"We should be able to sort this ourselves"

The last belief is about help. You're both reasonable adults. You've talked about the row, you've read about it, and now you're reading this, and the idea of sitting in a room with a stranger and going through the dishwasher feels like a failure, or like something for couples who are about to split up. So counselling is on a list of things you'll do if it ever gets that bad, and it never quite gets that bad, and the row goes on.

I'd move it off that list. Christensen's trial from chapter 5 took couples who'd been seriously distressed for years, and both therapies helped most of them, with effect sizes at five years that the authors described as comparing well with other long-term results. If it works for couples that far in, it's not a last resort. It's a tool, and the sensible time to use a tool is before the job has become an emergency. The couples who wait until it's that bad are the ones for whom a quarter separated anyway.

Practicalities, as of September 2026. The NHS counselling page says counselling can help with problems in your relationships, but that the NHS itself only offers counselling for certain conditions, such as depression, so a couple wanting help with a row will usually be looking at a charity or at paying. If you pay, the NHS says to check the counsellor is on a register accredited by the Professional Standards Authority, and names the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy as one. Some employers offer a few free sessions. It's worth asking.

There's a middle route that doesn't need a stranger. The method in chapters 20 to 22 is a version of what a counsellor would help you do, naming the row and agreeing its underneath, and many couples can do it at the kitchen table on a Sunday afternoon. Try that first. If you can't get through chapter 21 without it turning into an instance, that's not a failure either. It's the sign that a third person in the room would help, and getting one isn't an admission of anything except that the two of you would like to stop having this row.