When you think of a mental health therapist, the first thing that may come to mind is that they are calm, cool, and collected in all aspects of life. They have everything together and know how to handle every situation you could possibly dream up. They know how to react appropriately and how to give you what you need in all aspects of life. These thoughts may even lead you to think being in a relationship with one (or your own) would be the most perfect relationship you could possibly imagine. It is not uncommon for a person to even develop feelings for their own therapist. It is a phenomenon that occurs quite frequently, actually. We have a whole article on it here. Mental health therapists are often held to a high standard of expectations in a person’s mind simply because of their career and the fact that they are viewed as professionals of the heart and inner workings of the mind. When someone imagines being in a relationship with a therapist, they may picture a person that would always listen intently, have an unlimited amount of patience, and always be able to understand you and what you need 100% of the time. We won’t go into detail in this article as to why this is the case (refer to the other linked article), but essentially this is because a therapeutic relationship between client and therapist is one sided at the core of it. It is important to remember that therapists are humans as well and have human reactions and emotions to situations just like anyone else. It would be much like a person who is trained to be an elementary school teacher being expected to have the same patience with their own children that they have in the classroom. It is ultimately unrealistic. With that said, there are some definite pros to marrying a therapist that you may not get from other relationships. So what is it really like being married to a mental health therapist? I have been in a relationship with one for many years and married (happily) to her for coming up on two years. Let’s get into what that has been like, the pros, the cons, and ultimately what makes it the best relationship I have personally ever had.

A little backstory

I initially met my wife before I knew what her occupation was. I have had struggles with mental health my entire life that was amplified by many things the older I got. I won’t bore you with all of those details in this article (perhaps a different one) but I will say that when I met my wife, I was not in the absolute best of places mentally. We met at a Mexican restaurant. I pulled up on my motorcycle and she was sipping on a margarita. When I saw her, she was the most beautiful person I had ever seen and there was just something about her and I knew in that moment that I would need her in my life forever. Luckily, I must have caught her eye too because she spoke to me (I later learned this is not entirely normal for her to do). We got to talking, she told me she had a jeep (and pointed to it). I asked if she would take me for a ride in it sometime, and the rest is history. Now, the first part of our relationship was a struggle and was riddled with challenges, some of which were pretty intense on both sides. It wasn’t until we had been dating for a few weeks that I found out the details of her occupation. By the time I found out that she was a therapist, I had already showed my ass (and my true mental health struggles) and was immediately embarrassed. But this left me thinking….if she stayed through all of that and didn’t judge me then she must really like me. Now, of course learning that she was a therapist didn’t fix my own struggles and it did not change the way I view her, but I certainly started to realize that I had been blessed with someone who could challenge me, push me, and help me heal in a way I never knew was possible.

Now that you have a little backstory, let’s talk about the pros and cons of being in a relationship with a mental health therapist.

Pros

As I’m sure you can imagine, there are some amazing benefits that could come from being in a romantic relationship with someone who has been trained in the heart and mind. I can only speak for certainty to the relationship I personally have with my wife. I’m not wanting to lead anyone to believe that every therapist is the same by any means and I definitely am not encouraging going out and and intentionally seeking partnership with a therapist simply because you read this article and come to the conclusion it was a good idea. As you will see me emphasize many times in this article, therapists are human too, so ymmv. This has been my personal experience on my journey with my mental health therapist wife.

They are great communicators

The very nature of their work, and the substantial amount of practice and training that is required when obtaining their license, makes it so that they will naturally have the ability to communicate in an efficient and productive way. Now, that’s not to say that they will always get it right, but it does give them an edge that others do not possess. They spend hours upon hours of their daily life listening to other people and helping those people learn how to communicate effectively. It is second nature to them and this reflects in their personal relationships too. That brings me to the next point.

They are great listeners

Listening is part of healthy and productive communication and since their work requires productive communication, they would also naturally be great listeners. The way that my wife communicates with me is very different than how she communicates with her clients, but at the core of it, it’s pretty similar. She has this amazing ability to make me feel heard and understood in ways I never have been before. Sure, we have our moments where the communication is not the best, but for the most part she is able to actively listen and understand what I need in that moment….so long as she has the bandwidth for it.

