Couples Counseling

Relationship, Couples and Marriage Counseling

Relationships can be hard and messy, this is the truth, although it’s not the only truth. They too can be filled with joy and play, and romance and ease. It is generally the messiness, the unhappiness or struggles in a relationship that have brought you to search for help you and your partner, spouse, husband, wife, boyfriend or girlfriend.

Perhaps there has been a crisis; an affair, an addiction, a job loss, an illness or any other myriad of things that can cause pain in a couple. It may just feel like the passion has left the relationship or perhaps your friendship has waned. No matter what the impetus for the call, I am sure that it took courage and resolve to want to get help.

Coming in for a consultation

Generally following the call from you or your partner, I will invite you to come in together for a consultation. During this initial session I’ll ask each of you to talk about what has brought you in to seek help. You can talk about any aspect of your lives, what feels good to you and what feels troubling to you. You can ease into what you share and there is no wrong way to start this dialogue. We will take our time to try to understand what has gone on between the two of you. In time, we will work to create a space where you and your partner can begin to have something more and/or different with each other.

I know there can be so much hurt and pain by the time you come to therapy, but with persistence and patience, in a non-judgmental environment, we can begin to find some healing space for the relationship to grow into.

I will work with you both to understand what is happening in the relationship dynamic. After you peel back the loud and glaring issues, there are usually layers of complicated relational issues that lie underneath. During the couple’s therapy I will also help you to see not just the troubled underpinnings, but also the strengths that exist in your dynamic. It is important to see what is working while at the same time exploring what isn’t.

Getting back to what once was, is it possible?

Often people want to get back to what once was; the exciting, romantic, unconditional time in the relationship, and that is understandable. But there really is never a “going back” there is only a going forward and deciding what to build and how you want to build it. In the couple’s work you get to craft with your partner how you want the relationship to work, what dynamics you’d like to have between the two of you as well as defining the behaviors that are destructive and damaging.

Imagine that you have a house that was built on a rocky foundation. When you come to see me, we begin by deconstructing the house of the relationship; removing the doors and windows and flooring until we get to the foundation. There, we sturdy up the base of what the relationship is built on and then we reconstruct the walls, the flooring, the doors, the windows and furnish it with conscious, collaborative and thoughtful decorations.

In other words, in case you don’t favor metaphors, you get to build the kind of relationship that you would like, one that is agreed upon by the two of you, and is created with patience, tolerance, kindness, and compassion. A relationship that belongs to the two of you.