When working with couples, what unfolds in the room is not a set of facts or objective realities. Every gesture, silence, tone, and phrasing forms part of the interaction as it happens. What you see in the room is the pattern in action. The therapist is not outside of this. They are already inside it, affected by how the interaction is organised.

This is where seduction begins. Not as manipulation or deceit, but as a systemic pull. Each partner’s narrative, emotional expression, and way of engaging invites the therapist toward alignment. Systemically, we cannot not communicate, and that applies here (Watzlawick, Bavelas, & Jackson, 1967). Everything that is said and done has an effect. There is no neutral information. Each contribution positions the other and shapes what happens next.

The relationship pulls the therapist into its logic. It invites agreement and alignment. Systems recruit. That is how they maintain themselves (Bateson, 1972; Maturana & Varela, 1980). The risk is not only taking sides, but being drawn toward the account that appears more coherent, more emotionally compelling, or more articulated. Without noticing this shift, the therapist begins to participate in the same pattern that maintains the problem. This is why a systemic frame focuses not on content or the individual, but on what is actively happening between partners and between the couple and the therapist.

From a systemic position, both partners are participating in the pattern through what they do and what they do not do. The task is to hold that frame, even when one account appears more convincing than the other.

In this sense, the therapist enters as an external element, but the system will attempt to absorb that position. This is not intentional. It is how patterns sustain themselves. What feels accurate or resonant can quickly become alignment. Empathy can slide into collusion. Insight can be mistaken for movement.

The risk increases when the therapist’s own blueprint becomes active. Similarity can pull. Shared experience can narrow perspective. Aversion can harden into certainty. One partner begins to make more sense. The other becomes more difficult to hold. At that point, neutrality has already been compromised.

The task is not to eliminate this pull, but to recognise it as it happens. To remain aware of where attention is going, where alignment is forming, and how the interaction is shaping the therapist’s position.

When attention shifts from content to interaction, a different level of information becomes available. What is being done between partners, and how the therapist is being positioned within that, carries more clinical value than the story itself. If this is not tracked, and if the therapist is not aware of their own vulnerabilities to particular patterns, this becomes a blind spot.

This is the work of recognising recruitment as it happens. The issue is not whether the therapist feels pulled. They will. The issue is whether that pull is noticed before it becomes alignment. Seduction is the system’s attempt to make the therapist useful to its existing organisation. The task is to feel that pull, recognise it, and return attention to the interaction as a whole.