February 14th arrives with its usual fanfare: heart-shaped balloons, prix fixe menus, and Instagram captions about “my person”. For married couples, Valentine’s Day can feel like a reminder to pause and celebrate the fact that you’ve chosen each other, again and again, through the less photogenic parts of life.

But alongside the flowers and dinner reservations, I want to nominate something far less glamorous for the month of love: couples therapy.

Before you turn the page thinking, “Nah, my marriage is fine, we don’t need this”, let me clarify. I’m not talking about therapy as an ambulance – something you call only when the relationship is on life support. I’m talking about it as hygiene. The same way you don’t wait for a toothache to start flossing, or for your cholesterol to spike before you consider exercising, you don’t need a dramatic marital crisis to benefit from learning how to communicate better.

In fact, couples who “don’t fight much” might be the ones who benefit most. When there isn’t constant conflict, it’s easier to assume everything is fine. But under the smooth surface, many marriages quietly accumulate tiny resentments, unspoken assumptions, and mismatched expectations – especially in the years when you’re busy surviving. I’ve written before how our sandwich generation struggles with the responsibility of caring for both children and aging parents. This plus the pressure of work, financial planning, and general adulting pushes us into household roles that somehow cement themselves without any explicit agreement. You don’t realise you’ve stopped having real conversations until one day you notice you’ve become highly efficient co-managers of life…and slightly disconnected as romantic partners and best friends.

Therapy, at its best, is simply a structured space to talk without the conversation being hijacked by defensiveness, sarcasm, or interruptions from the kids. A good therapist isn’t there to declare a winner. They’re there to help you hear what your partner is actually saying underneath the clumsy delivery, and to translate what you’re trying to say when it comes out sharper than intended. In other words, it is relationship literacy.

Of course, the minute you bring up therapy in an Indian context, you’ll likely be met with a particular look. The one that says: Are things that bad? Or worse: Why would you tell a stranger your personal business?

Our resistance often has less to do with therapy itself and more to do with two very Indian preoccupations: privacy and reputation. Many of us were raised with the belief that “good families” don’t air issues outside the home, and that marital problems should be managed silently, like a rash in an embarrassing area. We worry about being judged, or about the therapist “taking sides,” or about someone we know finding out. For a culture that can be oddly comfortable discussing other people’s lives in detail, we are remarkably anxious about exposing our own.

But here’s the thing: therapy is not a public announcement. It’s not a confession booth for your social circle. It’s a private service you choose, no different from hiring a personal trainer, a nutritionist, or a business coach. No one thinks twice about consulting an expert for money, fitness, or parenting. Yet when it comes to the relationship that forms the foundation of the home, we insist on winging it with zero training, and then act surprised that it gets messy.

The good news is that India is changing quickly in this department. There are far more qualified therapists now than there were even a decade ago, and mental health conversations are becoming less niche and more mainstream. In big cities especially, therapy is no longer a rare, dramatic last resort. It’s becoming a normal part of adult maintenance – especially for younger couples who are more self-aware and less interested in “suffering silently” as a badge of honour.
And for those who still feel too exposed walking into an office, online therapy has made the entry point much easier. You can do sessions from home, at a convenient time, without navigating traffic or reception areas or the fear of bumping into an auntie who will later call your mother. For many couples, that simple layer of privacy is enough to make it possible.

Now, I will not pretend therapy is cute. It’s not candles and soft music and everyone suddenly speaking in gentle, emotionally intelligent sentences. Therapy can be uncomfortable. It can be humbling. It can make you realise you’ve been repeating the same argument for ten years, just with different props. It can also make things feel worse before they feel better – because when you finally say what you’ve been swallowing, it can come out messy. When you finally hear what your partner has been feeling, it can sting. When a therapist gently points out your patterns, you may feel exposed – not because you’re being attacked, but because you’re being seen.

This is the part where many couples quit and declare, “Therapy didn’t work.” But often, what didn’t work was expecting it to feel immediately soothing. Emotional muscle-building is like physical muscle-building: the first few sessions can feel awkward, painful, and a little insulting to your ego. You might leave a session quieter than you arrived. You might feel raw for the rest of the day. You might even argue afterwards because now you’re both stirred up. That doesn’t mean it’s failing. Sometimes it means the numbness is wearing off.

The couples who benefit most tend to be the ones who stay long enough to get past the initial discomfort and into the deeper work: learning how to fight without being cruel, how to repair after conflict, how to ask for what you need without making your partner the villain, how to listen without preparing your rebuttal. It’s not glamorous work, but it’s transformative.

And perhaps most importantly, therapy creates a space where the relationship itself becomes the priority; not the children, not the house, not the to-do list, not the in-laws, not the image you project. In a long marriage, that alone is radical.

So yes, by all means, do Valentine’s Day. Go out, dress up, post the photo if it makes you feel good. But if you really want to honour your marriage, consider something quieter and far more powerful: investing in the skill of staying connected. In a world that teaches us to curate everything, couples therapy is one of the few places where you’re allowed to be honest: imperfect, defensive, tender, trying.

It’s not a sign that your marriage is broken, but a sign that you want to keep it well. Happy love month, dear readers!