Couples Counseling

Are You Struggling To Find Common Ground In Your Relationship?

Does it feel like something is getting in the way of the deep, trusting relationship you desire?

Do you and your partner go round and round, arguing about the same issues without ever resolving anything?

Are you overly defensive, critical, or quick to blame each other over what later seem like trivial matters (or can’t even remember what you were fighting about)?

Are you ready to make the leap from companionship to true intimacy?

Perhaps one of you feels a growing sense of distance and seldom feels validated, appreciated, or heard. Or maybe you’re having trouble overcoming trust or communication issues and want to rediscover the spark that brought you together.

Your Connection Could Be In Jeopardy

Watching your relationship gradually deteriorate before your eyes can be a painful process. You may feel helpless and paralyzed to take action as each of you slips into withdrawal, isolation, or apathy. Perhaps the barriers between you feel insurmountable, preventing you from sharing emotional connection, sexual intimacy, or mutual understanding. 

If communication has broken down, you may have put up walls that neither of you is willing to bring down. Without slowing down the conversation and really listening to each other, resentment, suspicion, hopelessness, and withdrawal can quickly take over. Or maybe other stressors—such as job loss, substance use, parenting, or recovering from infidelity—are allowing feelings of anger, frustration, guilt, shame, or sorrow to permeate the relationship.

Couples therapy offers tangible tools to help repair your marriage or partnership and overcome obstacles. If you would like to make a conscious, empathetic connection with your partner, improve your communication skills, restore trust, and reignite the fire in your relationship, working with a couples therapist can help you forge a path back to each other.

Keeping A Long-Term Relationship Going Can Be Challenging

By the time the bond with our partner is solidified, the hormone-fueled intensity that initially brought us together has usually run its course. This is a healthy and normal progression—after all, we need to turn our attention to building a life together, raising kids, and pursuing careers. However, once the “honeymoon phase” recedes, we naturally become vulnerable to bumps in the road that can derail our connection.

We may encounter problems due to a power imbalance or different expectations for the relationship. Perhaps we have conflicting attitudes about money or decision-making, have become emotionally inaccessible to each other, or can’t agree on the right time to start a family or pursue our careers. Or maybe you have mismatched sexual desires that impact intimacy.

When You Stop Tending To Your Relationship, You Gradually Drift Apart

Instead of acknowledging these problems, many couples avoid confronting their challenges. They may decide it’s easier to avoid difficult conversations in the short term or hope things will improve with time. However, taking a passive approach inevitably leads to unspoken resentment, disconnection, and a dysfunctional dynamic.

All relationships need maintenance, and marriage counseling with a therapist who has worked with hundreds of couples can be a great way to get a tune-up. Gaining a deeper understanding of your motivations, needs, behaviors, attachment history, and nervous system regulation patterns can support better communication and get your relationship back on track.

Couples Therapy Can Help Restore Your Partnership

One of the most pragmatic and effective tools of couples therapy is bringing awareness to your behaviors and motivations. With greater awareness, you can be conscious in your choices and authentic in your interactions, reducing conflict and increasing connection, intimacy, and understanding of yourself and your partner along the way.

Learning to acknowledge and value each other can improve your dynamics and deepen your bond. This is why I strive to be a compassionate and non-judgmental couples therapist—someone who will work with the often-unconscious aspects of your relationship so you can understand the learned behaviors that cause friction between you and move forward with a renewed sense of connection.

What To Expect In Sessions

Couples therapy will be tailored to suit your needs and address the unique challenges you face in a safe space that fosters neutrality and mutual respect. We will begin by first understanding how each of you operates within your relationship.

Next, we may explore your history, including past relationships with what are called “primary caregivers”—the parent(s) or other adult(s) with whom we formed our first relationship bonds. Because we all developed attachment styles based on how we organized ourselves to bond and feel safe in our family systems, I will pay close attention to how your backgrounds impact current dynamics and integrate what we discover in service of the relationship. 

We’ll also examine personal beliefs and possible misconceptions you may have about your respective roles, helping you break free from presumptions that could hold you back. Throughout our sessions, I will be looking for ways to improve communication skills and minimize the interference of non-verbal cues you may be unaware of, such as the turning of the head, subtle eye rolling, or a barely audible sigh.

Therapy Integrates Innovative Approaches For Couples

Like any emotion, anger or resentment requires healthy expression. However, this can be difficult if one of you feels defensive or blamed. Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples (EFT) focuses on bringing greater awareness to underlying emotions and understanding how attachment style is at the root of any recurring conflict dynamic. The capacity to allow or contain healthy emotional expression lessens the chance that perceived negative emotions, like anger or resentment, will "leak out" in unhealthy ways, such as with sarcastic comments, the “silent treatment,” or angry outbursts.

With Hakomi couples therapy, a body-centered psychotherapy, we try to capture the subtler intricacies of your dynamic, including decoding each other’s non-verbal cues and unconscious behaviors to understand how they may influence the other person. Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy (PACT) presents a paradigm shift to help you develop a relationship where you establish safety and know that you have each other’s backs and best interests in mind.

Regardless of where things currently stand, couples therapy can empower you to see your interactions more clearly and find solutions to your challenges. With a deeper understanding of your dynamic, you can shift away from unconscious relational patterns informed by past experiences, flawed stereotypes, and learned behaviors and restore health and harmony to your marriage.

But Maybe You’re Not Sure If Couples Therapy Is Right For You…

What if marriage counseling reveals we shouldn’t be together?

Couples therapy helps cultivate a mutual understanding and respect for how each of you developed the behaviors you deemed necessary to navigate the world. With this greater understanding, it becomes much easier to make decisions about communication, behavior changes, and even whether the relationship is one you’d like to save.

Discernment therapy can help you determine whether to mend the relationship or, if you decide to separate, make the transition smoother. Conscious uncoupling offers greater peace of mind that you’ve explored all options, allowing space to grieve and preparing you to navigate new territory.

We had a bad experience with a couples therapist in the past and are afraid of being judged or misunderstood.

As a couples counselor, I take extreme care to hold the relationship in high regard with the end goal of helping you restore a trusting, loving bond. This can only happen if each person feels safe to share their experience, free from judgment. Rather than taking sides or singling out you or your partner, my goal is to uncover the underlying wounds and misunderstandings at the heart of the conflict.

In addition to honoring each of your unique perspectives, I strive to keep fairness and awareness of cultural or familial patterns at the forefront of couples counseling. The relationship is a system, and in our sessions, I hope to show you how each of you has played a role in the issues that have gotten in the way of progressing toward your healthiest long-term goals.

What if my partner doesn’t want to attend couples counseling?

Couples therapy will only be successful if both of you feel you have a say in what has gone wrong and in what direction the relationship should be trending. I find that curiosity about your partner and a willingness for you to engage in the therapeutic process and to change are key components to success. This includes each of you having a commitment to therapy and a willingness to change.

Finding Ways To Connect And Reignite Passion Is Possible

If you are struggling to find common ground, meaningful connection, or greater satisfaction in your relationship, I can help. To find out more about couples therapy or schedule a free 15-minute consultation with me, please visit my contact page. 

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