He Says We Don’t Need Couples Therapy

Hello,

We are at the end of our second posting and I don’t recognise our relationship. We argue more than we talk. When we do talk, it goes in circles. I’ve been thinking about couples therapy for a while, but every time I bring it up my husband shuts it down. He says we do not need a stranger telling us how to talk to each other. He believes therapy is for people with serious problems, and we just need to try harder.

I’ve tried harder. I have listened to podcasts, and I saw a therapist to help me communicate better. Nothing. I am so tired of being the only one working on this, and failing so badly. What do I do when we clearly need help but he won’t agree to get it?

A Spouse

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Dear Spouse,

You may be thinking about how to get your partner to couples therapy. But let me start with something that may be hard to hear: you cannot convince a partner to go to couples therapy. So let us step back and look at what his refusal might actually be about. 

What His “No” Might Mean

In most couples, there is often one partner who is more willing to seek help and one who is more reluctant. This is normal and it does not necessarily mean the reluctant partner does not care about the relationship. But in diplomatic couples, the reluctance often runs deeper.

It could be cultural. In many parts of the world, and in many families, seeking psychological support is still considered a weakness. Your husband may come from a background where asking for help means you have failed at something you should be able to handle on your own. For some people, walking into that room already feels like an admission of defeat.

It could be professional. His career is built on managing complex situations, reading rooms, negotiating. The idea that his own relationship needs outside intervention can feel like a professional verdict: you cannot manage the thing you are supposed to be best at. So "we do not need therapy" may actually mean "I cannot accept myself as someone who does."

It could be fear. And this one is important, yet nobody talks about it. What if he already senses, somewhere underneath, that this life you have chosen together is not working for your couple or for you? Therapy is dangerous then, because a professional might say it out loud. And then he faces a bind he is not ready for: the career or the relationship. Shutting down the conversation about therapy is a way of making sure that question never gets asked.

*Just between us, in reality he would not need to choose between the two in the end. But admitting that it does not work as is for both of you and looking for flexible solutions may take too much courage.

Or it could be that he genuinely does not see the problem. He comes home from a job that challenges him, in a city he finds exciting, to a family that you are keeping together. From where he sits, the system is just fine. He may not be refusing help out of malice. He may just be living in a different reality on the same posting. Alas, the structure of diplomatic life makes that possible, because it gives the diplomat and the spouse fundamentally different daily experiences.

The Pattern You Are Already In

Any of these could be true. More than one could be true at the same time. But here is what matters: every single one of them tells you something important about how your couple operates and what the posting is doing to you both.

Look at what has been happening. You see the problem. You research, adjust, propose a solution. He disagrees and the conversation ends. You absorb the disappointment and try again. He says no again. You are carrying the entire weight of trying to repair this relationship while he gets to decide, every time, that nothing needs repairing.

You are the demandeur and he is the decision-maker. This pattern is the problem. It is already telling you what a couples therapist would eventually help you both see. 

So Where Does This Leave You?

Many couples come to therapy wanting to prove the other person wrong, or have a therapist tell their partner what they have not been able to say. But the work that actually changes things is when each person gets clear on what they need, what is working and what is not, and where their red lines are. You do not need him in the room for that.

What you may need is a big shift: from working on your communication to looking at how you are actually feeling in this relationship and on this posting. You may have forgotten how to do that. The system where your partner's job decides almost everything about your family's life can make you voiceless, stripping away your sense of autonomy and your belief that you can make choices. So figuring out what you need and where your red lines are is how you start claiming that back and having more say in your own relationship.

Would I say it is easy? No. But it is definitely worth it. And then let us see what happens to your partner when you shift the conversation from “you need to come to therapy so we can be fixed” to “let us talk about how to make this work for both of us, here is what I need.” I am really curious how it will work out in the end, please keep me posted. 

P.S. I work with diplomatic spouses on exactly this every day, you know where to find me. 

Photo by Kenzie Kraft on Unsplash