At a glance
When a relationship hits crisis, the first job is to lower the temperature enough that both of you can think, sleep and talk again. The first week is about speed, because sentences produced late at night without sleep become their own problem. An urgent session steadies the ground under the argument and leaves the future of the relationship for later.
Clinical insights from 20+ years in psychotherapy
I’m Mark Colclough, MA, psychotherapist in Copenhagen. Qualified at the Psychosynthesis Education Trust and the University of East London. 20+ years in practice.
- Shock in the short crisis. So there is a deeper bitterness in the long crisis, and surprise and pain in the short one.
- A commitment works like a truce. When a couple can make a commitment and stick to it, it takes the weaponisation out of the conflict.
- Inviting the partner who leans out. To the partner who is leaning out, in front of the partner who is leaning in, I look at what is at risk for you in being open and vulnerable towards your partner.
Clinical notes: These observations are anonymous and compounded from session notes since 2004.
What counts as a relationship crisis?
A crisis has a date on it. Something was discovered, admitted or said, and the version of the relationship you were both living in stopped being true.
- An affair comes to light. One of you finds out, or one of you tells. Read more about an affair coming to light.
- One partner says they want to leave. The sentence is out and neither of you knows what it now means.
- A secret about money. The discovery changes what the other partner believes about the whole shared life.
- One argument goes somewhere new. Something was said or done that neither of you has seen before.
- The rules are suspended. In all of these, the ordinary machinery of your life stops and neither of you knows what happens next.
Long unhappiness has no date. Drifting quietly for years wants different treatment, and ordinary couples therapy is the better fit for it.
Why do the first few days feel worse than the problem?
In a crisis the body arrives before the judgement.
- Arousal narrows attention. Heart rate rises, and holding 2 things in mind at once gets much harder.
- Neutral sentences sound like threat. You answer the threat you heard, and your answer gives your partner a real one.
- The loop feeds itself. Each reply raises the other person’s arousal, so the conversation gets faster and worse.
- The body has been measured. Researchers at Berkeley recorded the physiology of 149 married couples discussing a real conflict for 15 minutes.
- Calm brings warmth. In the 20-second stretches where one partner’s body moved from high arousal down to calm, warmer behaviour appeared alongside it, at every age they measured.
That points the opposite way from what most people do in week one. You stop a flooded conversation, let the body come down, then talk.
What is urgent couples therapy in Copenhagen for?
An urgent session makes the next fortnight survivable and works out what help you need. Its job is narrower than ordinary couples therapy. It is booked into the diary like any other appointment, and how soon depends on the diary that week.
- Getting the story straight. Straight enough that you are both talking about the same event.
- Agreeing the next 2 weeks at home. Who sleeps where, and what is said to the children.
- Sorting the decisions. Separating the ones that must be made now from the ones that only feel urgent because everything does.
- No verdict. Nobody establishes who was right, and I will not tell you whether to stay.
- When your partner will not come. Couples therapy alone is built for one person working on a relationship.
Read more about acute couples therapy in Copenhagen.
What if one of you has already decided to leave?
Then you want different things from the session, and that has to be said at the start.
- Leaning out. One partner is unsure whether they can stay. That differs from a partner who has decided, clearly and calmly, and is telling you so.
- Leaning in. The other wants to fight for the relationship. Improving communication answers neither question.
- Clinicians have a name for it. Doherty, Harris and Wilde call this the “mixed-agenda” couple and set out a short, separate piece of work aimed only at clarity about direction.
- What their cases did. Of the 100 cases they reported, about half went on to couples therapy and most of the rest moved towards separation.
- Direction comes first. A review of what predicts change in couple work puts that question before any choice of method.
- A settled decision is settled. Treating it as indecision is its own kind of pressure.
Before you work on a relationship, both of you have to want the same thing from the next hour. Read more about discernment counselling.
What do you do in the next 48 hours?
Do very little, deliberately, and slow everything down.
- Eat and sleep, even badly. Exhaustion decides more of the fortnight than most couples realise.
- Agree a 48-hour hold. No announcement, no message to family and no permanent decision while neither of you has slept.
- One conversation a day. At a fixed time, with an agreed end. Endless talking is only longer, never more honest.
- Write the questions down. Ask them in daylight, a few at a time.
- Agree a stop sentence. Whoever says it names the time they will come back: “I need 30 minutes, and I will come back at nine.”
- Name the return time every time. A break with no return time is experienced as being walked out on. With one, it is experienced as care.
- Tell one outside person. Choose somebody who will not take sides.
None of this fixes anything. It buys the condition in which couples therapy works.
These steps fail when neither of you can hold the pause and every conversation floods within minutes. That is what the session is for.
Questions people ask
How soon is an urgent couples therapy session in Copenhagen available?
That depends on the diary that week. The acute couples therapy page is the fastest route to a booking.
Should you make big decisions in the middle of a crisis?
Hold the permanent ones. Decide what happens for the next fortnight, and leave anything that cannot be undone until you are both sleeping again.
What if my partner refuses to come to couples therapy?
Come alone. Changing one half of a pattern changes the pattern.
Does a crisis mean the relationship is over?
A crisis is a period of acute distress with a date on it and carries no verdict on the relationship.
Will the therapist say whether to stay together?
No, I will not tell you whether to stay. The session is for steadying the next fortnight and choosing the next step.
You may also find these helpful
Sources
- Yuan, McCarthy, Holley and Levenson, Physiological down-regulation and positive emotion in marital interaction, Emotion, 2010
- Doherty, Harris and Wilde, Discernment counseling for “mixed-agenda” couples, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 2016
- Capozzi, A research-driven flowchart to approach change in couples, Frontiers in Psychology, 2025
How this article was written. I choose the subject and the angle. An AI assistant researches and drafts. Nothing is published until I have read it, corrected it and stood behind every clinical statement in it. The professional and clinical judgement is mine and mine alone.
