A lot of couples come to my office after having tried couples therapy before. As a couple, you are quite vulnerable in a way to the whims of the therapist, especially if it isn’t clear what you should expect from your therapist and the process. I’ve laid out some golden rules here of what constitutes an ethical process:

1. Your therapist should take the time in the beginning to lay out the parameters of the process. This includes important issues around confidentiality in the process and limitations of what the therapist can keep secret. For instance, it should be clear that the therapist’s relationship is with the couple, and not one individual, and therefore only in the rarest of circumstances (if one partner was experiencing violence for instance) would the therapist ever maintain a private contact with one of the members of the relationship.
2. Your therapist should not be giving advice of a direct kind, especially in the beginning. For instance, it is impossible for your therapist to “know” if you should stay together, move jobs, etc. A good process facilitates and focuses on the relationship and its communication processes, and the opinions of the therapist about aspects of your life that are not relevant to this should be kept to a minimum.
3. You should feel free to express if somehow you think the process is one sided or you feel unheard. The therapist should be working hard to maintain a balance in their approach. Too many couples have come to my office complaining that a therapist blamed things on one partner, or made comments to that effect. Of course it is helpful if in the therapeutic process, elements of one person’s behaviour are mirrored in such a way that the couple learns more about how that contributes to the overall “communication dance”, but this should be approached in a spirit of togetherness and understanding.
4. Lastly, you should feel a little frustrated at times with the process. There are many complicated elements to a good couples therapy, and one of them is slowing down and listening to what is possible to achieve and what has to wait. If your therapist is working too hard or trying to solve too much, then that can be an obstacle, as opposed to the feeling that you are focusing on specific elements in the right timeline. Your therapist should be able to articulate why you are working in a certain area and not.