Blog
Why "We Need to Talk" Feels Like a Threat (and What to Say Instead)
On the four words that stop a heart, why we keep using them anyway, and the skill of bringing something up before it becomes a crisis.
On Wanting
One of my all time favorite poems is Mary Oliver describing a kingfisher diving into water after a fish: "hunger is the only story / he has ever heard in his life that he could believe." I return to that image often in my work with couples because wanting — the hunger itself — is so woven into what it means to be alive. We only cease to hunger when we cease to be.
Which is why it matters so much when people lose the thread back to what they want.
The Invisible Work: Why Couples Fight About Chores (and What They're Really Fighting About)
On the Saturday morning argument, the resentment that lives underneath it, and the difficult art of asking for what you need.
Before You Say "I Do": What Premarital Counseling Actually Is (and Isn't)
Why the couples who benefit most from premarital counseling are usually the ones who think they don't need it.
What the Thaw Uncovers: Your Relationship in Spring
On mud season, the things we set aside for winter, and why what surfaces now deserves your attention.
Dating in the App Era: Why Valentine's Day Feels Especially Strange Now
On infinite choice, increasing loneliness, and what we're actually looking for when we swipe.
Let January Be Quiet: the Art of Coming Home to Each Other
On candles, slowness, and why this dark season might be the most generous gift your relationship gets all year.
The Most Radical Thing You Can Do for Your Relationship This December? Less.
Why protecting your calendar is an act of love.
The Partner You Want to Be: Shifting Focus from Finding to Becoming
The most revolutionary thing you can do in dating is to stop asking "Are they right for me?" and start asking "Am I becoming the partner I want to be?" This shift in focus changes everything—not just how you show up in relationships, but the quality of connection you attract and create.
The Dating App Cycle: Why You Keep Deleting and Re-downloading
While it's easy to blame the apps themselves, the deeper issue often lies in how we approach dating altogether. Most of us download these apps seeking external validation and someone who understands us. We're focused entirely on finding rather than being.
Book Review: "It Takes One to Tango" by Winifred M. Reilly
If you've ever felt stuck in your relationship, wondering if change is possible when your partner seems unwilling or unable to meet you halfway, this book offers both hope and a practical roadmap forward. Winifred Reilly, a Marriage and Family Therapist with decades of experience treating couples, presents a refreshingly honest and empowering approach: you can transform your relationship by focusing on what you can control—yourself.
Navigating Pregnancy Loss as a Couple: When Grief Looks Different for Each Parent
When a couple experiences a pregnancy loss, each partner may experience and express their grief in profoundly different ways. Understanding how grief can manifest differently for each parent, and learning to navigate these differences together, can be crucial for both individual healing and relationship strength during this difficult time.
Disenfranchised Grief and Pregnancy Loss: Understanding Your Valid and Natural Response
The loss of a pregnancy—whether through miscarriage, stillbirth, or other circumstances—brings profound grief that can feel overwhelming and isolating. Understanding the concept of disenfranchised grief can help explain why this loss may feel particularly challenging to navigate in our society.
The Long Way Back
The discovery of an affair reorganizes everything. What I hear most often, in the first sessions after discovery, is some version of: I don't know who I'm talking to. The person sitting across from them seems like a stranger, and the life they thought they were living has become a story they no longer recognize. That is devastating. And it’s where this work begins.
Before You Need It
For many couples, the engagement period is one of the most logistically demanding of their lives, and almost all of that demand is oriented toward a single day.
Weddings matter. The ritual of public commitment, witnessed by the people you love, matters. But I have sat with enough couples to feel strongly about what tends to get left out. Couples who planned beautiful weddings and then found themselves, five or ten years later, in my office trying to untangle something that had been there from the beginning.
Declaring Yourself
There is a conversation many people spend a considerable amount of time not having. They want to have it. They’ve rehearsed versions of it in the car, in the shower, lying awake. They’ve considered the timing. They’ve imagined the good response and the frightening one, and tried to calculate the probability of each. This is the territory of early commitment.
What Comes After Falling
When partners say “I love them, but I’m not in love with them.” Here’s a different way of thinking about what that in love feeling was, where it goes, and — most importantly — what it makes room for.
What We're Practicing
The practice of returning to each other through conversation, repair, and curiosity