Six weeks until the therapy appointment – what to do until then?

You have finally brought yourselves to call – and get an appointment in six weeks. Sometimes in three months. The time in between is the hardest.

30 August 2026

It is one of the bitter peculiarities of this field: the moment a couple is ready to accept help is rarely the moment help is available. Between the decision and the first appointment often lie weeks. And the readiness you have laboriously gathered does not necessarily last that long.

What usually happens in this time

Two things, and both are unfavourable.

Either everything is postponed. “We will discuss that in therapy” is a sensible-sounding sentence that in truth creates a backlog. By the time of the appointment, so much has accumulated that the first session is spent sorting out the backlog.

Or it keeps escalating, because the decision to go to therapy itself becomes a topic of dispute – who wanted it, who delayed it, what it says about the state of the relationship.

What helps

Getting smaller. The waiting time is not the time to settle the big questions. It is the time to relieve everyday life enough that you actually reach the appointment together. One concrete arrangement about a single recurring point of friction is worth more than three conversations about first principles.

Writing down instead of saving up. What matters to you loses either urgency or precision by the time of the appointment. What is written down stays available – and the first session becomes considerably more productive when both know what they actually want to talk about.

Sorting separately, looking together. Much gets entangled because both speak and react at the same time. First saying, each for themselves, what is on your mind, and then looking at the result together, takes the edge off – without anyone having to give in.

What is better left alone during this time

Big decisions. Whoever decides about separation, moving or children during the waiting time decides in a state of highest tension. Those are exactly the questions the appointment is there for.

And self-help literature in excess. Nothing against a good book – but whoever gets themselves five books during the waiting time is usually looking for an argument, not for understanding.

When the waiting time is not a waiting time

There is one case in which none of this applies: when violence is involved, fear of each other or control, that is not a situation a couple should bridge among themselves. Then it needs help from people, and it needs it now.

In Germany, the Hilfetelefon Gewalt gegen Frauen (help line for violence against women) can be reached around the clock and free of charge at 116 016, anonymously and in many languages too. In acute danger: 110.