They will challenge you

Now some may think this is a con. I personally find this to be a plus in my situation. When I first started dating my now wife, I was nowhere near the person I am today. I had a lot of past trauma, I had a really ugly anxious attachment style, I had a really bad tendency to people please, I had a nasty habit of letting my negative self-talk overtake the positives in my life (this lead me to giving up a lot of the time when things got difficult), the list goes on. My wife also has a lot of past trauma so in the beginning of our relationship the consequence of our years of trauma would often rear it’s ugly head. One thing that I learned very early on was that my wife was not a quitter. And she would not accept anything less than follow through from me as well. If I say I’m going to do something, she expects me to do it. I’ll give you a great example of what this has looked like in our relationship.

Before I met my wife I had made several attempts at college. Six attempts to be exact. I would get excited about wanting to go to college and get my degree. I would apply and register for classes. For the first semester or two I would be all in, getting great grades and making sure I was attending classes and doing my work, hell bent on succeeding. But after a semester or two the newness would wear off, the classes would get difficult, I would gradually stop showing up for class, I would stop doing my work, and ultimately I would drop out and in order to make myself feel better about it I would make every excuse in the book up as to why I couldn’t do it. When I first found out about my wife’s career path and what she did for a living, I was immediately inspired by her and the way she can reach people and help people. I wanted to be able to do that too. A couple of months later I was gung ho about starting my journey to obtain my LCMHC license. I immersed myself into the field of psychology and started researching schools to apply to. My wife was very encouraging of this and pointed out that, because of my history, I would make an amazing therapist and I would be able to help people on a deep level. Of course this further drove my desire to start and finish school (for the 7th time, mind you). Like always, I applied to school (SNHU) and it was all online. There were positives and negatives to this which I won’t go into detail for the sake of this article. I already had some transfer credits but because SNHU only allows you to take two classes a semester, it put my graduation date 3 years from the date I started. At first, this didn’t really seem to be an issue. I was excited and I threw myself into my work for the first few months, repeating a pattern that I didn’t yet see. Little did I realize at the time that I was repeating a pattern that would come crashing down around me, only this time something was different. I had about a year of school left when things started getting old and boring and difficult. I told my wife that I wanted to take a break from school and focus on working and our relationship. We had discussed many times how, in my past, I would start school only to drop out after a while. I expected her to support me in that decision and it never crossed my mind that she would push back. But, she did. The conversation actually ended with us both very frustrated and angry. She refused to let me quit. She would not back down. She insisted that I decrease my workload in the house and focus on finishing my degree and that she wouldn’t accept anything less than success. I was angry and resentful but I didn’t realize at the time that she recognized the pattern and was pushing me to change that pattern. I now have a BA in Psychology with a concentration in mental health counseling, and as much as my wife gives me all the credit, I can honestly sit here and say that I wouldn’t have that degree had she not been in my life. She saw something in me that I did not see and that no one before her pushed to bring out. She saw the pattern and pushed me to change that pattern. Now she’s pushing me to get my Master’s in counseling….God help me.

They can see through your bullshit

I mean come on, they spend their days reading people…..of course they are going to be able to read you as well. For some, this may be another con. For me, I like it and I see it as a positive because it leaves me no choice but to be honest with myself. Like I said before, I came into the relationship with a people pleasing habit and an anxious attachment style. I am almost embarrassed to admit it, but I became very quickly attached to my wife. I felt anxious when we were apart. If she would not text me back for a bit I would have all of these awful and negative thoughts run through my head. I would think she was mad at me or wasn’t interest in me anymore. I thought she was with her ex and couldn’t talk. If she asked me if I was “okay” I would smile and answer how I thought she’d wanted me to. You name it, I thought it. I was afraid to make her mad and I avoided any confrontation with her because I did not want her to leave me. If she wanted something, I agreed to it, even if I didn’t really want it just for the sake of pleasing her and not wanting to risk pissing her off. I was afraid of being sad or mad or even melancholy because I grew up with the only emotion being “allowed” was happiness. The thing is, for the first few months of our relationship she was making mental notes of these things and observing it and taking it all in, and I didn’t even realize she was doing it. Reflecting back on the start of our relationship, it was blatantly obvious that she was based off of her reactions and questions and comments she would make when these moments would occur. It wasn’t until we were well into our marriage that I realized I was changing, and had been since a few months in. I was becoming more secure. I was challenging her if we disagreed on something without fear of her leaving. I was speaking my mind more and standing up for myself with others in my life as well. I was giving my honest input in situations that I would have normally went along with the majority. I started to change, and still am changing, because she was able to see through my bullshit and, without me even knowing it, taught me how to change.

