Couples therapy usually involves partners meeting conjointly with a therapist, in person or via telehealth, to discuss relationship concerns. But individual appointments with the couples therapist can also be part of effective relational treatment. These meetings can help therapists better understand relationship dynamics, address barriers to progress, and support each partner’s therapeutic work.
They also raise an important question: What happens when a client shares personal information during an individual session they have not yet shared with their partner?
Reasons for Individual Sessions During Couples Therapy
For many couples therapists, individual appointments are part of a structured intake process. One example is the 4-session evaluation model, which includes an initial conjoint session, followed by individual sessions with each partner, and concludes with a conjoint session focused on feedback and treatment planning.
Individual intakes can build client-therapist rapport and allow clients to speak more openly about their personal history, including early childhood experiences and family dynamics, previous relationships, and their perspective on current relationship issues. Individual intakes also allow the couples therapist to assess for safety concerns, such as active relational violence, which could indicate that couples therapy is not appropriate. Other factors, such as psychiatric issues and/or substance use, can also be evaluated that would warrant additional services or referrals.
Individual appointments may also occur throughout treatment. The purpose of these meetings includes addressing symptoms interfering with relational progress, targeting skills related to couples therapy goals, or preparing for a challenging conversation.
Are Individual Couples Therapy Sessions Kept Confidential?
Ultimately, in couples therapy, the "client" is the relationship, not any one person within it. Individual sessions aim to support progress toward the couple’s treatment goals. An individual appointment during couples treatment does not automatically mean the therapist has shifted into providing individual therapy. As such, individual sessions during couples therapy involve unique confidentiality considerations.
Couples therapists have policies for managing information from individual sessions based on their professional codes of ethics and clinical best-practice guidelines. If you’re in couples therapy, your therapists should explain in advance how they handle individual disclosures, what confidentiality protections apply, and how information relevant to couples treatment may affect ongoing work.
The American Association for Marriage & Family Therapists (AAMFT) Code of Ethics states that a couples therapist “must not reveal any individual’s confidences to others in the client unit without the prior written permission of that individual.” Some couples therapists, though, utilize a no-secrets policy to manage disclosures and confidentiality. Such policies generally address how the therapist will respond when a partner privately discloses information that materially impacts the relationship or the goals of treatment.
It is important to understand how the AAMFT code described above interacts with these policies. If a couples therapist has a no-secrets policy, it means they reserve the right to refuse to keep a client's secret if it impedes their ability to help the couple. However, the AAMFT code still prevents the therapist from directly sharing that secret with the other partner without consent. Importantly, not all information shared in individual sessions is treated equally.
For example, a partner might disclose within an individual session an experience, such as childhood abuse, that they are not yet ready to share with their partner. If the information does not directly impact the direction of couples therapy, it does not automatically need to be shared. Instead, the couples therapist will discuss whether and how this information is relevant to the couples treatment, how you want your partner involved, and how they can support future discussions.
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The situation is different, however, when a partner reveals information that directly affects couples therapy and keeping it concealed would undermine the goals or integrity of treatment. A common example is if one partner privately discloses an ongoing affair. A no-secrets policy does not, by itself, authorize the therapist to reveal the affair. Instead, the therapist can explore reasons for nondisclosure, discuss the implications for treatment, and help the client consider how to disclose the information appropriately.
If the client refuses disclosure and the therapist cannot ethically or clinically continue conjoint treatment under the circumstances, the therapist may need to end couples therapy and/or offer a referral.
Why Individual Sessions Matter in Couples Therapy
In general, individual sessions can provide a valuable space for alliance building, assessment, personal reflection, and targeted therapeutic work to support your relationship. At the same time, couples therapists must balance respect for each partner’s privacy with responsibility for the treatment as a whole. Privacy is allowed; therapeutic collusion in maintaining secrets is not. Partners deserve space to work through personal experiences, while therapists must also protect the integrity, safety, and clinical purpose of couples treatment.