Carl Whitaker used the metaphor of chess when speaking about family therapy: the queen has all the moves, but lose the king and you lose the game (Whitaker & Bumberry, 1988; Whitaker & Keith, 1981). I was introduced to this during training with Ricky Snyders, and it stayed with me because of how often I see it play out. This applies directly to couple therapy.

Very often, especially in heterosexual couples, the partner who initiates therapy arrives with the moves. They tend to have more language available to them, particularly emotional and therapeutic language, and a clearer account of what is wrong and what needs to change. That does not make their position wrong, but it gives it weight and influence in the room.

The other partner, often the man, tends to arrive differently. More cautious, less convinced, sometimes resistant, and often less expressive. At times they are already positioned as the problem, and in some cases they are there because not attending felt like a greater risk than coming. I am describing a pattern here, not a rule, but it appears frequently enough to shape how the work unfolds.

If therapy begins to align itself with the person who brings the clearest frame, the work can appear active and sophisticated while one partner is gradually pushed to the margins. At that point, it does not matter how technically sound the interventions are, because the game is already being lost. The problem is not a lack of activity, but that the frame itself is no longer relational. It begins to reinforce the same polarisation and defensiveness that already exist in the relationship.

In my experience, what engages these partners is not insight or emotional language as a starting point. It is structure, balance, and a clear sense of fairness in how the process is organised. From the outset, there needs to be a clear indication that this is not about collusion or about bringing one partner up to the level of the other. It is about examining how both partners contribute to the pattern and how that pattern is maintained through their interaction.

For that to happen, the process has to be structured so that both partners experience it as relevant. This includes accommodating different ways of engaging, not only through emotional and relational language, but also through structure, action, and clarity in what is happening between them. If this is not achieved, one partner disengages and the therapy fails at a structural level.

Engagement in couple therapy is not simply about willingness or motivation. It is about whether each person experiences the process, in how it is structured, as something that makes sense to them and addresses their position. If one partner experiences the process as something they are being brought to, rather than something they are part of, disengagement is almost inevitable.

This is what engaging the “king” is about. Not in terms of gender, but in terms of ensuring that the partner most at risk of disengagement remains actively within the process.

When the work is structured, even-handed, and grounded in shared responsibility, something shifts. The partner who arrived guarded often begins to engage, not because they have been persuaded or corrected, but because the process no longer resembles the same argument with a therapist added to it.

This has been an important part of how my way of working has evolved. Engagement is not assumed. It is structured. The therapist has to remain vigilant about the pull of the dominant frame and ensure that the process does not privilege one partner’s way of understanding, speaking, or engaging. The work has to hold a broader range: emotion and thought, structure and expression, experience and action. Without that, both partners do not fully engage, and the work does not move forward.