What happens in couples therapy? An honest walkthrough of an Imago session

The room, the structure, and the conversation you've probably never had.

Most couples sit in the car park for a minute before their first session. Not because they're late — because neither of them quite knows what they're walking into.

Will we have to fight in front of a stranger?

Will she take sides?

Will I be told everything is my fault?

So here is what actually happens. Not the sales pitch — the real shape of a session, as it runs in my practice room in Nantwich.

First, what doesn't happen

You don't lie on a couch. Nobody hands you a verdict. And I don't referee the same arguments you’ve been having on a loop at home.

This surprises people. They arrive braced for a courtroom, each partner ready with their evidence, half-expecting me to hear both cases and rule. But couples therapy isn't about deciding who's right. In an Imago session there are no villains, only two people who've stopped being able to hear each other. Usually both of you have a point. Usually both of you are also missing something. My job isn't to judge the argument; it's to change the way the argument happens.

That's often the first relief of the work: nobody is on trial here.

The shape of a session

‍A couples session with me lasts an hour or 90 minutes. There's a loose structure to it, and the structure is doing more work than it looks like.

We usually start with a brief check-in — how the week has been, whether anything from last time has been sitting with either of you. Then we move into the heart of it: one structured conversation, done properly, about one thing that matters. Not six grievances skimmed at speed. One thing, slowed right down.

That slowing down is the point. Most couples who come to me are having the same conversation they've had a hundred times at home — the one that starts about the dishwasher or childcare responsibilities and ends somewhere much older and more painful, with both of you exhausted and no closer. The session takes that conversation and changes its speed, its order, and its rules. It makes both of you feel safe. I get you back in touch with the reason you cam together in the first place. Same people, same subject, completely different outcome.

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The mirroring conversation

Imago therapy is built around something called the Intentional Dialogue, and the first part of it — mirroring — sounds almost too simple to work.

‍One of you speaks. The other one's only job is to say back what they heard. Not to answer it, defend against it, correct the facts, or explain what they actually meant in 2019. Just to repeat word for word — and then to check: "Did I get that?" and “is there more?”

I'll be honest with you: the first time, it feels awkward. Slightly stilted and clunky. People sometimes laugh, which is fine — laughing is allowed, it breaks the tension and nervousness.

‍And then something shifts. Because for many couples, this is the first time in years that one of them has finished a sentence and known — actually known — that it landed. Not that it was heard while the other person loaded their reply. Heard. There's often a moment, a few sessions in, where the listening partner mirrors something back and the speaking partner goes quiet, and their eyes fill, and they say some version of: that's it. That's what I've been trying to say.

From mirroring, the dialogue moves on — to validation (understanding why your partner's view makes sense from inside their world, even if you see it differently) and empathy (imagining how it might actually feel to be them). But mirroring is the foundation. If you take one thing from this post, take this: most couples don't have a love problem. They have a listening problem. And listening, unlike chemistry, can be learned.

What the first session looks like

The first session is gentler than people expect. There's no ambush, no "so, whose fault is it?"

We talk about what's brought you in — and I ask each of you separately, because you'll often say quite different things, and both answers matter. We talk about how you met, which sounds like small talk and isn't; the way a couple tells their beginning tells me a great deal about where the connection still lives. And we begin, lightly, to look at the pattern the two of you get caught in. Not the content of the rows — the shape of them. Who pursues, who retreats. Who goes loud, who goes quiet.

You won't be asked to do anything you're not ready for. Some couples do their first small piece of dialogue in session one and I start with an appreciation dialogue; some need two or three sessions before it feels possible. Both are normal.

And if part of you is worried that coming to therapy means admitting the relationship has failed — I understand why it feels that way. But in my experience it's usually the opposite. The couples who come are the ones who still have something they're not willing to lose. Sitting in that room together, however awkwardly, is one of the more hopeful things two people can do.

Does it work?

‍I won't promise you an outcome, no honest therapist can. What I can tell you is what this work tends to open up: conversations that go somewhere instead of round in circles, a way of raising hard things without them becoming a fight, and often, underneath all of it, the rediscovery that the person across from you is not your opponent. They're someone who's been trying, clumsily, in their own way, to reach you too.

Some couples come for a few months. Some stay longer. Some come to part well, which is its own kind of care. The work belongs to you; the structure is mine to hold.

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If you're thinking about it

‍I offer couples counselling in Nantwich, Cheshire. Sessions are £75 (60 minutes) and £105 (90 minutes), and you’d like, we can have a free 15-minute call — a relaxed chance to say hello, ask anything you like, and see whether it feels like a fit. There's nothing to prepare, and you don't need to have decided anything.

If any of this sounds like the two of you, get in touch: hello@thepsychotherapyplace.co.uk

‍Janine Sinnott is a UKCP registered member and Advanced Clinical Trainee, working with couples using Imago Relationship Therapy at The Psychotherapy Place, Nantwich, Cheshire.