According to research by John Gottman, the average couple waits six years from the time they first notice serious problems before reaching out for couples therapy. By the time they arrive, the patterns are deeper than they need to be. Here’s how to spot the signs earlier.
Sign 1: You’re having the same argument over and over
Healthy couples disagree. Even healthy couples have recurring conflict — Gottman’s research shows that 69% of couples’ problems are perpetual, not solvable. The problem isn’t recurring disagreement. It’s recurring disagreement that ends in the same place, with no progress, every single time.
If you can predict exactly how a fight will unfold from the first sentence — what they’ll say, what you’ll say back, how it’ll end — therapy can interrupt that pattern. Once you see the script, you can write a new one.
Sign 2: You feel more like roommates than partners
Long-term relationships go through phases. There are seasons of disconnection — after a baby, during a stressful work period, when caretaking elders. Those usually pass.
What’s worth attending to: prolonged disconnection that has become the new normal. You care about each other, you share a household, you coordinate logistics. But the intimacy — emotional, physical, intellectual — has faded and you’ve stopped trying to bring it back.
This is the kind of drift that often goes on for years before anyone names it. By the time one partner finally says something, the other has often been quietly waiting for the conversation.
Sign 3: Communication has shifted into criticism and defensiveness
Gottman identified four communication patterns that strongly predict relationship breakdown:
- Criticism: Attacking your partner’s character (“You never…”) rather than describing the behavior (“I’m frustrated that…”).
- Contempt: Mockery, eye-rolling, sarcasm directed at your partner. The strongest single predictor of divorce.
- Defensiveness: Counter-attacking instead of acknowledging your partner’s point.
- Stonewalling: Shutting down, withdrawing, refusing to engage.
If you regularly recognize two or more of these in your interactions, the relationship has shifted into a destructive pattern that’s hard to reverse without help.
Sign 4: You’re considering or having an affair, or your partner is
Affairs almost never come out of nowhere. They typically reflect months or years of disconnection that the couple couldn’t or wouldn’t address. Whether the affair has happened or you’re noticing the conditions that could lead to one (emotional intimacy with someone outside the relationship, the urge to share with them what you used to share with your partner), this is a sign to act.
For couples in the wake of an affair, therapy is hard but often transformative. Most couples who do successful affair-recovery work emerge with a stronger relationship than they had before — not because the affair was good, but because the work it required was deep.
Sign 5: You can’t make a decision together without it spiraling
Money. In-laws. Parenting. Where to live. Whose career takes priority. These decisions are the meat of long-term partnership, and they’re hard for everyone.
But if you’ve reached a point where major decisions can’t be discussed without conflict — or worse, where you’ve stopped trying to discuss them and are quietly making unilateral decisions — the partnership infrastructure has eroded. Therapy can help rebuild it.
Sign 6: One or both of you keeps saying “I don’t know if I can do this anymore”
This one is straightforward. If either partner is regularly saying or thinking they’re not sure they want to stay, that’s not a phase to wait out. It’s a signal worth taking seriously.
The earlier you bring this to therapy, the more options you have. Couples who arrive in active crisis usually have less room to maneuver than couples who come in when the doubts first start.
What couples therapy is and isn’t
Couples therapy is not:
- A space to prove your partner wrong while the therapist takes your side
- A guarantee the relationship will survive
- Quick — most couples come weekly for 12 to 20 sessions
- Pleasant in every session — some are hard
Couples therapy is:
- A structured space to understand the dynamics driving conflict
- A way to learn skills — communication, repair, conflict, intimacy — that you weren’t taught and may not have modeled growing up
- An opportunity to make decisions about the relationship with more clarity
- Sometimes the difference between drifting apart and rebuilding
Research on evidence-based approaches like Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) and Gottman Method shows about 70-75% of couples report significant improvement, with many sustaining gains years later.
What if my partner doesn’t want to come?
This is common and rarely a deal-breaker. Many partners are skeptical going in and end up valuing it more than the partner who initiated. We’re also happy to start with just one of you — sometimes the work of clarifying your own goals shifts the dynamic enough that the conversation becomes possible.
Couples therapy that works around real life
Sanare Counseling Group offers virtual couples therapy across Maryland — so you can attend together from your living room, or separately from different locations. EFT and Gottman-informed approaches. In-network with major plans.
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