The author reflects on her psychoanalytic work with an especially challenging couple, intelligent and articulate but emotionally primitive. Emphasis is placed on creating personal safety, processing destructive attacks immediately, joining, using induced feelings and object-oriented questions, and encouraging something new to happen in the room to disrupt and expand entrenched dynamics. The question of concurrent, individual therapy is also discussed. The couples therapist works to create a “thirdness” where reflection, embodied communication, and maturation can unfold.