged in the way the work requires.

One of the first areas that needs to be assessed is the presence of coercion. This most often appears in the form of threats or external leverage. The threat of divorce or breakup, or situations where legal proceedings have already been initiated and are being used as leverage, fundamentally alter the therapeutic space.

When a threat is active, it needs to be explicitly explored. It often indicates that the two people are not there with the same level of willingness to engage in the process. The interaction becomes organised around position, compliance, and consequence. What is said and done is shaped by the need to avoid loss, defend against pressure, or force change.

Responses are no longer freely given within the relationship. They are influenced by what is at stake outside of it. Like any form of therapy, this work cannot be done inside a field of coercion.

A second area that needs to be assessed is the presence of third parties, most commonly in the form of ongoing affairs or external relationships.

When this is present, the process is structurally affected and this needs to be made explicit. If one person’s emotional or sexual needs are being met elsewhere, they are not sufficiently engaged in the relationship to participate in the process in a meaningful way. This is not a moral judgement, but a structural one.

The relationship is no longer the primary site where needs, tension, and repair are organised.

Unless the needs of each individual, particularly in terms of intimacy and connection, are dependent on the relationship changing, there is insufficient pressure for change to occur. When those needs are being met elsewhere, urgency is reduced. The intensity that would normally drive engagement, conflict, and potential reorganisation is displaced.

In both of these situations, coercion and third-party involvement, the same underlying issue emerges. One or both partners are not sufficiently engaged in the relationship as the primary site of change. Without that, the process cannot operate as intended.

Couple therapy is demanding and challenging, and this has to be made explicit from the outset. The work requires active participation from both partners, both in the session and outside of it. It also requires a clear agreement about what the process involves, what is expected, and the conditions under which the work cannot continue.

Before anything meaningful can happen, there has to be a shared commitment to the process. This is not dissimilar from individual therapy, but with one critical difference: both people have to be there by choice.

That does not mean certainty about the future of the relationship. It does mean willingness to engage in the work without coercion shaping participation. Proceeding when one partner is being forced into the process does not create a workable therapeutic system.

This does not mean that people are fully honest at the beginning. They often are not. But as far as it is within the therapist’s control, the task is to establish a clear therapeutic container and to be transparent about what the process requires.

If those conditions are not in place, it is not couple therapy. It is something else, and it will fail for that reason alone.

It is the responsibility of the therapist to be explicit about this and, where necessary, to decline starting the process.