8 Signs That Couples Therapy Is Making Your Life Better

The 8 signs to look for:

1. You know who has influenced your relationship map.
2. You have a more stable sense of self-worth.
3. You understand and respect the differences in your relationship.
4. You’ve developed a sense of relationship mindfulness.
5. You cultivate healthy boundaries.
6. You are able to engage in healthy conflict.
7. You’ve developed a mindset of generosity.
8. Your relationship evolves.

The idea of starting couples therapy with an intimate partner can be daunting.

You may be feeling conflicted about approaching important but scary topics that typically blow up into fights or get swept under the rug.

Starting therapy can also be overwhelming if you’re on the brink of breaking up.

Many people also fear that the therapist and their partner will gang up on them, and they will spend the therapy hour getting berated.

But couples therapy can have long-lasting benefits for your relationship — and might even save it.

Why bother with couples therapy? 

It’s true that going to therapy with your partner can be vulnerable.

But a great therapist is like a personal trainer. They’ll help you achieve things you might not have on your own.

At the same time, they’ll make you feel comfortable, introduce you to new techniques, and never push you faster than you’re ready to go.

8 relationship signs that show couples therapy is working

As a couple’s therapist myself, here I’m sharing some signs to look for to know that your hard work is paying off.

These insights are from internationally known therapist and author Terry Real’s Relational Life Therapy (RLT) approach, which I practice.

1. You understand your relationship map

A relationship map is a blueprint of how a relationship should be. Everyone has one. People typically get theirs from watching their parents or caregivers interact with each other (and them).

In our adult romantic relationships, we follow this blueprint unconsciously. Most people aren’t aware they have it. Attachment style is another term people use to talk about this concept.

It’s not until much later in life when you might become conscious of it, often with the help of therapy. Then you can come to understand what’s driving your behaviors in a relationship and why you tend to seek out certain things in a partner.

That’s why doing the work to change your default relationship behaviours as an adult is so hard. It takes time — like learning a new language.

An important part of relational healing is understanding where you learned your unhelpful behaviours in the first place. You know that you are in the process of healing wounds when you can point to the sources of the injury.

Our biggest influences — positive and negative — on our relationship behaviours are most commonly our parents as they are typically the models we had in childhood. But you’ve also probably been impacted by your peers, past romantic partners, the media, and broader society. 

Until we examine the influences, we are just flying through life on autopilot.

Examining our upbringing also helps us to see where we missed out on the guidance necessary for the intimacy we crave.

Making these implicit influences explicit — figuring out where our feelings and behaviors come from — means that we have the option to step into the cockpit and choose to steer our behaviour towards more connection. 

Understanding both your own and your partner’s map fosters a sense of safety and trust, leading you to feel like you can support each other more effectively.

In RLT, each person explores their own past influences, including any childhood trauma, in the presence of their partner.

This allows you the powerful opportunity to witness, support, and understand your partner’s process of connecting the dots of their own relationship map.

For instance, if a partner understands that their loved one grew up in an environment where expressing vulnerability was discouraged, they can respond with greater empathy when their partner finds it challenging to open up.

2. Stable sense of self-worth

If you notice that you have fewer ups and downs regarding your sense of self-esteem, that’s a sign of relational healing.

In RLT we define healthy self-esteem as an understanding that your worth comes from within and is inherent in you. It is an understanding that, at a fundamental level, you are no better or worse than the people around you, and that nothing you do can diminish (or inflate) your worth.

You might get higher grades, make more money, or be more conventionally attractive than someone else, but your core worth is the same as theirs.

Therapy can help you develop a more stable sense of self-worth, enabling connection with others without losing yourself. This emotional growth fosters a sense of security, allowing us to trust we will be okay whether or not we are in a relationship.

A sign of healthy self-esteem includes the ability to stand up for what you want with love.

This can be a significant change if you grew up hesitant to tell people your needs. The therapy process can help you internalize the belief that you deserve a cherishing relationship and helps you set boundaries around acceptable behavior from your partner.

3. Understanding and respecting your differences

Dr Orna Guralnik, couples therapist and star of the show Couples Therapy recently pointed out on a podcast that many romantic conflicts boil down to the couple’s differences. But that those differences can also help us grow.

“This thing that we do, which is that we reach out towards the world and fall in love and want to connect with someone else, means we are inviting otherness into our lives and that is important,” she says. “That [otherness] is the thorn that will make you grow, that will make you heal, and go beyond yourself.”

The point isn’t to eliminate our differences, she explains.

The key is to approach your partner with a curiosity and openness to see them for the individual they are, and work together to negotiate how your unique differences fit together.

4. Relationship mindfulness

One of the most important ways you can grow through couples therapy is by developing the skill of “relational mindfulness.”

It’s the ability to notice when you’re triggered and to pause and regulate your nervous system — that is, calm down — rather than reacting defensively.

Couples learn to recognize when they are operating from a place of being reactive and defensive and move into a place where they are responsive and thoughtful with one another. This shift is crucial for healing and growth within the relationship.

We can learn to take a time-out during conflict, then return to have more productive conversations.

This process is extra important because we are often drawn to partners who are specifically designed to push on old hurts from our childhoods.

Believe it or not, this can actually be a good thing. It can provide the opportunity for deep healing, as long as you and your partner can learn to respond from a place of wisdom and maturity rather than reactivity.

One of my incredible RLT trainers Anna Sterk tells her clients who are particularly good at triggering each other, “Lucky you, you get to heal!” 

