Many couples come to therapy too late. They stand passively by while the distance between them grows. Their communication disintegrates, hurt feelings multiply, anger and resentment intensifies, and loving feelings fade. Your relationship is an important a part of your life and overall happiness. Don’t neglect it.
The Form
Marriage counseling is not just for the married. Counseling is appropriate for any serious relationship – whether the couple is married, living together, living apart, straight or gay. In couples therapy, partners attend 45 minute sessions together. Sessions are usually once a week, although the frequency and the length of the sessions may be adjusted to accommodate your needs.
The Substance
Couples therapy can help you talk about the most difficult things without getting bogged down in arguments and dead ends. Any issues that concern you should be up for discussion. Common ones include intimacy, conflicts around money or division of labor, parenting, in-laws, abuse, and infidelity. When discussions start getting derailed, we will examine the feelings and conflicts which drove them off course. Couples often get stuck when they fear that their needs will be compromised and threatened if they don’t doggedly defend their position or withdraw and retreat to parallel lives. Either tactic prevents any real collaboration from taking place. I will help you break that cycle.
One of the often unspoken truths about couples counseling is that not all couples can or should stay together. Some people are so fundamentally incompatible and unhealthy for each other, that the best thing they can do for themselves is to recognize this and part peacefully. For most couples, though, there is an underlying compatibility and connection that is worth restoring. I can help you rebuild your strengths and communications and teach you to collaborate with each other so that each of you is being optimally nurtured in the relationship.