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Is Couples Therapy Worth It?

The Benefits and Costs of Seeking Therapy for a Couple

Miriam and Josh, a young couple who had been married for five years, arrived at my couples therapy practice in the middle of a serious argument. As I listened, the amount of hurt they were feeling was palpable. Their relationship had been troubled for a long time, and this argument-or some version of it-had been recurring for a couple of years. They wanted to know: Could I help them repair their marriage?

In many cases, I can help. But there is valuable information I wish more couples had before they reach the point of exhaustion and contacting me. If you are struggling in your relationship and considering couples therapy, this article is for you. It offers practical guidance to help you decide what to do next.

1. Start Early: Consider PREPARE/ENRICH

If you are engaged or planning to marry, consider working with a therapist or counselor who uses the PREPARE/ENRICH assessment. It is a relationship assessment designed to help couples identify strengths and areas for growth before marriage.

Partners complete the online questionnaire separately. A trained facilitator then reviews the results with them, highlighting areas where shared values and beliefs may support the relationship, as well as differences that may need attention. These differences are not necessarily problems; they are opportunities to understand each other and build skills before disagreements become recurring sources of conflict. Many of my couples say they like having aspects of their relationship measured, complete with bar graphs and pie charts, because it makes their relationship, something they can’t see, more visual and tangible.

My future husband and I took PREPARE/ENRICH while we were engaged. The results gave me peace of mind as I prepared to walk down the aisle with him. Not only that, but our therapist also helped us discuss one of the areas where we disagreed and offered useful feedback. After nearly thirty years of being happily married (with the usual bumps in the road) I still consider that experience one of the most valuable steps we took before making our ‘forever’ promise.

2. Don’t Wait! The Benefits of Early Intervention

Couples often wait until their relationship feels desperate before asking for help. According to relationship expert John Gottman, couples whose relationship is plagued with unhappiness typically wait an average of six years before getting help. However, a peer-reviewed study by William Doherty and colleagues (2021) challenged the evidence behind Gottman’s research. In a study of people seeking couples therapy, they found that participants reported waiting an average of 2.68 years after serious problems began before entering therapy. Either way, waiting can mean years (yes, years!) of accumulated anger, resentment, disappointment, and loneliness; all registered harshly on a couple’s hearts.

So, when should you seek couples therapy? Not after years of unhappiness have become the norm. The best time is when you recognize a recurring problem and realize that your efforts to resolve it on your own, aren’t working- before the relationship is in crisis.

3. Learn to Disagree Without Damaging Your Relationship

I often hear couples say, ‘We keep having the same fight, we’re getting nowhere and it’s starting to affect our feelings about each other and our sex life.’ That’s important information. The recurring fight is not just a problem to eliminate; it’s also sophisticated material a therapist can use to help increase understanding of one another and bring you two closer.

Couples who build lasting, intimate relationships are not couples who never fight. Instead, they learn how to disagree, repair hurt and return to one another to negotiate a solution. I think of this as having a ‘mechanism of correction’: a reliable way to notice when a disagreement is going off course and get back on track. A skilled couples therapist can help partners recognize when they are emotionally flooded, before hurtful words come out or one or both of you shuts down and puts up walls.

Instead, partners can practice naming what they need, getting curious about the other person’s perspective rather than becoming defensive, and expressing what they actually feel. Each person takes responsibility for their part, and the couple works on the issue as a team.
Unfortunately, by the time many couples reach my office, they are burned out. Some have been worn down by a ‘thousand cuts’- small disappointments that were never addressed. Others carry old emotional wounds that were never fully understood or repaired. Trying to cover these problems without addressing them rarely works. I call it ‘putting whipped cream on garbage.’

By then, the question may have shifted from ‘Should we get help?’ to ‘Is it too late?’ Sometimes a relationship cannot be repaired, or one partner may not be willing to do the work. But in general, the sooner couples begin working with a qualified therapist, the less accumulated hurt they may need to untangle.

