Couples Therapy Homework: What You Do Between Sessions
Couples therapy homework is the practice you do between sessions: short conversations, small daily habits, and paying attention to your own reactions. It is usually light, often a few minutes a day, and tied to what you worked on that week. The point is to carry new habits into ordinary life, where your relationship actually happens.
Why do couples therapists give homework?
A session is under an hour. The rest of the week is more than a hundred waking hours of dishes, deadlines, kids, commutes and the conversations you have when you are both tired. If the only time you practice a new way of talking is in the therapist’s office, the old way wins on sheer repetition.
Homework closes that gap. It gives you a small, specific thing to try while the session is still fresh, and it gives the therapist real information. What you did, what you avoided and what went sideways are all useful to hear about the following week.
Not every therapist assigns homework, and not every week calls for it. At spiral2grow, homework is provided periodically, either to help you address a specific issue raised in session or to keep you engaged in the process between meetings.
What kinds of exercises are common?
Assignments vary with the therapist’s approach and with what you are working on. These are some of the most common types.
A daily check-in about life outside the relationship
One widely used exercise is what the Gottman Institute calls the stress-reducing conversation. You set aside 20 to 30 minutes, take turns talking about stress that comes from outside the relationship, and listen without offering unsolicited solutions. The rules are simple: show that you understand, take your partner’s side, and do not use the time to discuss problems between the two of you.
It sounds almost too basic. For many couples, it is the first time in months they have talked without the conversation becoming logistics or an argument.
A planned time-out
If your fights escalate fast, you may be asked to practice stopping. You agree on a signal ahead of time, pause the conversation when either of you is overwhelmed, and come back to it later. The Gottman Institute recommends a break of at least twenty minutes spent doing something calming on your own, not rehearsing your next point. The returning is part of the assignment. A break that never ends is avoidance, which is covered in stonewalling and the silent treatment.
Noticing your cycle
Some homework involves no conversation at all. You are asked to notice the moment a familiar pattern starts: what your partner did, what you felt, what you told yourself, and what you did next. Emotionally Focused Therapy in particular centers on helping couples identify and change the negative interaction patterns that create distress, and you cannot change a pattern you have not yet learned to spot.
Appreciation and small gestures
You might be asked to tell your partner one specific thing you appreciated each day, or to respond when your partner reaches for your attention. These tasks rebuild goodwill, which makes harder conversations less risky. The practice blog has more on daily habits that strengthen emotional connection.
A structured talk about one issue
Later in therapy, you may be given a format for discussing a difficult topic at home: one speaks, one listens and reflects back, then you switch. The goal is understanding first, not a solution in one sitting. This is usually assigned only once you have practiced it in session.
Individual reflection
Some tasks are yours alone: writing down what you want from the relationship, thinking about what you learned about conflict growing up, or reading a chapter the therapist suggested.
Does couples therapy homework actually help?
Probably, but the evidence is thinner than you might expect. Most research on therapy homework has been done in individual treatment, and the authors of a study in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy describe the overall findings as mixed and note that couples treatments have been studied relatively little.
That study looked at a brief checkup-style program for couples, not ongoing weekly therapy. Couples who completed more of the recommended tasks improved faster, and the link was strongest about six months after the program. By one year the difference had faded, and couples who did less had caught up. More satisfied couples and those more motivated to change completed more tasks. Couples with children completed fewer.
A fair reading is this: doing the homework seems to speed things up, it is not the only route to change, and it is easiest for the couples who need it least. If you are struggling to do it, that is common and worth saying out loud.
What if one of you does the homework and the other does not?
This is one of the most frequent complaints in couples therapy, and it usually repeats a pattern you already have at home. One partner takes charge and feels alone in the effort. The other feels managed and digs in.
Try not to turn the homework into the next fight. Do your own part, skip the scorekeeping, and raise it in the next session instead of in the kitchen. A therapist will usually want to know what got in the way: time, discomfort, not seeing the point, or quiet doubt about the therapy itself. Each of those has a different fix.
If you are the one who is not doing it, be honest about why. “I forgot” is sometimes true. Sometimes it means the task felt awkward, or you are afraid of doing it wrong.
What if the homework starts an argument?
Stop the exercise. Homework is practice, and practice sometimes fails. Make a note of where it went off track and bring that to the next session. A structured conversation that blew up at minute three tells your therapist exactly where to focus.
If you often see criticism, defensiveness or contempt show up in these attempts, the article on the Four Horsemen explains what is happening and what tends to replace it.
How do you make the homework stick?
- Attach it to something you already do. After the kids are in bed, on the walk to the subway, over coffee on Saturday.
- Keep it short. Ten good minutes are worth more than an hour you both dread.
- Put it on the calendar. In a busy New York week, anything unscheduled loses to work.
- Ask for a smaller task. If the assignment is too much, say so. A good assignment is one you will actually do.
- Tell the truth in session. Reporting that you did nothing is more useful than pretending.
For other ways to get more out of the process, see how to prepare for couples therapy.
Can you do these exercises without a therapist?
Some of them, yes. A daily check-in, an appreciation habit and an agreed time-out are low risk, and many couples benefit from trying them on their own.
It is worth getting professional help when the exercises keep breaking down, when one of you will not take part, when the same argument returns no matter what you try, or when there is a breach of trust you cannot talk about calmly. Exercises work on habits. They are much less effective against deep hurt or a pattern neither of you can see from the inside. That is where couples counseling adds something a worksheet cannot: a third person who can slow the conversation down and notice what you both miss.
If you feel afraid of your partner, do not attempt structured conflict exercises at home. Reach out for confidential support first, for example through the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.
Getting started
If you would like help working out which kind of practice fits your relationship, you can request a free phone consultation with Moshe Ratson, LMFT. Sessions are held in Midtown Manhattan or Online by Video.
Common questions
It varies by therapist and by week. Many assignments take a few minutes a day or one longer conversation a week. Some weeks there is none. If a task feels like too much for your schedule, tell your therapist, who can usually shrink it to something you can realistically do.
No one can make you do it, and a therapist will not end therapy over a missed assignment. Still, skipping it repeatedly slows things down, because new ways of talking need practice outside the session. If you keep avoiding a task, the reason is worth discussing openly with your therapist.
Low-risk options include a daily 20-minute talk about stress from outside the relationship, sharing one specific appreciation each day, and agreeing on a signal to pause a heated argument and return to it later. Stop any exercise that escalates, and avoid at-home conflict exercises if you feel unsafe with your partner.
Yes. Homework does not depend on where the session happens. The same between-session practice applies whether you meet in an office or by video. Some couples find that video sessions make it easier to try an exercise in the room at home where their conversations usually happen.
Sources
- The One Daily Talk That Will Benefit Your Marriage, The Gottman Institute
- The Four Horsemen: Stonewalling, The Gottman Institute
- What is EFT?, International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy (ICEEFT)
- Motivating Action and Maintaining Change: The Time-Varying Role of Homework Following a Brief Couples Intervention (Hawrilenko, Fleming, Goldstein & Cordova), Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, PubMed Central, National Library of Medicine
This article is part of the Couples Counseling Guide. It is general information, not a substitute for care from a licensed professional who knows your situation.
This article is for general education. It is not a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis or treatment.
