ForumsInterracial Couple Therapy & CommunicationHas couple therapy actually helped you and your partner talk without fighting?
Has couple therapy actually helped you and your partner talk without fighting?
Me and my boyfriend have been together a little over 2 years, I'm Black and he's Korean-American, and we both live in Atlanta. We get along great like 80% of the time, but whenever stuff about family, money, or how people look at us comes up, it turns into this weird tense silence or a full argument. It's not even always about the actual issue, sometimes I feel like we're fighting about tone or assumptions more than anything else.
We finally agreed to try couples therapy after a nasty fight over Thanksgiving plans. I found a therapist on Psychology Today and we're doing online sessions because his work schedule is all over the place. I guess I'm wondering if other interracial couples found therapy helpful for communication, or if it just made everything more awkward at first? Also if anyone has tips on how to bring up cultural stuff without making it sound like an accusation, I could use that. I don't want us to keep repeating the same argument every month.
Mar 27
50
2 repliesL
Lisa NakamuraPREMIUMHonestly, therapy helped us more than I expected, but the first 2-3 sessions were kind of rough. I'm Filipina and my husband is white, and we had a lot of the same stuff where we weren't even hearing each other, just reacting. Our therapist kept slowing us down and making us repeat what we thought the other person meant, which felt annoying at first but actually exposed how much we were assuming.
One thing that helped was setting a rule that we don't bring up family stuff when we're already upset or in the car. Sounds dumb, but it saved us a bunch of blowups. Also, if the therapist feels too focused on generic relationship advice and not the cultural part, I think it's fair to say that out loud.
B
Ben O'ConnorPREMIUMMy ex and I did therapy in Chicago and it honestly was useful for communication, but only after we found someone who didn't act weird about race stuff. The first therapist we tried kept making everything sound super neutral, like culture wasn't a real factor, and that was useless. Once we switched, the new counselor actually asked about family expectations, food, religion, and how we each grew up talking about conflict.
For bringing stuff up, I used "when you said X, I felt like Y" instead of "you always" or "you never." It sounds basic, but with interracial couples I think it's easy for stuff to get interpreted as bigger than the one argument. Therapy gave us a place to practice that without it turning into a whole weekend fight.
Sign in to reply to this thread.