Couples counseling is “like assembling an airplane in flight.” Highly stressful. Highly volatile. Potentially explosive.

So you want a skilled technician in control.

But not all counselors are trained to navigate the rough waters of a relationship in distress, and the result is more harm than good.

“Unfortunately, many therapists have not been trained to step out of the who’s-to-blame dynamic.”

While any number of social workers, psychologists and other counseling professionals can perform couples therapy — and many do it well — that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve had much experience with it or that they’ve gone through the specialized course work required of Certified Imago Relationship Therapists.

And when a therapist accustomed to treating individuals brings an individualistic approach to a couples session, it can backfire.

Unlike traditional psychodynamic therapy for individuals, the most effective couples therapy doesn’t plumb the unconscious or delve into the past or seek to identify the psycho-pathologies causing people to behave in destructive ways.

Rather, couples therapy works best when it focuses on the systemic interactions between partners—that is, how the relationship dynamics are perpetuating patterns that are driving them apart and what positive steps each person can take to change them.

As an Imago therapist I have learned to treat the system, not the symptom because if I don’t pay attention to the system, one person will feel betrayed, left out, reactive, resentful and not want to come back to therapy.

So in the classic case of the stoic husband and emotional wife, an Imago therapist might identify how his indifference is driving her panic, and vice versa, so both can make changes and neither shoulders all the blame.

What I don’t do is point to the man’s inability to express his feelings as the central problem—which is a sure way to drive away a man who probably didn’t want to be there in the first place.

People often come to therapy in hopes of getting the therapist to agree that their partner is, in fact, a useless slug or jerk. And it’s hard not to get sucked into their worldview.

Traditional therapy goes something like this: A couple comes in, and they tell me their story, and the therapist would say, you’re right, you’re wrong, and s/he would break the tie.

But siding with one partner or even the perception of siding with one partner hurts the cause.

The real client in couples counseling is the relationship. And it needs a calm and cogent arbiter whom both partners trust to direct the session when temperatures in the room rise.

“Can I cut people off? Can I intervene? Can I redirect? Can you draw out emotions? Can I build a bridge between the two people?

One of the most important questions people should ask when seeking a therapist is how much of their practice is devoted to couples. Most therapists will say, 30%.

100% of my practice is devoted couples.

Among the missteps a well-meaning but inexperienced therapist can take:

— Appearing to side with one partner over the other.

— Allowing hot conflict, including letting partners interrupt each other and blame or criticize each other.

— Offering bromides about good communication but little else.

— Failing to give homework that each partner can work on for the next session.

— Performing a cost-benefit analysis on whether the relationship is worth saving.

— Advising partners that they may be better off split.

I advocate against couples therapy that takes a “values-neutral” or the “me”-oriented perspective approach that view relationships as platforms for people to be happy.

This is not to say people should stay miserable.

But there is a lot of psychological research showing the pursuit of happiness is itself self-defeating.

Happiness is a byproduct of a life well-lived — of good relationships, of making a difference in the world.

I didn’t always practice what I now preach. At the start of my career, I took an individualistic approach to couples therapy and if one partner didn’t want to save the marriage, I didn’t see how it was worth saving.

About 43 percent of couples who seek counseling are these “mixed agenda” couples in which one person is “leaning out.”

But while not all marriages can or should be salvaged, it’s not the therapists’ role to decide.

I’m the last person to give up and I’m not the first person to give up.

People should be able to tell early on if the therapy is helpful. Within the first couple of sessions, each partner should feel that the therapist understands his or her point of view and is actively structuring the sessions.

The relationship should be improving in nine to fifteen sessions.

When done right, about 70 percent of couples therapy cases show positive change, according to a study in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy.

When done wrong, it can make things worse.

Research shows going alone to individual counseling for marital problems increases the chance of divorce. That’s because the client is telling only one side of the story to an empathetic therapist, so it becomes a gripe session about how unhappy the person is in the relationship and the absent partner starts to look like even more of a monster, exacerbating the couple’s polarization.

That’s not to say it’s never appropriate to see an individual therapist for relationship problems.

For example, if one partner’s depression or commitment issues caused the discord, that person might benefit from individual counseling to work on those personal issues (though if the marital problems came before the depression, couples therapy is the way to go).

Still, it can be helpful to bring in the partner.