4. Recognize the Different Kinds of Relationship Crises

When one or both partners are considering leaving

A common concern I hear is: ‘One of us is considering leaving, trust has been seriously damaged, and we’re living like roommates instead of lovers.’ These are three different challenges, and they should not be treated as one problem.

A crisis does not automatically mean the relationship is over. With commitment and appropriate support, some couples use a crisis as a turning point toward greater understanding and intimacy. The outcome depends on the circumstances, each partner’s commitment to putting in an all-out effort to repair their relationship, and whether the relationship can truly become supportive, nurturing and enlivening for both people.

When trust has been damaged

Trust can be damaged by infidelity, lying about spending or finances, or struggles involving addiction, to name a few causes. Some people assume that such events inevitably end a marriage. They do not always. Rebuilding trust, however, usually requires more than deciding to move on; it requires remorse about hurting your partner, honesty, accountability, and sustained changes in behavior. Couples therapy may help partners determine whether and how trust can be rebuilt.

When there has been an affair

Many people assume infidelity inevitably leads to divorce. The reality is more complicated: some couples separate, some remain together without truly repairing the relationship, and others use the aftermath to do difficult work and build a different kind of partnership. The affair matters, but so does what happens afterward. If the hurt is minimized, the underlying problems are ignored, or the couple simply patches over the surface, resentment and disconnection may remain.

The question is not only whether the couple stays together. It is whether they can create a new relationship in which both partners feel respected, emotionally safe, and connected.

When you feel emotionally disconnected

Emotional disconnection may be quieter than an affair or an explosive argument, but it deserves attention. Some couples go years with little conflict and little intimacy. They manage the household, raise their children, and remain courteous, yet feel more like roommates than partners.

The commitment may still be there, but friendship, affection, curiosity, and passion may have faded. Because the relationship is not visibly falling apart, couples sometimes put off getting help and often mistake the absence of arguments for the presence of connection.

When you are unsure whether to stay or leave

If one partner wants to work on the relationship and the other is leaning toward leaving, discernment counseling may be a better first step than traditional couples therapy. It is a structured, short-term process intended to help couples gain clarity about whether to maintain the status quo, move toward separation or divorce, or commit to a defined period of couples therapy.

The goal of discernment counseling is not to pressure either person to stay. It is to help both partners make a more deliberate decision about what comes next.

5. The Cost of Couples Therapy vs. the Cost of Divorce

One of the biggest reasons couples tell me they put off therapy is cost. I understand that completely. Couples therapy can be expensive, and insurance coverage for relationship counseling is often limited or unavailable. Research supports cost as one barrier that can keep people from seeking couples therapy (Hubbard & Anderson, 2022).

But it is worth asking: What is the cost of waiting?

For many couples, a structured course of therapy may cost less than a divorce, although that depends on the therapist’s fees, the number of sessions, the legal process, and the couple’s circumstances. Divorce can involve attorney fees, filing costs, property and financial decisions, housing changes, and other expenses that may continue after the legal process ends.

Nolo’s survey of people who had recently divorced found that, among respondents who hired lawyers, average total costs were about $4,100 for an uncontested divorce and about $20,400 for divorces that went to trial on at least one contested issue (Nolo, n.d.). These figures are based on a 2019 survey and should be treated as historical estimates, not current quotes. Costs vary widely by location and complexity.

Therapy is not a guarantee that a marriage will survive, nor should preserving a marriage be the goal in every situation. I tell my couples I’m not about to spoon-feed a couple into a relationship nobody really wants. But a meta-analysis of 58 studies involving 2,092 couples found that couples therapy was associated with improvements in relationship satisfaction and other important areas, including communication and emotional intimacy (Roddy et al., 2020). Outcomes vary, and therapy cannot guarantee a particular result.

Therapy may help you repair your relationship. It may help you understand each other more clearly. It may also help you make a more informed, intentional decision to separate. The goal is not to stay married at all costs. The goal is to stop letting cost, fear, or avoidance make the decision for you.

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