It depends on what type of help you need. Sometimes people come in individually to help them sort out issues in their relationship. Other times, people will prefer to come in as a couple and address issues together.
If you are coming in alone, then the best style of treatment must be created around what issues you are looking to address. If you have trauma from your past and it is poisoning your relationships today, then a trauma-focused approach will likely be most helpful. If you feel you have picked up bad habits, or maybe simply don’t know how to build a relationship well, then a more traditional approach using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy may be the ticket. If you are deeply affected by a major rupture in your relationship (like from infidelity or serious conflict) then approaches like Attachment-based therapies or Dialectical Behavior Therapy may be useful. There are hundreds of approachs, and most can be useful for relationship issues. The only requisite is to tailor the therapy to the client and the problem.
Similar to individual therapy, there is no one style of couples therapy, or one therapeutic model, that is best. Many of the most common therapeutic approaches have similar results in terms of their effectiveness. With that said, there are some well-known therapeutic approaches that are well-validated and highly effective. These include Emotion-Focused Couples Therapy, The Gottman Method, and Family Systems or Systemic Therapies. Let us explain each one below.
Emotion-Focused Couples Therapy (ECFT) was created by Dr. Susan Johnson. ECFT primarily focuses on the effects of Attachment and how people build intimate relationships. ECFT is used to identify healthy and unhealthy attachment patterns, and models healthy behavior for couples to be able to adopt those behaviors into their own relationship. The goal of ECFT is to assist couples to create Secure Attachment, or a relationship of emotional interdependence. Further, ECFT wants to help people and couples move away from Insecure, Anxious, or Avoidant attachment styles as those erode the quality of a relationship over time.
The Gottman Method is a couples therapy model derived by John and Julie Gottman. Based on decades of research, The Gottman Method is a therapeutic approach similar to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. The focus is on helping people learn about healthy and unhealthy behavior patterns to help couples make conscious choices in how they interact with each other. For example, one of the goals is to help couples identify common conflict problems, and learn their “antidotes”.
Family Systems is a series of therapeutic models that is couched in Systems Theory. Systems Theory will look at a couple as an interacting dynamic where each person influences each other, and creates norms and patterns, whether they realize it or not. From this, a couples therapist can make changes, sometimes with the Couples awareness, and sometimes subtly, and help the couple interact in a way that is more satisfying, healthy, and sustainable.
These are merely three of the many different approaches to helping couples. While researched, validated, and effective, the most important factor that makes couples therapy helpful or not is not necessarily the approach of the therapist, but the goodness of fit between the therapist and the couple.