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Couple's therapy can be useful if properly screened.

Many issues presenting in couple's therapy are better addressed individually.

Emotional, values, and attachment styles are frequently handled more effectively in individual therapy.

In couples’ therapy, we tend to see people arriving in a crisis or emergency situation in need of a referee or mediator. Sometimes, couples come to therapy 5 or 10 years too late. When resentment has grown into contempt, there is little a therapist can do.

In many cases, however, the challenges people come to couples therapy with are better served through individual work, which can often be screened in an intake.

Below are four signs that you may be better served by individual therapy to manage and repair issues in your relationship.

1. You have difficulty being alone without your partner

We might begin some relationships as a response or reflex away from an insecure or uncomfortable feeling within. We feel restless or unhappy when we are alone, and being near a partner and having them with us can feel like a satisfying end to this loneliness.

Over time, this can lead to enmeshment or what used to be called co-dependence: an inability to properly separate........

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