Paying for my partner’s therapy: an act of love or a defeat?

Let’s open the debate: we are in the midst of a couple crisis, with daily fights that cannot be resolved following disagreements, resistance and denials, we may have wanted the other to go to therapy with such a desire that we would even pay the price.

Daniela Val (32) says she started thinking about the possibility of forcing Manuel (36), her partner, into therapy after a relationship that had turned stormy for her. “We woke up without talking, I saw him walking down the halls of the house with discouragement, not wanting to work or go out, and every time I asked him what was wrong, we ended up fighting because he felt invaded, “he says.

Daniela began to discover the possibility that therapy could solve the problem. “I kept searching my head for an explanation why year on year he had changed so much, and since I couldn’t access his feelings, I started to theorize. It looked like he was going through a depression.

She got together with her friends who had studied psychology and asked them how terrible it would be to “give” Manuel therapy, because she had heard them say before that. Psychological interventions had to be desired or not by the person entering treatment. “They told me firmly not to do it, but an impulse inside me told me that he didn’t know how much therapy could help him improve his mood, so I did it anyway,” he says today.

Salvador Bello, a psychologist specializing in gender and violence at the University of Chile, has seen this situation in patients and believes that “the fact that a couple pays the other for therapy is desperate care intervention , when all resources are exhausted. This may come from worry, but in reality it leads us to reflect on our relational configuration: what is going on in this relationship that cannot be worked out within the couple and therefore, part of this couple thinks that it is important to involve a third party?

Manuel agreed to go to therapy after a year. After the first four sessions, Daniela says she saw her partner more willing to talk to her, but “none of us really understood why there was such an inability to communicate at first, and I desperately wanted to find out,” she says.

There is a desire to help, but if we go much further, there is a person who says “I am good and you are bad”; and this places her in a superior position within the couple.

The reluctance to connect with emotions is an act that clinical psychologist and specialist in dysfunctional relationships, Laura De Solminihac (@lauradesolinihac), describes as a reaction that “does not happen by chance, but is a way for the person to protect themselves when they are not yet ready to face reality because it is too painful for them”.

And according to Salvador Bello, it is not decisive whether it is a man or a woman who resists analyzing themselves because of our health habits that prevent us from exposing ourselves to situations of vulnerability. “It continues to be seen more in men because it’s less common for them to attend preventative care or be interested in delving into their biography, their masculinity and their own lives” . Daniela Val, up to this point, continued to feel that “her act of love had been pushing Manuel into that space so he could connect with his feelings when he couldn’t do it alone.”

In these cases, there is an asymmetry of power, because “we stay with what is happening with the person who is sent to therapy, but we do not wonder what is happening with the person who sends. There is a desire to help, but if we go much further, there is a person who says “I am good and you are bad”; and that puts her in a superior position within the couple,” as Laura de Solminihac explains.

In the deepening of what is happening in the relationship, there may be a more precise answer to the problem according to specialists, and that is that facing a crisis of only one part of the couple can mean risks for the common project. It happened to Tomás Valdivia (29) while he was finishing his studies in Antofagasta: “I was stressed, tired and under a lot of pressure about the future after leaving university. We argued with my girlfriend every week, until the day when she asked me for an hour to go to therapy without asking me, because she said that I was becoming unbearable.” account.

But it was Tomás who, after a few months, decided to end the relationship. “She was bored with me, but she held on until I spent some time in therapy, but nothing was improving. When I realized I couldn’t give her what she wanted, I asked my psychologist what I could do. That’s when I understood: it wasn’t just me who was the problem.”

As part of the attempt to resolve the crisis, it is possible that it will not heal, that it is indeed a “defeat”. This is what we rarely see, as Salvador Bello explains: “If there is a mental load in the person who takes over the management of this therapy or who pays for it, I would suggest that this person be the one who begins a therapeutic process, because there is a significant discomfort that brings us to this point of despair, and it’s worth asking what keeps her in the relationship, stays there, and wants so much that the other changes.

There is a saying that went viral a long time ago on social media, which says “we end up going to therapy for people who need to go to therapy” . But have we stopped to think about what gives us the power to insist that the other change? This is an interesting debate, because therein lies the danger of assigning therapy without the other wanting to attend or pay for it: pathologization.

Has it become part of the culture? “‘Pop psychology’ tends to pathologize behaviors that are not necessarily part of personality disorders or deviant behaviors, but are just behaviors that require problematization or analysis in conversation,” explains Salvador Bello, and Laura De Solminihac agrees that “It was very difficult for us not to pathologize normal sadness behavior, when what could be pathologized would be not to consider that such emotions exist in our daily life”.

Thus, the two specialists agree that Addressing painful behaviors that may be affecting a partner is crucial before seeking help from a third party. Conversation, problematization and analysis together give way to a growth of two. Now, if the behavior changes and transgresses the routine of one of the people, Laura recommends accompanying and recommending a therapeutic process without forcing, because “Those who are forced and unmotivated to seek treatment will not last in therapy.”

Moreover, the decision to improve mental health is directly linked to patients’ commitment to treatment, and this may translate into payment for their own therapy. This is the “therapeutic alliance” or “therapeutic contract”, which according to the document The person of the therapist from the University of Chile (2016), establishes financial compensation for the patient in order to “reinforce trust, empathy and faith in a treatment based on an asymmetric relationship in itself”, which, without payment, can even generate a feeling of debt, or a lack of commitment. An attitude contrary to a pro mental health attitude.