Couples Therapy
You’ve tried everything you can think of to heal your relationship.
Read books, listened to podcasts, tried talking to your partner, and gone to individual therapy.
Now you’re out of ideas.
Questions keep you up at night…
“Did I marry the wrong person?”
“Can we fix our problems?”
“How do I know when it’s time to bail and call a divorce lawyer?”
But then you remember the early days of your relationship, your children, or the beautiful life you share. All the history you share. How good things used to be.
Staying in this tension seems impossible.
But leaving seems impossible, too. None of the options before you right now feels right or good.
You just want to be able to…
Stay calm even in a difficult conversation, even if you disagree.
Repair after a big fight in a way that feels real and deep, much deeper than “I’m sorry.”
Ask for what you want, and handle disappointment when you don’t get it.
Say an honest “no” without fear of resentment from the other.
Have sex and not feel so fraught, or it be so difficult.
And feel freer to love and be loved in return.
Couples therapy can help.
Couples therapy offers a structured space to slow things down, understand each other more clearly, and learn to respond rather than react.
An important focus of our work is awareness, and it happens in phases:
Phase One: We’ll start by identifying the patterns in your relationship that are causing distress. Each partner identifies their part in the pattern and how they reinforce the distressing dynamic.
Phase Two: This might happen days after a difficult conversation or fight, but at some point, you realize that you got caught in your old pattern again. Don’t feel discouraged – this is actually something to celebrate because you’ve taken a step toward changing what’s not working!
Phase Three: We’ll shorten the gap between awareness of what happened and what happened. Even if you can’t do anything different yet, instead of taking three days to realize what happened, you now know it hours later, and you might even be able to go back to your partner and initiate some conversation about it and move towards repair.
Phase Four: Awareness in real time, even if you can’t do anything differently quite yet or maybe you can do one thing differently, like asking for a time out, or calming yourself down instead of getting defensive, or realizing that your irritation has more to do with being exhausted and hungry than what your partner said (and you can express that to them).
Phase Five: Awareness in real time and options. You and your partner are having a difficult conversation, you realize you’re playing out the old pattern, and you’re able to intervene and achieve a different outcome.
You can access love for your partner even though the tension is unresolved. You can feel comfort with your partner even though the tension is unresolved.
You have faith in your ability to resolve it and to pick the time that will set you both up for success.
Don’t keep going in circles.
You don’t have to keep repeating arguments, avoiding hard topics, or feeling more like roommates than partners – it may be time for a different kind of support.
Reach out to schedule a consultation and see whether working together feels like a good fit.