There is a strange kind of irony in being a couples therapist while going through a separation and divorce. I spend my days sitting with couples in the most vulnerable parts of their relationships. I talk about communication, emotional safety, boundaries, repair, resentment, attachment, intimacy, and the complicated work of choosing each other again. I help people untangle years of hurt and try to understand what is happening underneath the arguments. And then I go home and live inside the complicated reality of my own relationship ending. There is no neat separation between being a therapist and being a human being. I don’t get to leave my humanity at the office door.
Going through my own separation has brought up feelings I didn’t expect—not only grief, sadness, anger, disappointment, and fear, but also something I wasn’t prepared for as a therapist: imposter syndrome. There have been moments when I’ve sat across from a couple and thought, Who am I to be talking to you about this? How can I talk about healthy relationships when mine is ending? How can I encourage couples to communicate when my own relationship reached a place where communication wasn’t enough? How can I help someone work through resentment when I have my own? The rational part of my brain knows the answer. A relationship ending does not mean that everything I have learned about relationships is suddenly invalid. Being a couples therapist doesn’t make me immune to relationship difficulties. It doesn’t mean I have some magical ability to prevent heartbreak, conflict, incompatibility, or the changing needs of two human beings. But knowing something intellectually doesn’t always make it easier to feel.
I have also had to be incredibly intentional about my own emotions when sitting with clients. My experiences belong to me. My clients’ experiences belong to them. Those two things cannot become blurred. I don’t disclose my separation to my clients simply because I am experiencing something that may feel relevant to their stories. Their therapy is not a place for me to process my own relationship. They deserve the full attention of their therapist, not a therapist who is subconsciously trying to work through her own life while helping them work through theirs. That has required me to become even more mindful of my own biases. When a couple talks about betrayal, I have to notice what comes up inside of me without allowing my experience to determine what their relationship means. When someone talks about leaving, I have to resist the temptation to believe I know what comes next. When a couple is struggling, I have to remember that staying is not always the healthiest choice—and leaving is not always the healthiest choice either. My job is not to decide for them. My job is to help them understand themselves, understand each other, recognize patterns, communicate honestly, and make informed decisions about what is healthiest for their relationship and for themselves.
And perhaps, unexpectedly, going through my own separation has deepened that understanding. I have learned that sometimes healing isn’t about getting the relationship back to where it was. Sometimes healing looks like accepting that something has changed and figuring out how to move forward with integrity. For me, a huge part of that healing has been learning how to co-parent. The relationship may be changing, but our responsibility to our children doesn’t disappear. That means learning how to separate the hurt between two adults from the needs of the children we both love. It means working toward being healthy versions of ourselves—not perfect versions, not people who never get angry or sad, but adults who can regulate their emotions, communicate respectfully, take responsibility for their own behavior, and create a sense of safety for their children. It means recognizing that our children don’t need parents who have everything figured out. They need parents who are willing to keep figuring it out.
And maybe that is one of the most important things I have learned through this experience. Being a therapist does not mean I am above the human experience. It means I am willing to sit with it. I can know attachment theory and still feel heartbreak. I can teach emotional regulation and still have moments when my own emotions feel enormous. I can understand relationship dynamics and still experience the grief of a relationship ending. And I can be a couples therapist while going through a divorce—not because I have all the answers, but because I understand, perhaps more deeply now, that relationships are complicated, people are complicated, and sometimes healing doesn’t look like saving the relationship. Sometimes healing looks like becoming healthier versions of ourselves. Sometimes it looks like learning to co-parent with compassion. Sometimes it looks like grieving what we thought our lives would be while slowly building some
