My experience has been that it is very helpful that my T knows my ex-husband. We started with her for couples therapy so that is how I knew her. I was attached to her, but not the same way you would get in individual therapy. Now that I'm no longer married I see the same T for individual and I'm glad she has that history and saw me and H together.

I think it would be much more difficult to go the other direction.....individual tharpy with T to couples with the same T. Like Sunny said, the T must be trained and skilled at dealing with couples. When I was seeing T for both couples and individual she was excellent at keeping the couples sessions primarily focused on the couples and not focusing too much attention on one person or and individual issue.