Couples Therapy for Young Couples
October 21, 2025
So you think couples therapy is for people who’ve been together for ages and who are trying to save their marriage or relationship?
Well it is, but there’s a growing trend among people in much earlier stages of a relationship who are seeking therapy to get ahead of potential issues.
‘Young couples therapy’ is sometimes literally therapy for two people who are young (or young-ish). They might be engaged to be married or thinking about shifting their status from ‘seeing each other’ to ‘together’.
But ‘young couples therapy’ also describes people of any age who are in the early stages of a relationship, and who see the value of heading off tricky problems before they go too far (or before the people get more invested in each other).
Here’s what I typically cover in young couples therapy:
Communication
Many young couples identify communication as a challenge. It’s really hard to get communication right, but it can make or break a relationship. We all learn our communication skills from our family of origin – so if parents struggled with communication (or didn’t communicate at all) it impacts how we communicate with a partner.
In couples therapy, it’s useful to look at different aspects of communication. This includes functional communication (talking about tasks etc that need to be done) and relationship communication (feelings, thoughts, worries and expectations).
A good relationship therapist can help young couples understand their individual communication style, and how they can reduce behaviours like criticism and defensiveness.
Help with Conflict
Young couples can really struggle with conflict. This can be because they lack the communication skills to talk out an issue effectively (see above). It can also be because one or both partners are triggered by social situations, and/or external factors that are starting to come into the relationship.
It’s not uncommon for me to work with a young couple where social events have triggered jealousy or insecurity, or where two people realise they have conflicting views about something. Unsurprisingly, alcohol and substance use can make conflict worse, or even be the cause of conflict for young couples.
Therapy can help a young couple learn how to navigate both the triggers for conflict, and the conflict itself.
Social expectations
The relationship you have when you’re alone with a person can be quite different to the one you have with them in a social situation – as many young couples discover!
I do a lot of young couples therapy with people who are struggling to work out how much of their relationship time should be spent with other people. And what the expectations are when it comes to things like alcohol use or appropriate behaviour at a party or event.
Young couples therapy can help two people talk about their expectations honestly and in a controlled environment. It can help them set ground rules and boundaries which ultimately safeguard their relationship.
Extended family issues
Cultural differences. Different values. The role of religion. The expectations of extended family. All of these things can be landmines which are capable of blowing up an otherwise wonderful young relationship.
When you are a young couple, it can be difficult to know how to navigate tricky people in your partner’s family, or different expectations from your partner’s family. Couples therapy can help establish boundaries and ways of communicating with extended family which protects the relationship. This work is especially important if a couple intend to commit to each other and bring children into the mix. Investing in young couples therapy nice and early can make an enormous difference to what happens next.
Values and commitment
Perhaps one of the most important issues young couples face, is whether to move towards commitment and children. Many young couples find it difficult to confront this topic and couples therapy can provide a safe neutral space for this discussion. A commitment discussion usually involves exploring the values each partner has and whether there is enough of an alignment. Commitment discussions can be confronting for young couples and sometimes it can mean the end of the relationship if values turn out to be widely different. It’s worth having this discussion with a couples therapist who can help with the emotional aspects of this discussion.
Final words
There are of course many other topics young couples bring to therapy, but the above are the ones I see most often.
You may be wondering what is the difference between young person’s couple therapy and pre-marriage counselling? Pre-marriage counselling tends to be for couples who don’t have active issues that require work, but who would like to learn skills or be made aware of potential future hazards.
If you would like to book in for the pre-marriage counselling course because you are at the commitment phase and would like to future proof your relationship – please see the link here.
If you would like to book in for young couples therapy at the Sydney Couple and Family Specialists, please contact here to book in. Everyone at the practice knows what it’s like to be a young person embarking on a serious relationship, and/or a person in the early stages of a relationship,. We have a lot of life experience to add to our credentials and experience as relationship therapists!
