Helping Couples Reclaim the Relationship They’d Meant to Create

Course Description

Couples come to therapy having already defined two things: the relationship they’d meant to create, and the problems getting in its way. Then they meet us—people trained to know what “healthy relationships” look like. If there’s any “danger” here, it’s the implied threat to that expertise. Through demonstration and practice, we’ll explore the harder craft of eliciting couples’ own knowledge: about what they want from each other, what undermines it, and what they already know about finding their way forward.

Instructor Information

Educational Goals

1. Participants will identify choice points in their own work where they can decline invitations into expert positions.
2. Participants will develop their capacity to track the absent-but-implicit relationship intentions that are buried within a problematic dynamic.
3. Participants will consider the conceptual leap of seeing the relationship itself as an entity that has intention, see examples of how to interrogate that entity.

Measurable Learning Objectives

1. Participants will be able to identify three specific invitations to expertise that couples typically present.
2. Participants will be able to distinguish the invitations that come from the culture of psychotherapy into said expertise, from the position that the Narrative Therapy model they are studying encourages.
3. Participants will be able to list four strategies for creating rich conversations about a couple’s relational intentions, moving far beyond their tendency to speak in platitudes, and our tendency to readily accept those platitudes as sufficient.

Outline with Main Points for Each Topic (including times)

1. 9:45–10:15 AM · Presentation of the theory that is the context for the particular craft of interviewing — Obj 1, 2 — 30 minutes

   • Externalizing re-assigns agency, and makes a different response to the problem imaginable: “They blame themselves or each other. I’d rather blame the dynamic.”
   • But externalizing isn't enough: what dream is the dynamic confounding?
   • They define the relationship’s dreams. They define the relationship’s problems. Then they came to see us, and here is where the danger lies: they unwittingly came to see someone trained to know what a “healthy relationship” looks like
   • Effects or responses? “What did this do to you?” versus “How did you respond to what happened?” Response questions populate the same history with responses, and that's where intentionality becomes visible

2. 10:15–11:00 AM · A frequently interrupted demonstration of the craft with a volunteer couple — Obj 1, 3 — 45 minutes

   • A demonstration interview with two volunteers as an impromptu “couple,” paused repeatedly to allow audience questions and participation in the unfolding process
   • “What is this relationship for?” The first answer is likely drawn from too-readily available, thin language; follow this first answer backwards to unpack a “genealogy of intentions” for each person
   • The dream, the history of the dream, early evidence, corrective intention, the shared project, and the problem’s interference
   • Persistence: “What tells you that this intention hasn't disappeared? Where does it still show up?” The dynamic has a history of effects; the relationship has a history of responses
   • Two genealogies of intention can become the history of a third thing: what these two people have been trying to create between them
   • Externalizing the relationship

3. 11:00–11:15 AM · Question and answer period — Obj 1, 2, 3 — 15 minutes

   • Invitations into expert positions: the culture of psychotherapy and the narrative position
   • Choice points in participants’ own work where they can decline invitations into expert positions

Total instructional time: 30 + 45 + 15 = 90 minutes / 60 = 1.5 CE hours

Signing in and out

• Sign in at the door between 9:30 AM and 9:45 AM.
• Sign out and complete this session’s evaluation at the door when it ends at 11:15 AM.
• Sign-in, sign-out and the evaluation are not part of the 1.5 CE hours.

References

• Epston, D. (1993). Internalized other questioning with couples: The New Zealand version. In S. Gilligan & R. Price (Eds.), Therapeutic conversations (pp. 183–196). W. W. Norton.
• McKergow, M., Stellamans, A., & Walker, C. (2025). Dignity is the opposite of violence: An interview with Allan Wade. Journal of Solution Focused Practices, 9(2), 92–106. https://doi.org/10.59874/001c.151256
• Tomm, K. (2025). Interviewing the internalized other and the distributed self. Family Process, 64(1), Article e70025. https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.70025
• Wade, A. (1997). Small acts of living: Everyday resistance to violence and other forms of oppression. Contemporary Family Therapy, 19(1), 23–39. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026154215299
• Zucker, L. (2024). Relational interviewing. In E. Segal, C. Hoff, & J. Cho (Eds.), An encyclopedia of radical helping. Thick Press.