Couples Therapy
Finding Your Way Back to Each Other
Relationships change over time.
The couple who began a relationship years ago may find themselves in a very different place today. Careers, children, aging parents, financial pressures, health concerns, and other life changes can gradually alter the way partners relate to one another.
Sometimes couples find themselves arguing about the same things over and over. Sometimes they stop arguing altogether and begin to feel more like roommates than partners. And sometimes a significant event—an affair, a separation, a loss, or another major transition—forces a couple to confront problems that have been building for years.
Therapy can provide a place to step out of those patterns and begin to understand what is happening between you.
Beyond the Argument
Couples often come to therapy because of a particular problem: communication, intimacy, finances, parenting, infidelity, or recurring conflict.
But beneath the argument there is often something deeper.
One partner may feel unheard. Another may feel criticized or unappreciated. One may be seeking closeness while the other is protecting themselves by pulling away.
Over time, these patterns can become so familiar that couples begin responding to the pattern rather than to each other.
In therapy, we can slow that process down and explore what is really happening beneath the surface.
Common Reasons Couples Seek Therapy
I work with couples experiencing a wide range of concerns, including:
Couples do not need to be on the verge of separation to benefit from therapy. Sometimes they simply recognize that the relationship has changed and want to find a better way of being together.
When Life Changes the Relationship
Some of the most difficult relationship challenges arise during transitions.
Children leave home. Careers change. Retirement approaches. Parents begin to need care. Health concerns emerge. Expectations about the future change.
These experiences can cause couples to reconsider who they are individually and who they are together.
There are some things that are difficult to understand fully until we have lived through them. With many years of professional and life experience, I bring perspective to the ways relationships evolve over time and to the challenges couples can encounter at different stages of life.
A Place for Both Voices
My approach is warm, conversational, and collaborative.
Couples therapy is not about deciding who is right or assigning blame. It is about creating a space where both people can be heard and where each partner can begin to understand not only their own experience, but their partner's as well.
We will work to identify patterns that are keeping you stuck and explore different ways of communicating and responding to one another.
The goal is not to create a perfect relationship. It is to help you develop a relationship that is more honest, connected, respectful, and capable of navigating the inevitable challenges that life brings.
Moving Forward Together
Whether you are trying to repair a bond that has been damaged, want to strengthen a relationship that matters deeply to you, or find a way to decouple and/or coparent that honors your values and supports all involved, therapy can provide an opportunity to pause and reconsider how you want to move forward.
Sometimes the work is about finding your way back to each other.
Sometimes it is about finding a new way forward together.
You don't have to navigate it alone.
Let's take the first step together.