Couples therapy is like every other type of therapy. If you respect your therapist's demeanor, intelligence, and method, then the therapy may be beneficial to you. However, if your couples therapy experience mirrored mine, then you may inherit a special loathing of the process.

On our first and only appointment, my therapist started off the conversation by means of Freudian nonsense. She explained that all of our relationships' futures depend on how we interacted with one another as children. She also declared that lack of free play as a child is a giant deterrent on having a healthy adult relationship. By denying ourselves free play, we are denying ourselves happiness. Thus we in turn doom ourselves to misery. Therefore, we are just living out self-prophesying failures time and time again. Her words were a bit less succinct than what I describe, but that is what she inferred.

We spent an hour rehashing events that were forgotten for good reasons. We discussed various topics of childhood disappointment, fear, and abandonment. I think I may have redeveloped my fear of French clowns in this single session. What did occur from this session was an awkwardness that grew exponentially between my partner and me. We looked at one another and had a tandem moment of realization. After hearing about each other's childhood, we separately knew that the other was an emotional cripple, and we have no desire to travel life in a figurative wheelchair. We broke up three days later.