Joseph Wainwright
Long-form couples work for relationships that are still worth keeping
Joseph Wainwright is a couples and relational therapist with twelve years at Relate and a further decade in private practice. He is one of the steadier couples therapists in central London and works almost exclusively with established relationships that have hit a problem the couple cannot solve at the kitchen table.
The work
His sessions are eighty minutes, not fifty. The arithmetic matters: in a fifty-minute couples session there is barely time for both people to speak. His arc is usually six to twelve sessions, fortnightly, with written notes after each one that go to both partners.
Background and training
Joseph trained at Roehampton in the early 2000s. He worked at Relate Camden for twelve years, the last four as a senior practitioner and a clinical supervisor. He holds the COSRT accreditation in sex and relationship therapy and is a member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.
What he works with
Most of his clients have been together a long time. The presenting issue is often one of: a serious conflict that recurs, a long slow drift, an affair, the arrival of a new family member, a major career change in one of them, a bereavement, or a quiet question that one partner has been carrying alone for several years.
In practice
He is not the right therapist for couples in the early stages of separation who are looking for someone to help them part well. He is for couples who still want to be together and need a third pair of eyes. If he thinks separation is the right outcome he will say so, kindly and directly.
Most of the couples I see are doing nothing wrong. They are doing the things you do when you have been together a long time and have stopped noticing the things you both used to do.
Outside the practice
He runs an annual three-evening workshop for new fathers, focusing on the relational changes that arrive with a first child. He coaches a Sunday-league football team in Tottenham.
I am not here to take a side. I am here to be a third person in the room who is paying attention to both of you at the same time.