Love is easy at the beginning. Staying connected through misunderstandings, unmet expectations, parenting, finances, or emotional wounds — that’s where relationships get tested.
Couple’s therapy offers a structured, evidence-based way to repair disconnects, rebuild trust, and re-learn how to love consciously rather than react instinctively.

Modern couple therapy is not “advice-giving.” It is a science that integrates attachment theory, neuroscience, behavioural psychology, trauma healing, family dynamics, and communication training.

🌱 1. Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) – Healing Attachment Bonds

Developed by: Dr. Sue Johnson & Les Greenberg
Core belief: Behind every argument, there is a protest for love, safety, and connection.

🔹 What EFT Does:

• Identifies the negative interaction cycle (attack–withdraw, demand–avoidance, pursue–shut down)

• Helps partners express primary emotions—fear, loneliness, longing—rather than anger or criticism

• Restores secure attachment, emotional safety, and responsiveness

🔹 Helpful For:

✔ Couples feeling “emotionally distant”
✔ Rebuilding intimacy after betrayal
✔ Constant criticism vs withdrawal cycles
✔ Trauma or abandonment wounds in relationships

🧠 2. Cognitive-Behavioural Couple Therapy (CBCT)

Focus: Thoughts → Emotions → Behaviour → Relationship Satisfaction

What it Targets:

• Rigid beliefs like: “He never supports me”, “She always nags”

• Unfair expectations, assumptions, blame cycles

• Communication errors like shouting, silent treatment, sarcasm

Interventions:

✔ Behaviour exchange (encouraging small daily positive actions)
✔ Problem-solving training
✔ Challenging cognitive distortions and catastrophizing
✔ Teaching “I feel…” statements over “You always…”

⚖️ 3. Integrative Behavioural Couple Therapy (IBCT)

Created by: Andrew Christensen & Neil Jacobson
Speciality: Balances two needs — Change & Acceptance

• Instead of trying to “fix” your partner, it first helps couples accept natural differences in personality, habits or values.

• When acceptance increases, defensiveness falls — then behavioural change becomes easier.

Used especially when couples are stuck in repetitive arguments for years.

🧒 4. Imago Relationship Therapy – Childhood Wounds in Adult Love

Developed by: Harville Hendrix & Helen LaKelly Hunt
Core idea: We unconsciously choose partners who reflect our childhood caregivers, to heal unfinished emotional wounds.

Focuses On:

• How childhood unmet needs (validation, attention, safety) show up in adult relationships

• “Why do I react so strongly to small things?” → Because they touch an old wound

• Uses Imago Dialogue:

  1. Mirroring (“So what I hear you saying is…”)

  2. Validation

  3. Empathy

Helps couples shift from blame to understanding.

💬 5. Gottman Method – The Science of Why Marriages Fail or Succeed

Founded by: Dr. John & Julie Gottman
Based on 40 years of research, observing real couples in “love labs.”

Key Concepts:

• Four Horsemen of Relationship Apocalypse:
  Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, Stonewalling

• Sound Relationship House Theory: A healthy relationship is built on:
  ✔ Love maps (knowing each other’s world)
  ✔ Fondness and admiration
  ✔ Turning towards, not away
  ✔ Managing conflict (not necessarily eliminating it)

Tools Used:

• Soft start-up in conflicts

• Repair attempts during fights

• Stress-reduction conversation routines

• Daily rituals of connection

🌀 6. Narrative Therapy – Rewriting the Story of the Relationship

Core belief: The problem is the problem. Your partner is not the problem.

What It Does:

• Separates the couple from “the problem” (e.g., anger, mistrust, financial stress).

• Helps couples rewrite their story from “We keep failing” to “We keep trying, learning, and growing.”

• Uses externalization techniques — “Anxiety is attacking us,” instead of “You’re too sensitive.”

🪞 7. Psychodynamic / Object Relations Couple Therapy

Deep focus: Past experiences, unconscious fears, attachment traumas.

It explores:

• Why certain conflicts repeat in each relationship

• How unspoken pain from childhood shapes how we love, fear, or withdraw

• Defence mechanisms like projection (blaming partner for own suppressed feelings)

Helps couples gain insight, not just skills.

📊 Quick Summary Table

🌟 Final Insight

No therapy model is “the best.”
Great therapy blends emotion (EFT), structure (Gottman), trauma healing (Imago), and acceptance (IBCT).
The goal is not to create a “perfect partner” but to build a safe emotional space where two imperfect humans can grow, forgive, and connect again.

👨‍⚕️ About the Author

Dr. Srinivas Rajkumar T
MD (AIIMS, New Delhi), DNB Psychiatry
Consultant Psychiatrist, Couple & Family Therapy Specialist
Mind & Memory Clinic – Apollo Clinic (Opp. Phoenix MarketCity), Velachery, Chennai – 600042
📞 +91-8595155808 | 🌐 www.srinivasaiims.com