What a First Couples Therapy Session is Like
What a First Session Actually Feels Like
I know beginning couples therapy can be hard. The first session alone can induce anxiety for any number of reasons: we don’t know one another, you don’t know what to expect, you might feel hesitant or doubtful about the whole process, you might be worried about what will come up in the session…. But my goal isn’t to find out everything about your relationship and diagnose where it went wrong: my goal in a first session is always to help you and your partner create a different experience of connection than the one which you are currently experiencing.
Luckily, few people come in and have the fight they always have. Couples often arrive on their best behavior — polite, careful, generous with each other in a way that might feel surprising. Two people who have spent six months circling the same wound will frequently spend the first session being remarkably decent about it. This is not fake. It's what people do when they're nervous and being observed and hoping to find solutions.
I have found that the first session isn't the place to re-run the injury. You both already know how that fight goes. You've done it hundreds of times, in your kitchen, for free. Running it once more in front of a stranger doesn't teach me anything I can't learn other ways, and it can teach the two of you something I'd rather you not learn, which is that therapy is one more room where this fight happens. This is why I do less interrogating in the first session, and more guiding and restructuring. If I notice a shift from we to you always, I'll interrupt it. If I notice blame or criticism escalating the intensity and speed, I will slow us all down to redirect the dialogue. .
Often, I will begin by shoring up the positive foundations of your relationship, which our negativity bias– our evolutionary tendency to give more weight, attention, and memory to negative experiences, criticisms, or threats– tells us to weigh more heavily than positive experiences and interactions of equal value. I will ask you and your partner to share appreciations with one another (more on appreciations later!), during which we might start to explore familiar feelings, internal narratives, and unmet needs that surface in the relationship related to where we find value and comfort in our partners.
As the first session progresses, we’ll explore your frustrations, concerns, and hopes for the relationship, creating a roadmap for where we need to go in future sessions. We don’t need to envision the final destination yet, but being able to identify the landmark conflicts along the way is essential.
What to Know Before Getting Started
I am not a referee, and I won’t take sides. But I'm also not neutral in the nodding, professionally-vacant sense. I may need to interrupt, to push, to name when I’m seeing an unproductive or unhealthy pattern. I will never say this to declare one partner the winner or the “right” one, because I believe that I am your relationship’s therapist more than even yours or your partner’s. When I do call something out, it’s because I believe it’s in service to your relationship, and that there's enough safety for you each to survive it.
And to the reluctant partner (because there often is one): you don't have to believe in any of this from the start. You don't have to buy the framework. You just have to be willing to have a conversation differently than you'd have it at home.
An honest note on pace: this is not a six-session fix, and anyone promising you one is selling something. Depth work takes time. Relational work takes time. But couples often feel a shift in the quality of contact long before the actual problem is solved. Sometimes that shift is the solution in itself.
Who This Helps — and Who It Doesn't
Imago helps couples who are stuck in loops: the same fight, with rotating content rotating, recurring patterns.
It helps couples who've gone quiet: no yelling, no crisis, just a slow drift into a polite roommate arrangement, which is often the harder one to name because nothing is technically wrong.
It helps couples in transition, when a new baby or a new city or a career ending or an aging parent or a coming out presses hard on old wounds nobody knew were still there.
It helps reflective, curious people who don't want just tools, they want to experience something new with their partners, people willing to sit in discomfort long enough for something to shift.
All relationship configurations are welcome: married, partnered, dating, long-distance, queer, non-monogamous, kink-aware, second or third marriages. The Imago frame doesn't require your relationship to be a particular shape!
Where I'd point you elsewhere, honestly:
Active untreated addiction
Ongoing intimate partner violence
One partner who has already decided to leave is looking for a witness rather than a process.
Those who just want tools, tactics, and a structured skills curriculum– there are excellent therapists who work that way with real skill, and I will help you find them.
One more thing: you can do Imago-informed work on your own, and in fact, I encourage couples to dialogue together frequently. After some practice, the structure lives in you, not only between you.
Why I Do This
I gravitate toward couples work because the space between two people is the most honest room in the house. Most people can manage themselves alone. They can do great work on themselves with an individual therapist. But in relationships, we are often most exposed, with our needs, desires, and fears laid bare. Everything unresolved in our past attachments eventually shows up in the relational space: in one person’s reactions to their partner’s anger or frustration, in the way one partner’s body tenses up when the other starts a sentence, and the internal narratives and messages that surface when a partner doesn’t meet an unspoken need.
The hunch I keep returning to is that most people aren't asking to be healed or completely fulfilled by their partnerships. They're asking to be received, heard, and accepted.
If You're Curious
If you've read this far and something resonated, maybe a flicker of oh, that's us, I'd be glad to talk. I offer a free consultation call to chat and assess fit. Reach out!