When people hear the words relationship counselling, they often picture two people sitting in a therapist’s office talking about their marriage or long-term partnership.
That can leave throuples wondering whether relationship counselling is really intended for them.
As a professional counsellor, let me assure you that it is. 🎉
A throuple can experience many of the same relationship difficulties as any couple, alongside some challenges that arise specifically because three people are involved. Communication can become complicated. Two partners may find themselves in conflict while the third feels caught in the middle. Jealousy, changing expectations, intimacy, boundaries, and decisions about the future can all affect the relationship.
Yet some throuples do not consider counselling because they assume that a therapist will not understand their relationship, will expect them to become a conventional couple, or will simply tell them who is right and who is wrong.
Specialist throuple counselling takes a different approach. The focus can be on understanding the relationship between all three people, rather than treating one person as the problem. A systemic approach, for example, considers how each person’s behaviour affects the others and how patterns develop within the relationship as a whole.
The relationship is the client, not any one individual.
One of the biggest misconceptions about relationship counselling is that the therapist is there to decide who is at fault.
That is not the purpose of relationship therapy.
In a throuple, there are several interconnected relationships: each person has a relationship with the other two, while all three people are also part of the relationship as a whole. What one person does can affect both of the others, and the responses of the others can then affect the original behaviour.
Throuple counselling can therefore concentrate on these patterns rather than asking which individual is responsible for the problem.
The therapist’s role is to facilitate exploration of what is happening between the partners, help identify patterns that may be difficult to see from inside the relationship, and support the partners in developing their own ways of responding differently.
Counselling isn’t only for a relationship that is about to end.
Another assumption is that you only need counselling when everything has already gone badly wrong.
That is not necessarily the case.
Relationship counselling can also be used when a relationship is fundamentally healthy but is entering a period of significant change. For a throuple, this might include:
- One partner moving away or relocating;
- A new baby or other change in family circumstances;
- Changes in employment or working patterns;
- Retirement;
- Changes in living arrangements;
- Introducing a new partner;
- Changes in sexual or emotional boundaries;
- Difficulties maintaining intimacy;
- Recurring arguments that the partners have been unable to resolve themselves.
There is no requirement for a relationship to reach crisis point before its members can ask for help.
You may have individual sessions as well as sessions together.
It can seem strange to imagine relationship counselling involving individual conversations with the therapist.
In practice, individual assessment or intake sessions can sometimes form part of the therapeutic process. They can give the therapist an opportunity to understand each person’s background, previous relationships, expectations, and individual concerns.
That information can be particularly useful in a three-person relationship, where each partner may experience the same situation differently.
However, the precise arrangement varies between therapists. Some practitioners may conduct individual meetings at the beginning, while others may work primarily or exclusively with everyone together. It is worth asking a prospective therapist how they structure this before starting.
What happens if one partner tells the therapist a secret?
This is an important question for any relationship entering counselling.
Throuples should not assume that everything said privately to a therapist can automatically remain completely separate from the relationship work.
Many relationship therapists establish a no-secrets policy. Under such an arrangement, information disclosed privately by one partner that is materially relevant to the relationship may need to be brought into the joint therapeutic work rather than being held indefinitely as the therapist’s private information.
For example, an undisclosed affair, significant financial information, or another matter that directly affects the relationship could create a difficult ethical situation if the therapist were expected to keep it permanently secret from the other partners.
The important point is that confidentiality arrangements should be discussed before private disclosures are made. A therapist should explain their boundaries around confidentiality, individual sessions, and information shared outside group sessions as part of establishing the counselling agreement.
Expect to do some work between sessions.
Counselling does not necessarily mean talking about the relationship for an hour and then returning to exactly the same behaviour afterwards.
Real change happens in the relationship outside the counselling session.
A therapist may therefore suggest practical exercises between appointments. These could involve practising a different way of having difficult conversations, deliberately changing a familiar pattern, reflecting on an argument, discussing particular questions together, or trying out an agreed change in behaviour.
For a throuple, this can be particularly useful because an intervention that sounds sensible in the counselling session still has to work in the reality of three people’s everyday lives.
Counselling does not necessarily mean staying together.
People sometimes avoid relationship counselling because they believe that seeing a therapist means committing themselves to keeping the relationship intact.
That is not necessarily the case.
Counselling can help people understand whether they want to continue their relationship and what would need to change if they do. It can also provide a space to explore separation when remaining together no longer appears workable for everyone involved.
For a throuple, separation can be particularly complicated because there may not be a single “couple” ending. One relationship between two partners might continue while another ends. Living arrangements, friendships, family relationships, finances, or parenting arrangements may also need consideration.