For a relationship mindfulness exercise you can do with your partner, check out my article How Reparenting Your Inner Child Helps Your Relationship.

5. Healthy boundaries

Being able to set and respect boundaries is a clear sign of relational growth. RLT defines a healthy boundary to be one in which you’re able to protect yourself, but also still able to connect to others.

I like to think of it as having the capacity to filter. We can filter what we share about ourselves, as well as filter what we decide to take in from others.

If you’re not setting healthy boundaries like this, you might be putting up a brick wall that stops connection entirely. This is known as avoidance — nothing is getting in, nothing is getting out.

Or you might have a wide open field in which everything is getting in and everything is going out. This is called enmeshment. 

A client of mine gave me permission to share a fantastic metaphor they came up with about understanding healthy relational boundaries.

Imagine you are in a rowboat with your partner. You are personally invested since you are literally “in the same boat,” but to move through the water effectively you can only paddle your own oars.

You can make requests such as changes in direction or speed, but you cannot take over for your partner and they cannot take over for you.

Healthy relational boundaries are the same way. You can help your partner and tell them what you need, but ultimately you can’t manage their feelings or actions for them and vice versa.

6. Productive conflict

You know you’ve both grown in your relationship when you’ve gotten better at engaging in productive conflict. In fact, you both understand it’s normal to flow through a never-ending cycle of harmony, disharmony, and repair. 

You both accept that the presence of conflict is not bad. It’s actually an essential part of being in a relationship.

Disharmony happens. But what’s important is the couples’ ability to repair. Healthy conflict skills include the ability to:

• apologize
• actively listen
• negotiate
• compromise without resentment (for more on how to do this, check out my article on making willing sacrifices) 

The more the couple has positive experiences of repair, the less they fear conflict, and the better they are able to move back through to harmony.

Total avoidance of conflict can be just as poisonous to relationships as volatility.

A strong relationship is when both partners aren’t afraid to rock the boat if they need to speak up about important matters. It’s not about avoiding conflicts but about repairing them effectively. 

7. Generosity mindset

It is a sign of relational maturity to develop an interdependent rather than individualistic mindset.

That means both people in the relationship act for the good of their partner and the relationship, as well as themselves. They don’t have an every-man-for-himself mentality.

This is no small feat as we live in a society that rewards people for hoarding money, power, and attention. Within romantic relationships, an individualistic mindset can look like losing the ability to listen or be curious about one another and getting stuck arguing about who’s right.

Just as hyper-individualism in society is poisonous on many levels, it is also damaging in our intimate relationships.

Our personal well-being is not separate from the health of our partners, our neighbors, or the earth. We cannot live a full life in a vacuum— or even really live at all.

There is no such thing as a 50/50 relationship, according to RLT. 

The bestselling book The 80/80 Marriage: A New Model for a Happier, Stronger Relationship proposes using mutual generosity rather than “fairness” to help your relationship thrive.

Generosity also means not needing to be “right” in a conflict. Terry Real will often say, “The answer to who’s right and who’s wrong is who cares.”

Given our culture, this can be a radical mindset shift to make. The good news is that when you begin to accept that fairness does not exist, you start to see how being generous in your relationship has an exponential positive impact.

Whenever you are giving in your relationship, it is not just benefiting your partner, it is benefiting the ecosystem of your relationship.

This is what Terry Real calls the “us mindset.”

In our relationship, there’s not just two individuals, but there’s also a joint emotional investment — a mutual fund, if you will. Giving to your relationship is not an expense, it’s an investment.

When you are investing generously in your relationship, the relationship pays you dividends. You both benefit from the relational fund that you are contributing to.

You can find Terry Real’s book about the “us mindset” on Amazon. It’s called Us: Getting Past You & Me to Build a More Loving Relationship.

8. Your relationship evolves 

Many people are familiar with the honeymoon stage in a relationship, and it’s not uncommon for people to fear “losing the spark” they had at the beginning.

Couples therapy can help you to progress through your relationship to a deeper level of intimacy. RLT outlines three stages of love: love without knowledge, knowledge without love, and knowing love. 

“Love without knowledge” is the honeymoon stage, the point where partners experience an intense and blissful sense of oneness. They may downplay any differences and idealize the relationship.

Then the “knowledge without love” stage comes bursting through the door. This is the point where many people come to couples therapy. It’s where you start to see your partner as a whole person — flaws and all.

These stages don’t progress linearly and they include stress and challenges. But if you recognize that they’re normal, it can provide reassurance and help guide you toward a more fulfilling relationship.

Doing the work in couples therapy to better understand yourself and your partner can help you move towards the “knowing love” stage of relationships.

The final word

As a relationship therapist, I sometimes get asked if I can tell whether a couple will stay together. My truthful answer is that I’m not concerned with this outcome. I find this to be a limiting perspective that fails to capture the broader benefits of therapy.

True relationship growth involves more than just staying together. It encompasses a range of outcomes that reflect healthier, more fulfilling connections. I’m a big believer that the insights and skills gained in therapy do not disappear if a relationship ends.

Instead, they become part of your relational toolkit, helping you navigate all kinds of future relationships with greater awareness and emotional intelligence.

Learning to love your partner in all their messy humanity can be challenging, but it can also be tremendously valuable.

Yes, the process of going to couples therapy can be intimidating and difficult at times. But relating to each other in this way can also be incredibly interesting, meaningful, and even fun. You can build empowerment and resilience as well as deeper, warmer, and more joyful relationships.