Individual Therapy vs. Couples Therapy: How to Know Which One You Actually Need
One of the most common questions people bring to an initial consultation is whether to pursue individual therapy, couples therapy, or both simultaneously. It is a reasonable question and one without a single correct answer, because the right format depends on the nature of the difficulty, the goals the person or couple is working toward, and a number of practical and relational factors that are worth thinking through carefully before committing to a path. As a licensed marriage and family therapist working with individuals and couples in Hidden Hills and Calabasas for over forty years, I have had this conversation many times, and I find that the way a person frames the question often tells me something useful about where the real work lies.
What Individual Therapy Is Particularly Good For
Individual therapy is the right choice when the primary work is internal: examining your own history, understanding the patterns you bring to relationships and other areas of life, processing a loss or trauma, building self-awareness, or developing emotional regulation and coping skills that are yours to carry regardless of relational circumstances. Individual therapy gives you the space to focus entirely on your own experience without the relational dynamics that are present, and sometimes limiting, when a partner is in the room.
It is also the appropriate format when a person is navigating something their partner does not share, such as a professional crisis, a childhood trauma they are revisiting, a grief that is primarily theirs, or a period of genuine personal uncertainty about the direction of their life. Couples therapy is not well designed for these purposes, not because it is less valuable but because it is focused on the relationship as its primary client, and there are times when what is most needed is attention to the individual.
What Couples Therapy Is Particularly Good For
Couples therapy is indicated when the primary difficulty is relational: when communication has broken down, when the same conflicts repeat without resolution, when trust has been damaged and both partners want to repair it, or when the relationship has lost the sense of genuine connection and partnership that it once had. It is also particularly useful when both partners are individually functioning reasonably well but the system they have built together is generating distress for one or both of them.
A crucial feature of couples therapy is that both people are present, which means the dynamics can be observed and worked with in real time rather than reconstructed from one person’s account. A skilled couples therapist can see what happens between the partners in the room, not just what each person believes is happening, and that direct observation is often extraordinarily useful for interrupting cycles that neither partner can see clearly from inside them.
When One Partner Does Not Want to Come
A situation I encounter regularly is one in which one partner wants couples therapy and the other is resistant, skeptical, or simply unwilling. This is frustrating for the partner who is seeking change, and it raises a real question: is individual therapy useful in this scenario, or does it require both people to produce meaningful change?
The answer is that individual therapy can produce significant relational change even when only one partner is engaged in it. When one person in a system genuinely changes their behavior, their communication, or their reactivity, the entire system is required to adjust. The partner who comes to therapy alone often discovers that as they change their own patterns, the relationship changes in ways that sometimes eventually bring the resistant partner in, and that in any case produce a meaningfully different quality of interaction. This is not ideal, and couples therapy remains a more direct path when the relational system is the primary concern. But it is far better than waiting indefinitely for both people to be ready simultaneously.
Can You Do Both at the Same Time?
Individual and couples therapy can absolutely be conducted simultaneously, and for many people this is the most effective approach. The individual work deepens self-understanding and emotional capacity that then becomes available in the couples work. The couples work surfaces relational dynamics and patterns that the individual work can then explore more deeply.
There is one important caution in this arrangement: it works best when the individual and couples therapists are different people. When a therapist attempts to conduct both individual and couples therapy with the same client and their partner, the individual therapeutic relationship, which requires a degree of confidentiality and unconditional regard, becomes complicated by the couples dynamic in ways that are difficult to manage cleanly. Most experienced therapists will either refer out or structure the work carefully to avoid this.
If you are uncertain which format is right for your situation, a consultation is often the most useful first step. Sharing what is happening with a therapist and thinking through the options together produces far more useful guidance than any general framework can offer from a distance.
Susie Cole Rome, MA, LMFT, is a licensed marriage and family therapist with over forty years of experience providing therapy for individuals, couples, and families in Hidden Hills, Calabasas, and across the Greater Los Angeles area, in person and via secure telehealth for California residents.
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Susie Cole Rome, MA, LMFT, offers compassionate therapy for individuals, couples, and families in Hidden Hills, Calabasas, Woodland Hills, Malibu, Agoura Hills, and throughout the Greater Los Angeles area, with secure telehealth available for all California residents.
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