Couple therapy is not a path for every clinician. It is not the application of techniques. It is not a set of tools applied to two people in a room. It is working inside a live relational system where intensity escalates quickly, perception distorts, and each partner, often without realising it, attempts to pull the therapist into their version of events.

If the therapist cannot recognise that pull, track it as it happens, and hold their position within it, therapy can become collusion with the dominant narrative and, more importantly, further consolidate the entrenched pattern of the relationship.

The issue is not simply one of training. It is a question of life experience and what has been done with it. To do couple therapy, the clinician should be able to draw on their own life experience, on having been in relationships, and specifically in intimate relationships. This is not about excluding some or engaging in the narrative that you can only work with it if you have lived it. That is not the point.

Working with the intensity and push and pull of relational patterns always activates the blueprint and relational experiences of the therapist. There is no version of couple therapy where this does not happen. And even though this is true for all therapy, it is much more pronounced when a live relational system is present in the room.

Being able to draw on personal experience also plays a critical role in the therapist holding and communicating a realistic frame of what relationships are. Most of us only truly discover what happens in a relationship once we have been in one. From the outside, it is easy to hold on to the fantasy of what a relationship is and what makes it work, but once lived, this is demystified. In working with couples, the therapist cannot afford to hold a view of relationships that is simplistic and unrealistic.

To work with couples requires being able to understand and actively make space for the lived reality of being in a relationship. Although this reality is often shared, it is frequently buried under the specific interactions and surface emotions that show up in the room. Personal experience enables the therapist to guide the couple towards what sits underneath, towards the core emotional realities of being in a relationship.

The loss of idealisation. Shame. Inadequacy. Feeling not good enough. Not being understood. Powerlessness. Feeling out of control. Being confronted with parts of ourselves that are not easy to face. The darker aspects we all carry. What happens to us when we move into survival. The things we are capable of saying and doing. The way we can become paralysed. The way what happens between us can feel alien compared to the rest of our lives.

Most of us grow up exposed to idealised and simplified models of what relationships are and what happens inside them. The pressure to reach that ideal, combined with the gap between that image and lived reality, can be deeply distressing and confusing.

To make space for this in the room, to allow it to exist between people, to sit with the disillusionment that the other will never be exactly what I want or need them to be, to face how I have caused harm to the person I care about, all of this requires more than theory or technique. It requires a reference point that allows the therapist to remain present and not move away from what is difficult.

But personal experience on its own is not enough. On the contrary, experience that has not been explored, processed, and worked through is more likely to increase bias and distortion. It strengthens the therapist’s own blueprint rather than expanding their capacity to see.

Although personal therapy should be a requirement for anyone doing this work, it becomes even more important in couple therapy.

The day-to-day work with couples can be more intense and activating than individual therapy for the simple reason that there is more happening in the room at once, and because the relational system will, in different ways, attempt to pull the therapist into it.

So the question is not simply whether someone has been in romantic relationships, but whether those experiences have been developed into clinical capacity in a way that expands perception rather than narrowing it.

The question is whether it allows the therapist to track interaction in real time, regulate intensity, and intervene without becoming part of the pattern they are trying to interrupt. That requires a level of personal development that is often shaped, at least in part, through having struggled with these dynamics in one’s own relationships and having worked through them.

Personal and professional development are inseparable in any therapist. In couple therapy, this link becomes even more direct.

Without this, the therapist remains at risk of becoming part of the problem, colluding with the pattern or aligning with one of the partners in ways that reinforce the very pattern they are trying to change.

Couple therapy is not for every therapist. Not everyone wants to work with what happens between people in a relationship, with the intensity, conflict, and affairs. That is not a limitation. It is a recognition of preference and fit.

But for those who choose this work, it needs to be clear that a few trainings are not enough. The work requires a personal process alongside theory and technique. The therapist’s own blueprint is active in the room. Understanding what you bring, and how it shows up under pressure, is essential.