Couples Therapy Arlington: A good couple’s work is often the outcome of both members of the couple doing the work necessary to get to know themselves as individuals so they can understand the part each plays in the relationship dynamic. Improving communication is clearly a goal of the work, but if we don’t know what we need to talk about, improving how we say it may not be much help.
“The greatest thing you ever learn is just to love and be loved in return”
Our couples therapy model is expensive, extremely challenging, and takes time. Still, reading? It’s also extraordinarily effective. We don’t mess around.
At Dodini Behavioral Health, we work in a co-therapy model–a male and a female therapist team. How do we do this? The initial session includes all four people–the couple and two therapists. It’s a chance to evaluate the couple and for you to check us out. We are observing dynamics and behavior patterns and beginning to look at the individual character issues that combine to make a beautiful, if not dysfunctional, relational dance.
After that first session, we encourage you to pick one of the therapists to work with individually. We may offer our opinion on who may be a good fit but usually leave it up to each individual to decide with whom they would most like to work.
We do ask that you each choose a different therapist. We tend to do two to three individual therapy sessions for each couple’s session. Doing this allows each person to do the individual work necessary to understand what he or she thinks and feels in order to most effectively communicate that to his or her partner. When two people honestly work on themselves and then come together for joint sessions, the couple can truly transform for the better. No finger-pointing at the other to change, just honest evaluation of how you need and want to change to be the partner you want to be within the couple you want to create.
