Building Social Trust Between Black and White Women

Do We Need a Form of Couples Therapy to Achieve Racial Equity?

As a young psychologist facilitating couples therapy, I quickly learned that it was easy to become the enemy of one partner simply by agreeing with the other partner. This pattern would set up a dynamic of “therapist volleyball” where I was tossed as the enemy between one or the other partner in any given session based on which partner I appeared to be favoring with my response.

As a seasoned psychologist, I learned to ward off this volleying and cries of “you always agree with her or him,” by creating an imaginary fourth person in the room called Goal. In our initial session, I would work with the couple to clearly define the goal (repairing the relationship or amicably ending the relationship, or getting clarity on what direction was needed, are examples). Once the goal was determined, I assured them that if I appeared to favor one partner over the other, it was because what that partner was saying or doing was in service of the goal. I really wasn’t an enemy to either of them. I was just in agreement with Goal, the invisible fourth person in the room.

The Women’s Marches, #MeToo Movement, and “New Class of Badasses in Congress,” and the 2016 and 2020 voting patterns have exposed both the unifying and…