Cons

I label this section as “cons” for lack of a better all encompassing word (and frankly because cons is typically expected following pros), but really these are just ways in which a therapist is just a normal person with normal problems. For those of you that fantasize about your therapist being this perfect God of a creature, if you don’t want your fantasy ruined, don’t read this section….or perhaps those are the exact type of folks that do need to read this. Here are some of the ways in which my wife’s humanality (did I just make that word up?) shines through.

They have very little bandwidth at the end of the work day

If you are not a therapist, I would like for you to imagine for a moment that you wake up, report to work, and then have to sit for about 8-12 hours listening to everyone’s problems, watching people break down and cry, listening to awful stories of abuse, back to back to back. You have to listen with intent and provide thoughtful feedback that helps to guide and teach these people skills to improve their struggles. But when you’re finally done with your sessions for the day, you then have to write notes on it all (but let’s be honest, if you’re reading this and you’re a therapist…..are your notes really caught up right now?). You finally get home from work (or log off for the day if remote) and all you really need is some time to clear your mind from all of those heavy secrets and trauma and slow your brain down from the constant instant replies that you are expected to give. But, instead of having that, your partner is angry that you got off work later than expected, the kids are fighting, and dogs are crazy, and everyone is tense. Do you think, in that situation, that you would be as calm, cool, and collected as you were at work or is it more realistic that you would be highly frustrated and tense as well? My advice is, if you are in a relationship with a therapist, just be mindful of how mentally taxing their job is and on the days they work, try to keep heavy conversations and needs to a minimum until your partner has had time to relax a bit. For my wife, I do all I can to make her work days easier and I work hard to steer clear of intense conversations and save those for after she has had time to decompress/days off. On the flip side of that, be careful not to only bring up these types of conversations on their days off because then you risk them developing a negative association with their days off. It’s a fine balance that you have to find. It can be very hard.

You can’t hide from them (or yourself)

This kind of goes back to them being able to see right through you. And again, I don’t really see this as a con but I know some might, so I will write it here. Don’t expect to be able to pull a fast one on them, or keep things from them. As much as they would like to not always see when this is happening, they can’t help it. They can read you like a book. They will be able to sense when you are lying by the tone of your voice, your body language, your facial expressions, and your eye movements. This will ultimately lead you to have to face yourself and who you are, so you better either already like yourself or get used to the idea that you will be facing yourself often. There have been many times that my wife has shown me who I really am and in those times there have been moments I was completely disgusted with myself, times I cried, times I felt proud, and times I felt angry or ashamed.

The relationship has the potential to be one-sided and unbalanced

Because therapists are healers and their clientele consists of people seeking help, their tendency to jump into problem solving mode is second nature to them. This can lead them to feeling like they need to “fix” everything and fall into that “fixer” role in their personal lives. This can look like them needing to solve conflicts immediately, feeling like they need to take charge in the relationship, having a fear of loss of control in one or more areas of their personal life, etc. The relationship has a high potential of shifting into an overcompensating/under-compensating dynamic if not checked in with frequently. Again, they can’t help it, so don’t be frustrated with your therapist partner if they do this. Try to understand where this is coming from so that you can discuss it and set boundaries in order to keep things balanced and equal. Your therapist spouse has needs and desires the same as anyone else and sometimes a simple check-in can help to tame the natural habit of your spouse becoming the over-compensator.

They can be stubborn

I know I know, anyone can be stubborn. This level of stubborn is a whole new level that I have never encountered. What I have concluded in my experience with my wife, is this is a result of the level of structure she has with her clients and the methodical way in which she conducts her work. My observation is that this bleeds over into her personal life and if things do not quite go as she imagines it going in her head, there can be some tension and miscommunication that arises as a result.

Of course this list isn’t the end all, be all and I could go on and on about how much my life has been changed by marrying a therapist. But at the end of the day, it isn’t really about the fact that I married a therapist, it is about who my wife is, and if being a therapist had contributed to making her the wonderful person she is, then so be it. I hope what you can take away from this article and my experience, is that being in a relationship with a therapist can be a very rewarding and fulfilling one, as long as you keep your expectations in check and can see them for the human they truly are and don’t get lost in the alluring fantasy of what the title “Therapist” can convey.