8 Things Men Worry About When Starting Couples Counseling

When it comes to couples counseling, it's common for women to take the lead. They often spot signs of disconnection and view counseling as a supportive measure. While men may have a different perspective and may see it as a sign of failure, there's no reason to feel nervous about starting couples counseling.

In this article, I will address some common worries men shared during the initial phone consultation. I will provide reassurance and explain what happens in couples counseling. Let's dive in!

#1: Some Men Worry About Being Labelled as the Bad Guy

When couples start couples counseling, they feel more stress, frustration, and hopelessness. Their communication is often ridden with conflict and disagreements. They see each other in a negative light. Blame, criticism, and defensiveness have set into their communication habits.

Men often worry that couples counseling will be a platform for airing grievances, a space where blame is assigned. They fear that their relationship problems will be solely attributed to them. While women may express their feelings more openly, men often find themselves shutting down, stonewalling, and withdrawing in silence.

This fear stems from the belief that the therapist may side with their spouse and judge them unfairly. However, it's important to note that couples counseling is a non-judgmental space, where both partners are heard and understood.

What Happens in Gottman Couples Counseling?

Specialized and trained couples counselors examine relationship problems from a systemic view. They focus on interactions. When we listen to partners, we pay attention to the dynamic and each partner’s role in the relationship challenges.

Couples counseling aims to raise partners’ awareness of each other’s role in problems and guide them to shift from unhelpful to healthy ways of relating.

Your couples counselor is there for both of you. Your couples counselor’s client is your relationship. We help both partners change. The goal is to improve your marriage's health.

#2: Some Men Worry Their Spouse and Therapist Will Gang Up On Them

When issues are brought to their attention, men often feel overwhelmed and powerless. They don’t always know how to make things better. They shift from dismissing problems to expressing anger and frustration.

In anticipation of couples counseling, men imagine that an expert, in addition to their spouse, will confirm that they are wrong and should do better. This could not be farther from the truth. Both you and your partner will be the focus of longer interventions. These happen when empathy, insight, or other barriers stop the relationship from improving. In that case, no blame will be applied to either of you. You will get observational feedback. It will help you explore some of your blind spots. Your partner will, too.

What Happens in Gottman Couples Counseling?

Couples counselors are trained to affect the relationship dynamic in the present moment. In couples counseling, the work happens directly between your spouse and yourself. During those talks, your couples counselor will focus on how you talk to each other. They will also focus on how you manage emotions and handle your differences. Your couples counselor's role is to guide you. They help you resolve or start to address sources of disconnection and disagreement.

Couples counselors instruct, direct, guide, and process during the sessions. We do not argue, convince, or tell you what is right or wrong. We collaborate with you and work on your and your partner’s goals.

Your couples counselor is not a referee. We consider your and our partner’s needs and help you build a relationship that includes both. We do not apply our values or judgment to what you and your partner need. We are trained to keep our biases in check so they do not interfere with our work. It's understandable to feel overwhelmed and powerless when issues arise in a relationship. However, seeking help from a couples counselor can be a positive step towards improving your relationship.

It's important to know that in couples counseling, you and your partner will be the focus of the interventions, and no blame will be placed on either of you. The couples counselor will provide observational feedback and help you explore some of your blind spots.

#3: Some Men Worry About Disclosing Personal Information

Men mainly relate to others by sharing common interests, experiences, and careers. They also connect with others through discussions about politics, sports, and hobbies. Talking about their lives, feelings, and family relationships is a rare experience for most men.

I will not explain all the possible reasons for this, but I will mention a few. Cultural norms, societal expectations, family modeling, experiences of betrayal, or an abusive childhood could all set the stage for cautiousness about personal disclosure in men.

“We do not talk about family problems with other people.” Some men are raised in families where privacy is crucial to protecting the family's well-being (status, social perception, physical safety). This is a family value that men often internalize.

“People can use your vulnerability to manipulate, use, and hurt you.” Many men are modeled a negative attitude toward vulnerability and an expected emotional strength. Feelings and personal information are perceived as weaknesses men need to protect and hide.

