When Communication Doesn’t Work & Why That’s Not Always the Problem
Most couples arrive in therapy saying some version of the same thing: “We just need to communicate better.”
But often, communication itself isn’t the real issue – it’s what sits behind it.
When two people speak, they’re not only addressing each other. They’re also speaking from their own history – how they learned to express anger, to seek care, or to withdraw. Sometimes, what partners hear in an argument isn’t just the other person’s voice, but the echo of olders relationships, long before this one.
This is why even well-intentioned conversations can collapse into frustration or silence. The words may be right, but their emotional weight belongs elsewhere.
From a psychoanalytic point of view, what fails in communication is rarely just the message itself – it’s the space between the two speakers. That gap is filled with fantasy, expectation, and misrecognition. Therapy gives couples a way to notice those patterns, to see how words are used not only to connect, but also to protect, defend, or avoid vulnerability.
Communication improves not when we “get it right,” but when we begin to hear what we’re really saying, and what we’ve been trying not to say.
More on Couples TherapyRecommended Reading:
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Éric Laurent, “Symptom and Discourse”
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Jacques-Alain Miller, “Love and the Other” (The Lacanian Review)
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