Most Couples Wait Too Long
After almost a decade of working with couples, I’ve noticed a pattern that genuinely troubles me.
Most couples who come to see me aren’t in the early stages of difficulty. By the time they make an appointment, things have been hard for a long time — sometimes years. The distance has built up. The same arguments have happened hundreds of times. The goodwill has worn thin.
And often, what I’m seeing is damage that could have been prevented.
Why do couples wait so long?
It makes sense, actually.
When you’re in the early stages of a relationship everything feels good. You’re connected, you’re optimistic, you’re enjoying each other. The last thing you want to do is introduce friction by bringing up topics that aren’t currently problems.
So you don’t.
You move in together or get married without ever really talking about money, or how you each handle conflict, or what you actually expect from each other in terms of roles and responsibilities. You assume you’re on the same page — or that you’ll figure it out as you go.
And sometimes you do. But more often, those unaddressed topics quietly accumulate. Small resentments. Unspoken expectations that don’t get met. Patterns of avoiding certain conversations that gradually make those conversations harder to have.
By the time couples come to therapy, the presenting issue is rarely the real one. It’s usually the buildup of years of things that never got talked about.
The conversations most couples avoid
The topics that tend to cause the most problems later are also the ones couples are least likely to discuss early on:
- Money — not just who pays for what, but attitudes toward spending, saving, debt, and financial security
- Conflict — how you each fight, what you do when things escalate, whether repair happens easily or not
- Intimacy — what you each need, how you express it, what happens when you’re not in sync
- Roles and expectations — who does what, and whether those assumptions are actually shared
- Values and beliefs — what matters to each of you, and where your views on important things might differ
None of these are comfortable to raise when things are going well. But they are so much easier to talk about before they become problems than after.
We’re working from an outdated model
Part of what makes this hard is that we expect a lot from relationships now — more than any previous generation has. We want our partner to be our best friend, our co-parent, our intellectual equal, our adventure companion, our emotional support, our person.
That’s a lot to ask of another human being. And most of us come into relationships with very little preparation for navigating all of that — just the hope that love will be enough.
Love matters enormously. And it’s not sufficient on its own.
The couples who tend to do well long-term aren’t the ones who never struggle. They’re the ones who have developed the skills and shared understanding to navigate the struggles when they come — and who talked about the hard things before they became the hard things.
What actually helps
There’s a lot of research on what distinguishes couples in strong, lasting relationships from those who drift apart or end up in crisis. It’s not about compatibility in the way we usually think about it. It’s about communication — specifically, whether couples can talk about difficult things without it damaging the relationship.
That’s a learnable skill. And the best time to start building it is before you need it.
If you’re moving in together, getting engaged, or simply wanting to invest in your relationship before things get hard — that’s exactly what premarital counselling and relationship preparation are for. Not because something is wrong. Because you care about getting it right.
Curious about what those conversations actually look like? I offer premarital counselling in Squamish and online across BC, as well as a self-paced online course that guides couples through 11 essential relationship conversations — including the PREPARE/ENRICH assessment.
If you’re ready to take that step, I’d love to hear from you.