“Emotions and personal stories are irrelevant to problems. They cause more problems.” Often, men learn how to dismiss and disregard the role of emotions in relationships and decision-making. They might prioritize solutions and facts. Considering feelings and personal information might skew the problem-solving process.

These are just a few internal conflicts men might experience regarding sharing personal information.

What Happens in Gottman Couples Counseling

Your story and your feelings make you who you are. Your background information and experiences will help you understand and connect to the challenges you are experiencing now in your marriage. It will also help your spouse to be more compassionate and understanding. The goal of vulnerability is to build a stronger connection. Your vulnerability will never be used as a weapon against you or to blame you.

We work with attachment, patterns, and emotional experiences in couples counseling. These define your relational self—how you bond with your spouse and establish intimacy.

To make necessary changes in your marriage, you must first look at what causes the challenges. Very often, the answers are in your story and your feelings. Opening up to your spouse is part of building an emotional connection, helping them empathize and understand your ways of being. Your personal information is necessary to improve your relationship.

Trained couples counselors will help you explore significant parts of your life that have impacted you. They will also examine how you coped with adversity and conflict and whether your current situation requires a different approach to problems.

A trained couples counselor will establish respect and interrupt partners when personal information is used as a criticism.

#4: Some Men Worry About Not Being Understood

We just discussed the worry about being vulnerable and disclosing personal information. All the walls against vulnerability put men in an impossible situation. They want to connect but are expected to show little vulnerability.

Relying only on facts can only get you so far. Bonding with people happens on both levels: facts and feelings. Feelings inform others about what is important to us, while only facts don’t.

Men rely on frustration and anger to move their agendas and meet their relationship needs. They often feel misunderstood by their partners and labeled as emotionally unavailable or incompetent.

In reality, men’s attempts at expressing emotions in relationships can be met with defensiveness and criticism, reinforcing their beliefs that their feelings are irrelevant.

What Happens in Gottman Couples Counseling

In Gottman couples counseling, all your patterns will be observed and acknowledged. In relationships, partners’ emotional expression is constantly reinforced by each other’s reactions.

A Gottman couples counselor sees how partners’ specific reactions undermine an open flow of emotional expression. Your couples counselor will intervene in those aspects of your communication and behaviors. They will help you establish a safer pattern where you and your partner have space to share. Your trained couples counselor will guide you to remove barriers to accepting each other’s emotional experiences.

Your Gottman couples counselor understands both of your perspectives. We see each partner’s internal processing and can make sense of your feelings regardless of how opposite or different they might be. We share that understanding and model validation for both partners.

#5: Some Men Worry About Divorce and Being a Failure

For many men, couples counseling means the marriage is reaching its end. They fear this is the first step towards divorce. They are apprehensive about what might transpire and if they can do what will be asked of them.

Most men seek help as a last resort. They are problem solvers and feel competent in their accomplishments, but seeking help implies incompetence and inadequacy.

They might feel triggered by failed past experiences, self-doubt, self-blame, etc., which confirm their worst fears: “I am unlovable and a failure.”

In my experience, when women initiate couples counseling, they want the relationship to work. Even if sometimes there are thoughts of separation, women think of couples counseling as an additional support system to maintain the relationship.

What Happens in Couples Counseling

As a specialized counselor in both couples counseling and discernment counseling, I identify ambivalence from the beginning of couples counseling and guide partners to focus on resolving it before engaging in couples counseling.

This is because when ambivalence is present, couples counseling becomes grounds for justifying how change is not possible, how the leaning-in partner is failing, and how the relationship is doomed. The ambivalent partner usually asks for reassurance and promises while rejecting them all. The focus is on their partner’s efforts to change, which are not accepted, seen, or considered.

Very rarely, couples counseling starts with two motivated partners and unfolds with ambivalence and divorce.

#6: Some Men Worry About the Stress of Facing the Problems

Some couples describe different experiences of their marriage. There is often more distress on the women’s side and more moderate concerns on the men’s side.

Men tend to dismiss relationship problems and engage in excessive optimism, not knowing how to handle negative feedback, experiences, or emotions.

