The Individual Couple Adjustment Therapy is one more tool in the treatment of problems related to the area of couple life. The assumptions on which the TIAP approach is based are as follows

1. Couple’s conflicts as such do not exist . There are the problems of each person as an individual.

2. A couple is the sum of two radically different individuals , with a singular and unique history, with a family, bonds, environment, principles, values, education, experiences and big or small traumas, which give rise to two necessarily different personalities, however big the affection and attraction that is experienced towards the other.

3. Therefore, the problems are not of the couple as such, but the product of the internal mobilization of past conflicts (of a whole life) of each of its components when they collide with those of the other, and the consequent hatching that takes place when trying to make life compatible with a person who contributes, equally, a baggage of values, but also of lacking, immature, when not manifestly pathological aspects.

Characteristics of TIAP

With the exception of the initial interview, in Individual Matching Therapy, instead of working together with the two components of the couple (as is usual in most modalities of couple’s therapy), the intervention is developed in an individualized way . Each member of the couple will carry out an apparently individual psychotherapy, on days and at times different from those of their partner.

The practical characteristic that defines this type of therapy is that the therapist will work with a double objective:

1. The greater self-knowledge, maturity, development and assumption of personal resources , acceptance of limits, and suppression of projections and introjections of relevant figures.

2. In parallel, when the therapist knows the strengths and weaknesses of both components, the practice of behaviours that will facilitate in both the knowledge of oneself , the knowledge of the other, the knowledge of others, the knowledge in general, can be promoted, the overcoming of the usual amounts of aggression and resentment, which are the result of a frustrated and frustrating common life experience (at least in certain aspects), the handling of tolerance to frustration, and the de-idealization of unrealistic expectations, which so many sexual conflicts generate, and which are nothing but somatizations; That is, the expression through the body (in this case the sexual organs) of unresolved emotional or affective conflicts.

Individual Matching Therapy Framework

Couple members will not be able to comment on the content of the individual sessions in their private or social life , as is the case with the components of any group psychotherapy. However, the effects of these sessions must be recognised by both oneself and one’s partner for the therapy to be considered successful.

Advantages of TIAP

TIAP constitutes a field of individual advancement that joins, in parallel, with the evolution of the other, advancing in time the possibility that these individual advances are reflected in their coexistence, in their verbal, affective and sexual communication.

This parallel and complementary enrichment allows that, from the first sessions, both members of the couple begin to be able to perceive important benefits for the relationship, only through the portion of empathy and psycho-affective knowledge of the other, obtained frequently in only two or three sessions.

The fact of working exclusively with the therapist, without the presence of the other member in the practice, allows the free expression of opinions, assessments and feelings , which, with the partner in front of you, would sometimes not be possible because of shame, grief or aggression.

There are many who, when working with the traditional methodology, do not go beyond the first session, or, at most, and with heroic efforts, endure a few sessions, which are clearly insufficient, abandoning the therapeutic work with the aggravating factor of having poured into the joint sessions opinions and feelings that will condition the rest of their potential coexistence.

Requirements for implementing TIAP

In order to be able to carry out Individual Couple Adjustment Therapy with guarantees, a series of requirements must be met:

  • That none of the members of the couple present mental disorders of such severity that they make the process impossible.
  • The total awareness by both parties that not only the other has problems , deficiencies, defects, traumas or unresolved conflicts.
  • It is desirable that the therapy is carried out with the total conviction of its necessity on both sides , as well as with absolute freedom; without pressures, even well-intentioned, of any kind.