Croton, NY: 
Rarely is couples therapy easy. Rarely does it help couples square away their problems in just one or two sessions. If couples are willing to put in the time and effort though, time spent with an experienced therapist can really make a difference – especially when couples have those ‘aha’ moments.
What is an ‘aha’ moment? It is a moment when the light bulb goes on inside your head. You suddenly realize something for the first time, despite the fact that it may have been staring you right in the face all along.
The Huff Post’s UK edition recently ran a post describing ‘aha’ moments from 10 real couples who underwent couple’s therapy. It is a good read. It perfectly demonstrates what happens when couples come to those major realizations that help them turn their relationships around.
Tearing Each Other Down
This post will not go into the details of all 10 ‘aha’ moments, but it’s worth mentioning at least one to illustrate the point. The very first couple mentioned in the HuffPost piece found themselves fighting more frequently during the COVID shutdowns. Having nowhere to go and nothing to do only made an uncomfortable situation worse.
The strange thing is that the couple had a newborn. They thought the baby would strengthen their relationship. That wasn’t the case. During therapy, one of their ‘aha’ moments was discovering that they had a tendency to tear one another down during disagreements.
Rather than looking for healthy ways to communicate when they were fighting, they looked for opportunities to lash out at one another. They realized that this made for an unhealthy relationship – both in the long and short terms.
Love Truly Is Blind
What this particular couple discovered about themselves is not unique. Do you know that phrase, “love is blind”? It is true, just not in the sense that we normally understand it. We think of blind love as not being able to see the faults in other people. In reality though, blind love is being unable to see the truth about one’s relationships.
Couples are so intimately involved in one another’s lives that they have a tough time stepping back and taking the view of a third party. They cannot see all the good and bad things they do for their relationships because they are in the midst of it all. Think of it as a forest.
Standing in the middle of the forest makes it impossible for you to see just how big that forest is. But stand on a mountaintop a mile away and you get a much clearer view. Now you can see just how vast the forest is. Relationships are the same way.
We All Need Them
Being able to see things from a third-party perspective is generally what leads to the ‘aha’ moment. The thing about such moments is that we all need them. They are not just reserved for couples in therapy. They are for everyone and anyone looking to improve relationships.
Sometimes an ‘aha’ moment reveals something good. Other times it reveals something bad. The key to whether a given ‘aha’ moment actually strengthens a relationship is what the person does with it. When good things are encouraged and bad things corrected, ‘aha’ moments become productive moments.
Perhaps you and your partner are considering couple’s therapy. If so, we would be more than happy to help you at our Rye, New York office. Contact us to learn more about couples therapy. In the meantime, begin preparing yourself to have some ‘aha’ moments. They are part and parcel with couple’s therapy.