Couples counselling · Hebden Bridge, and online
When it's the two of you, and talking at home has got hard.
Couples usually come up these stairs when the same argument has been going round for months, or when the talking has stopped altogether and the house has gone quiet in a way neither of you likes. Sometimes one of you has said the word counselling and the other has flinched.
Wanting some help with it is a plain, sensible thing to want. It doesn't mean the relationship is over, and it doesn't mean either of you has failed. It means two people have noticed they could do with a third chair in the room for a while, and this is a room with one.
What fifty minutes in this room is like, for two.
You both sit down. Mari or Dan sits in the third chair, a little back from the two of you. The first while is usually spent on what's brought you here, and each of you gets to say it in your own words, uninterrupted, while the other listens. That on its own is often the first time it's been said all the way to the end.
Nobody is cross-examined. Nobody is put on the spot and left there.
Whoever you see stays even. We're interested in how the two of you have got where you are, and we'll ask about it on both sides, but we don't keep score, and we won't be recruited. If one of you starts to feel ganged up on, say so, and the room will shift. It's our job to notice before you have to.
A lot of what happens is slowing things down. At home a sentence lands and the reply is out before it's been heard. Here there's time to ask what was meant, and time for the answer. Things get said in this room that haven't managed to get said across the kitchen table, mostly because here nobody has to win.
Here there's time to ask what was meant, and time for the answer.
What's said stays between the three of us. The one exception is if we believed one of you, or someone else, was at serious risk of harm; where we could, we'd talk to you about that first. There's more on how private it is, said plainly.
We can't tell you where the work will take the two of you, and we won't pretend to. Some couples use the room to find a way back to each other. Some use it to part more kindly than they would have managed alone. Both are honest things to do with fifty minutes, and neither is decided on the first visit.
If one of you isn't sure about this.
Most couples don't arrive equally keen. Usually one of you has been reading pages like this one for a while, and the other has agreed to look, with some reluctance, because they were asked to. If you're the reluctant one: that's a normal way to arrive, and nothing in the room depends on you having wanted to come.
If you're the one who's been reading, you don't have to talk your partner into a session. The free 20-minute call is for exactly this. Either of you can ring and ask how it works, what gets talked about, whether it's likely to feel like being told off. Mari or Dan will answer honestly, and you can decide together afterwards, or decide nothing at all for now.
And if it turns out that one of you would rather come on your own first, that's a fine place to start too. Here's what counselling on your own is like.
Evenings, and what it costs, said once.
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the session
50 minutes
The same length as a session on your own. Most couples come weekly or fortnightly; that's something to settle between the three of you.
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the fee
£85 for a couple
For the two of you together, in the room or online. There's a small number of reduced-fee places; if cost is what's in the way, say so on the call.
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the evenings
Tuesdays and Thursdays until 20:00
Two working lives are hard to line up. Evening appointments on those two days mean neither of you has to explain an afternoon away.
Online, it's the same fifty minutes with the same person; you'll each need to be somewhere you can speak freely, which for some couples means the same sofa and for others means two rooms. Everything else, including the hours and how we keep things private, is on fees, sessions and privacy.
Either of you can make the free 20-minute call.
You don't both need to be on the line, and you don't need to have agreed anything first. Whichever of you is ready can ring or write, and Mari or Dan will talk through how it works for the two of you. There's nothing to book at the end of it unless you both want to.