It seems everyone’s answer to a struggling marriage these days is, “Have you tried therapy?”
Like therapy is some magic wand that turns your bad husband into the man of your dreams or transforms your difficult wife into the woman you married.
“Just go to couples counseling!”
“Therapy saved our marriage!”
I’m not anti-therapy.
Therapy is great; it helps millions of people.
It’s absolutely beneficial for marriages.
But therapy can’t fix a marriage where….
Here’s why therapy won’t fix your marriage, and what actually will.
Why Therapy Won’t Fix Your Marriage (And What Will)
1. Therapy Can’t Make Someone Care Who Doesn’t Want To
You can’t therapize someone into loving you or counsel someone into respecting you.
You can’t workshop someone into wanting to be married to you.
If your partner is already done and already emotionally divorced from you, therapy isn’t going to change that.
Because therapy requires a willingness and desire to make things better.
And if your spouse is sitting in that therapist’s office with their arms crossed, giving one-word answers, clearly just going through the motions to shut you up, no amount of therapeutic intervention is going to help.
Therapy works when both people want the marriage to work and need tools to make it better.
It doesn’t work when one person wants out and the other is using therapy as a last-ditch effort to force them to stay.
2. Some Problems Don’t Need Therapy; They Need Decisions
Not every marriage problem needs to be analyzed or unpacked.
Some problems are simple: someone needs to decide to do better.
Your husband doesn’t help with housework?
He doesn’t need therapy.
He needs to start doing the dishes.
Your wife doesn’t make time for you?
She doesn’t need a therapist; she needs to put her damn phone down and talk to you!
Your disrespectful spouse doesn’t need couples counseling.
They need to decide to stop being disrespectful.
See, some things don’t require deep psychological exploration.
They require action, and therapy can even become a convenient excuse to avoid action.
You can spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours in therapy discussing why your husband doesn’t prioritize you.
Or he could just start prioritizing you.
Therapy isn’t always the answer.
Sometimes the answer is: stop talking about it and DO something different.
3. Therapy Can’t Fix What One Person Won’t Acknowledge
When one person refuses to acknowledge their role in the problems, then therapy is useless.
The husband who blames everything on his wife’s nagging, the wife who insists she’s perfect and he’s the problem….
Therapy only works when both people can be honest about their contributions to the dysfunction.
But if your spouse is sitting there acting like they’re a victim of your unreasonable expectations while the therapist is clearly seeing the issues, therapy becomes a waste of time and money.
You can’t fix problems people won’t admit exist.
4. Some Therapists Are Terrible (Let’s Be Honest)
Not all therapists are good.
Some are biased, some take sides, some have outdated views on marriage, and some just aren’t skilled enough to handle complex relationship issues.
I’ve heard horror stories of a therapist who told a woman she should be more submissive to her controlling husband.
Or is it the therapist who suggested a couple spice things up in the bedroom, when the real issue was emotional abuse?
And some therapists spend every session letting one partner dominate the conversation while the other sits there unheard.
Bad therapy can actually make your marriage worse because now you’ve paid someone to validate the wrong person’s perspective or give harmful advice.
So if you’re in therapy and it’s not helping, it might not be that therapy doesn’t work; it might be that you have the wrong therapist.
5. Therapy Becomes a Substitute for Actually Fixing Things
Some couples get comfortable in therapy.
They go every week, talk about their issues, and feel like they’re doing something productive, but nothing actually changes at home.
They have the same fights and the same problems, just with more psychological vocabulary now.
“That’s your childhood trauma talking.”
“We need to work on our attachment styles.”
Cool.
But are you treating each other better or you are just good at analyzing why you treat each other badly?
Therapy can make you feel like you’re working on the marriage without actually working on the marriage.
It’s like going to the gym, sitting on the equipment, talking about how you should exercise, but never actually exercising.
6. The Real Work Happens at Home, Not in the Therapist’s Office
Therapy is one hour a week, maybe two if you’re really committed.
But you live together 24/7.
So if the only time you’re respectful and attentive to each other is during therapy sessions, your marriage isn’t improving.
The therapist can give you tools, strategies, insights, and frameworks.
But you have to use them consistently at home when it’s hard, when you’re tired, and when you’re annoyed.
If you’re not implementing anything you learn in therapy, therapy is just expensive venting.
So, if therapy isn’t the magic solution, what is?
1. Both People Have to Want to Stay Married
Not staying because of the kids, because divorce is expensive, because you are scared to be alone, or what will people say?
But genuine desire to make this marriage work with this person.
If that desire isn’t there, no amount of therapy will create it.
2. Someone Has to Go First
Waiting for your spouse to change first is how marriages die.
Someone has to break the cycle.
Be more affectionate even when they’re not, be more patient even when they’re being difficult, and initiate change even when it feels unfair.
Not forever or indefinitely, but someone has to start.
And often, when one person consistently shows up differently, the other eventually responds.
3. You Have to Mean What You Say
Stop making empty threats or giving ultimatums you won’t follow through on.
If you say “I can’t do this anymore” but then keep doing it, your words lose power.
If you say something needs to change or you’re leaving, and it doesn’t change, but you stay anyway, you’ve taught your spouse they don’t actually have to change.
Mean what you say and stop bluffing.
4. You Both Have to Be Willing to Be Uncomfortable
Change, growth, vulnerability…are all uncomfortable.
If neither of you is willing to sit in that discomfort..
To have hard conversations, face your own flaws, and try new ways of relating, the marriage won’t improve.
Comfort is the enemy of change.
And if your marriage needs fixing, it needs change.
5. You Have to Know When to Leave
Sometimes the answer isn’t fixing the marriage; it’s ending it.
And therapy can keep you stuck in a marriage that should end because you keep thinking, “Maybe if we just try harder in therapy…”
Some marriages can’t be saved.
Some shouldn’t even be saved.
If there’s abuse, contempt, betrayal without remorse, complete emotional disconnection, therapy won’t fix that.
6. Individual Work Matters More Than Couples’ Work
Sometimes the best thing for your marriage is individual therapy, not couples therapy.
Because many marriage problems are actually individual problems brought into the relationship.
Your unhealed trauma, their unresolved anger, your codependency, their avoidance….
Fix yourself first..
Heal your own stuff and work on your own issues.
When both people do their own individual work, the marriage naturally improves without couples therapy.
I’m not telling you to skip therapy.
If you’re both willing, it can help.
But don’t use therapy as a way to avoid the real work or as a last-ditch effort to force someone to stay who’s already gone.