North Star Conversations Transcript: Jason Price on What Couples Therapy Really Involves
North Star’s Brandon Gimbel talks with couples therapist Jason Price, LMFT, about how relationship challenges shift across the lifespan—from early communication breakdowns to the long-term accumulation of emotional wounds. Jason explains how therapy helps couples reconnect by repairing old patterns and creating new ones.
Brandon Gimbel (00:00)
So you talked about different stages that couples may come to see you in and for. You mentioned early in the marriage, you mentioned late in the marriage, and you mentioned milestones, and then you mentioned different crises that can happen. How do you approach each different stage when patients come to see you?
Jason Price (00:14)
Yeah, there's some common themes, I think, that run through all of it. I think in all couples therapy, we're looking at communication patterns. We're looking at how couples go about getting their needs met from each other. And I think that runs true, kind of, through the lifespan. At the early stages of working with a couple pre-marriage or early on in the marriage, a lot of times we're doing a lot of education and training around how to communicate messages better. I think when it's been more advanced and a couple has been married for a long time, a lot of times we're resolving a lot of old hurts and wounds that have happened. And then adding in the training element of how to communicate better and get their needs met.
Brandon Gimbel (00:53)
I hadn't thought about the couples who've been together for a long time as that length of time potentially being a problem or contributing to the problem. What you're describing is it's a double-edged sword.
Jason Price (01:02)
Yeah, that's right. In some ways, there's a sense of "we're connected, that we know each other, we're in this for the long haul," which can be great. But there could be so many hurts over time. And it doesn't have to be the major things like infidelity or abuse or things like that. It's kind of death by a thousand cuts can happen. And so we deal with a lot of those themes. And then it's having to get couples to take a leap of faith that things can be different. And that's, I think, the beginning stages of couples therapy for longer term couples is how do you set the framework that says, we're not going to resolve all those old issues today, but we're going to understand how they fit into the context of your marriage and then create a new path.