When men consider couples counseling, they fear divorce, they fear having to change themselves, they fear their partner will blame them for all the issues, and they fear they are failing as a partner.

Amid this anxiety, there is also fear that whatever is going to happen in couples counseling will be highly overwhelming and unsalvageable. Men keep their feelings to themselves and anticipate excruciating stress from facing problems.

Men are problem-solvers but have not devised workable solutions for their relationship issues. Facing the extent of distress in the relationship without having tools to cope with it makes couples counseling nerve-wracking.

What Happens in Gottman Couples Counseling

The reality is that couples counseling will give you those tools right from the start. So you can face the problems, address them, and adjust to have a more fulfilling and positive connection with your spouse.

Men often share their feedback about their experience of the Gottman Method. They find it containing, straightforward, helpful, applicable, predictable, consistent, and meaningful. Men often express their surprise that their feelings make sense, that their perspectives are essential, and that they are not the cause of all relationship issues.

#7: Some Men Worry About What to Say

Some men have expressed concern about not having much to say. They describe themselves as introverted, shy, not very social, etc. They anticipate awkward silences, having to come up with things to say, not finding words to express themselves, or feeling uncomfortable answering questions.

Usually, men lack information about what happens in couples counseling and misunderstand how sessions work. Occasionally, they might have had a bad experience in couples counseling that made them feel uncomfortable and put them in the spotlight for having to fill the sessions with information and stories.

What Happens in Gottman Couples Counseling

Couples counseling is different from individual counseling. The counselor's structure, planning, and active involvement are crucial in couples counseling to accomplish relationship goals.

A Gottman couples counselor sets the stage for sessions, regulates interactions, asks questions, and guides partners to make necessary shifts in their relationship. A Gottman couples counselor uses guides and structured conversations that allow partners to feel in control and have space to process, understand, and change.

First, let me say that most men who shared this concern with me fully participated in couples counseling and expressed relief with how things unfolded.

Although it rarely happens, with all my involvement, some men remain silent. There is defensiveness and a passive-aggressive nature to the silence or lack of participation. In those scenarios, there is often a secretive agenda (affair, ongoing or in the workings, other undisclosed betrayals such as relapses or questionable financial decisions, other undisclosed secretive behaviors).

If this is the case for you, couples counseling might not be the best option unless you plan to be transparent and disclose the “secret.”

#8: Some Men Worry About Needing to Change Who They Are

When men think about change, they often assume they will have to change as people. These assumptions are based on how partners frame problems in their relationship. Their partner might have criticized them and told them there is something wrong with who they are and their perspective.

Their values, morals, personality traits, temperament, preferences, dreams, and other aspects of their individuality might have been attacked during conflict and disagreements. Changing these fundamental parts of self can feel overwhelming and unfair.

What Happens in Gottman Couples Counseling

Gottman couples counseling aims to help partners face their differences, accept their differences, and build a relationship in which both feel welcomed and included.

You and your spouse are together for a reason. Most of those differences are what drew you to each other. However, these differences become a source of tension and discord later in life. Partners forget the positive aspects of those differences and focus on how they make things more complicated.

A Gottman couples counselor will discuss how these differences create perpetual problems that will never be fully solved. They will help you start a dialogue about these perpetual issues to compromise and navigate your fundamental differences with respect and understanding.

The focus will be on behaviors your spouse may experience as destructive, unhelpful, escalating, or uncaring. This is where the change is. You will gain insight into the impact of some of your behaviors on your partner. Understanding your partner’s experience of your actions will uncover some of your blind spots. Your partner will do that as well.

Conclusion

Men have valid reasons to worry about couples counseling. As we can see, those worries stem from different aspects of their upbringing and experiences. If you or your partner relate to one or more of these worries, talk to your counselor in the initial phone call. A good couples counselor will be able to make you feel respected, validated, and reassured. They will give you hope and make you feel safe. Do not let these worries stop you from starting couples counseling.

Check out “7 Worries Women Have When Starting Couples Counseling” and “What to Expect in Gottman Couples Therapy.”

Do you have any questions about couples counseling or the Gottman Method? Please email me at tmatyukhin@tmatmcs.com