The problem couples define when starting therapy varies, but does not become the focus of the work. Not because what they experience is not important, and not because it will not be addressed, but because it is typically not addressed in the way they expect.

Jay Haley captured something essential when he suggested that couples are often not arguing about the issue itself, but are engaged in a struggle over control of the interaction (1976). More specifically, over who gets to define what the issue actually is.

This is what the therapist is listening for. Not simply the content, but the underlying struggle over definitional privilege. Who has the authority to determine what counts as valid, accurate, or real.

This becomes visible quickly in the session. Competing accounts of what is happening, why it is happening, and repeated attempts to establish one version as definitive. At times, the therapist is pulled into the position of mediator or final authority on what is real, which is not their role.

Haley described this as a struggle that unfolds through power tactics. Not because people are inherently manipulative, but because the interaction becomes organised around competition. Each attempt to define the situation is also an attempt to secure that authority.

The visible argument is filled with correction, reinterpretation, challenge, and control, alongside efforts to defend, counter, and reassert one’s position. The issue itself is quickly overtaken by this process.

These are power moves within the interaction. Not as deliberate attempts to dominate, but as a consequence of competing definitions of reality. Each response stabilises one version while undermining the other.

Different couples do this in different ways, but the structure remains the same. The conversation becomes competitive.

This is why simply giving couples space to talk does not work. They are not in therapy because they cannot talk, but because when they do, the interaction turns into a struggle for authority, and nothing shifts.

The task of therapy is therefore not to increase expression, but to identify and interrupt this pattern. The focus moves from what is being said to how the conversation is unfolding, moment by moment.

At the centre of this is a fundamental assumption already active in the exchange: that two experiential worlds cannot co-exist as equally valid at the same time. That if one stands, the other must give way.

This assumption is rarely stated, but enacted continuously. It drives the need to correct, to prove, to establish what really happened. This is the trap.

As long as the interaction is structured around establishing a single, agreed version of reality, the conversation remains competitive and circular.

The shift begins when this assumption is disrupted. When the interaction no longer requires resolution at the level of “what is true,” but can hold two different experiences without collapsing into correction.

At that point, the conversation changes. It is no longer a struggle for control, but an interaction where contact becomes possible.