Nicholas Purcell’s article concerns me greatly, not because he recognises that some relationships are abusive and dangerous, but because he appears to place the decision about whether a relationship should “die” in the hands of the therapist (As a therapist, here’s why I sometimes advise couples to end their marriage, 31 August).

As a psychosexual and relationship therapist, I would never presume to know whether a client should leave their relationship. Our role is not to make that decision for them but to help clients understand what is happening within their relationship, explore patterns of behaviour and coping strategies, recognise coercion or abuse where it exists, consider the options available to them, and understand the possible consequences of those choices.

Where abuse is present, couples therapy may be entirely inappropriate. We may need to talk explicitly about risk, a safety plan, involve specialist services and support a client through separation if that is what they decide. But the decision remains theirs, not the therapist’s.

That distinction matters because of the considerable power the client invests in therapists, who often come to us at their most vulnerable. If we begin to regard ourselves as knowing which marriages should live and which should die, we risk replacing our clients’ judgment with our own.

Indeed, in relationships where someone’s sense of self has been diminished through coercion or control, one of therapy’s important functions can be to help restore agency. It would be a troubling tragedy if, in attempting to free a client from someone else’s certainty about what is best for them, the therapist substituted their own.
Karin Blak
Psychosexual and relationship therapist; author of The Essential Companion to Talking Therapy