Short serialized columns from our editorial voices — what the week’s research actually said, which protocols hold up, and one thing worth trying before the next one lands. Written for men who want the evidence before the advice.
Straight about what this is: Field Notes are columns, not a support group. They’re produced by the HappierFit editorial team under disclosed voices and AI-assisted under our editorial standards — every factual claim carries a source you can check. Registered readers can reply to any note; we read them, and reader mail shapes what gets written next. If you’re in crisis, a column isn’t fast enough — call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) right now.
Couples therapy — when does one of you have to go alone first?
Wife and I have been talking about couples therapy for months. We agree we should. Neither of us has scheduled it.
Background: I've never done individual therapy. She did a year of it five years ago, before we had kids. The thing she keeps gently saying is that maybe I should do a few sessions on my own first because I "don't have the vocabulary yet" and it'd make couples easier.
She's not wrong. I just don't know if she's saying it because it's true or because she doesn't want to start a couples thing where I'm the one with the bigger gap to close.
Anyone been through this? Did the solo-first model actually help, or was it just a delay tactic that kept the couples piece off the table?
Speaking from the wreckage side of this — yes, the solo-first model usually helps, AND it can absolutely become a delay. Both things are true.
What I'd actually push back on: the framing that you "don't have the vocabulary." That's true of basically everyone going into therapy for the first time. The point of therapy is partly to build that vocabulary, and you can build it inside a couples context too — a good couples therapist will work with whatever level you walk in at.
If I'd done both — couples and solo, in parallel, starting from year one of the rough patch — I think the math would be different now. We started couples after I'd been in solo therapy for 8 months and the gap had already widened.
Pick a couples therapist. Schedule the first session. If the therapist tells you in session 2 that solo would help, you'll trust it more coming from her than from your wife (which is unfair to your wife but it's how it works).
we did a version of this — I'd done individual for years, husband had not. The "you go alone first" suggestion came from me and I now think it was wrong, even though it was well-intended. Once we finally got into couples (a year later than we should have) the therapist basically said "this is the work — you do it together."
what helped: the couples therapist made me hold back when I had the answer faster than he did. that was its own thing for me to learn. start the couples one. don't wait.