Separation Types: Therapeutic Separation

Change the Patterns of Your Relationship With Therapeutic Separation

Therapeutic separation is a working separation that focuses energy on changing the patterns in your relationship. Therapeutic separation could become a part of any of the types of physical separation, but it could also occur without either partner leaving the home, because the focus is on separating from outdated and limited patterns that are not working in the relationship.

Therapeutic separation embraces the goals of a psychological separation, in which emphasis is placed on the individuals’ responsibility to work on themselves as a precondition or simultaneous condition of working on the relationship. What distinguishes a therapeutic separation from a psychological separation is that in a therapeutic separation, the very purpose is to improve the relationship, and both partners must agree to undertake the work. Even though there’s no guarantee of recommitment, the intention is to work toward improving the relationship as both partners take the opportunity for individual growth and change.

Usually a therapeutic separation is decided on when one person feels out of balance and realizes that he or she must become whole and healthy as a primary condition of improving the intimate relationship.