To be blunt: If you think you and your partner need to get better at communicating, you probably do.
The good news is, you already know how to talk! The problem is that when something important is happening, our brain is wired to act, not talk coherently. It’s very human!
Maybe one of you gets loud and that makes the other shutdown. Maybe when a conversation turns important one of you wants to pause but the other wants to stay and hash it out and fix it. One of you wants to talk solution but the other just can’t seem to do it! Maybe one of you wants more sex (very human!) and one of you doesn’t want it when there’s even a hint of pressure. All very human! All very hard to talk about!
So my suggestion is to stop talking! We’ll start again at some point, but only when we figure out how to talk and stay on the same team. You’re good at it in other areas, I know it! You wouldn’t be a couple if not.
It’s when something important (triggering! urgent! threatening! annoying!) is happening that our ability to cooperate falls apart.
Plus too much talking in couple’s therapy is a drag! Weekly scheduled argument! No fun!
Couples Therapy
My job is to teach you how to pay attention to your internal experience (thoughts, feelings, nervous system) so that you can pause, breathe, clock when you’re beginning to fight and choose to do something differently.
Then, you begin to practice communicating nonverbally through slow, attentive, curious touch. Maybe it’s fingertip to fingertip, maybe it’s a hand on an arm, maybe it’s standing and walking hip to hip, but in that slow, attentive contact you will be able to learn to pay closer attention to your partner’s internal experience, and vice versa.
Then, using the breath to keep yourselves regulated, you will be much more capable of navigating the hard conversations.
If you and your partner can learn how to stay on the same team then my promise to you is that you will be able to navigate anything that you come into couple’s therapy with. Betrayal, grief and loss, mismatched sex drives, negotiating nonmonogamy, life changes, parenting, finances, you name it. If you can learn how to talk, then what you talk about won’t be a barrier anymore.