Relationship counselling and mediation are not the same thing, however. A counsellor may help partners explore the relationship and their decisions about it, whereas mediation has a different purpose and is generally concerned with helping people manage separation and future arrangements.
Things can feel harder before they feel clearer.
Starting counselling does not guarantee that everyone will immediately feel better.
In fact, talking openly about subjects that have previously been avoided can temporarily increase tension.
A therapist may help the partners notice resentment, jealousy, assumptions, or recurring behaviours that have previously remained unspoken. Once those things are being discussed openly, the relationship can feel more uncomfortable before new ways of responding have been established.
That does not necessarily mean counselling is failing.
It can be part of the process of discovering what is actually happening within the relationship. The purpose is not to manufacture agreement between three people but to create enough understanding for the partners to make more informed choices about what happens next.
The therapist’s approach (theoretical framework) matters.
Not every counsellor works in the same way, and knowing this will particularly important when choosing someone to work with your throuple partnership.
A therapist’s training and theoretical approach can influence how they understand relationships, conflict, and change.
The approach used by Dean Richardson MNCPS (Accred/Reg) of LGBTCoupleCounselling.co.uk integrates systemic and psychodynamic models alongside group-counselling theory. The systemic element considers the relationship as an interconnected system, while the psychodynamic element considers the influence of previous experiences and less conscious patterns on present relationships. You’ll find more about this on the Blog.
Other therapists may use different approaches.
That means it is reasonable for a throuple to ask a prospective counsellor:
- What training do you have in relationship counselling?
- What experience do you have working with three-person relationships?
- How do you approach non-monogamous relationships?
- Do you see all three partners as equal participants?
- How do you deal with individual sessions?
- What is your confidentiality or no-secrets policy?
- What happens if one partner wants to leave?
- What therapeutic approach do you use?
- Do you give exercises or other work to complete between sessions?
These questions can help a throuple establish whether the therapist’s way of working is appropriate for their particular relationship.
Throuples do not have to wait for a crisis.
Perhaps the biggest misconception is that relationship counselling is something you turn to only when a relationship is already failing.
It can be much more useful to think of counselling as professional assistance for a relationship that has encountered something the people within it are currently struggling to resolve.
For a throuple, that might be a serious conflict. It might be jealousy or communication difficulties. It might be a major life change. It might be uncertainty about the future. Or it might simply be the recognition that the three of you keep having the same conversation without finding a way forward.
A throuple does not have to justify its relationship structure before seeking help.
The important question is whether the therapist understands that the relationship involves three people and is prepared to work with the relationship you actually have, rather than trying to fit it into a model designed for somebody else’s idea of what a relationship should look like.
Throuple counselling is a form of relationship counselling. If three people are experiencing relationship problems that they cannot resolve by themselves, professional help is an option worth considering.
Video Counselling for Throuples
Video counselling can be particularly practical for throuples because getting three people to attend appointments at the same place and time can be difficult.
Each partner can join the session from a different location, making it easier to fit counselling around work, travel, family commitments and different schedules.
This can also be useful when the three partners do not live together. Rather than requiring everyone to travel to the same counselling room, each person can participate from their own home or another private location.
Online counselling can therefore make it easier for all three partners to participate consistently, even when geography or practical circumstances would otherwise make regular sessions difficult.
For throuples who are comfortable communicating online, video counselling provides a way to work on the relationship together while remaining in familiar surroundings.
How LGBTQ+ Throuples Counselling can Help.
Dean Richardson MNCPS (Accred/Reg)
My approach draws on systemic and psychodynamic thinking, which means looking both at the relationship between partners and at the less-conscious emotional patterns that can influence how we behave within relationships.
The aim is not to decide who are the “good” partners and who are the “bad” partners. It is to create a space where both people can speak honestly, understand what has happened, and consider whether and how their relationship can repair flaws.
LGBTCoupleCounselling.co.uk was established in 2010 by Dean Richardson MNCPS (Accred/Reg) (that’s me! 👋) specialising in online video counselling for LGBTQ+ relationships. I’m an accredited, postgraduate-qualified systemic and psychodynamic counsellor† with more than 27 years’ counselling experience. My private counselling service provides specialist relationship counselling online through secure video, allowing throuples to work with a counsellor without, say, having to travel to a counselling office each week.
† sounds technical, but it means I work with your relationship’s past events, untangling what happened to you and helping you plan your future.
Find out more about LGBTQ+ Throuple Counselling…
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