Couples Counseling & Marital Therapy

How did we get here?

Even the best marriages and long-term relationships can buckle under stress. When communication breaks down, each partner can feel alone and unloved. The first visible signs of relational distress can include a loss of affection, a dip in emotional and sexual intimacy, and persistent fears of rejection. If ignored, partners may become self-protective and defensive, causing further distance from the other, resulting in miscommunication and resentment.

Infidelity

If you’ve suffered the effects of emotional and/or physical infidelity, the rupture of trust, the accompanying loss, grief and the complicated feelings that emerge can feel unmanageable. Making sense of what, why and how this could happen is where the work of healing begins for the hurt partner as well as the remorseful involved partner, as each attempts to recover and then work together to build back trust and a stronger relationship.

Loss of emotional and sexual intimacy

When tension and stress make it difficult to share our needs with and be heard by our partner, we can become frustrated and cut off from each other, in and out of the bedroom. Our attempts to reconnect emotionally and physically can feel awkward, and the fear of rejection can get to the point when we just stop trying. Exploring where the blocks exist between you and your partner can open an important door to self-awareness, discover a healthy and shorter path to repair of your relationship and strengthen or re-create the most intimate connection we have.

Difficulty collaborating on financial, parenting/family issues

The most healthy and solid marriages and partnerships can become tested when the reality of family living and issues require conscious decision making. When perspectives on issues such as money or parenting styles clash, causing frustration and reactive anger for the couple, this frequently impacts others in the home and family system the partnership created in the first place. How we formed our own protective approach to problem-solving and confrontation as far back as childhood can inform how we engage with each other as adults – what works and what obviously doesn’t in your core relationship. Tools for each of you to learn a more collaborative “we” versus “you or me” approach toward family issues are available and effective.

When unresolved trauma impacts the relationship

Past experiences of emotional, physical or sexual abuse for either or both partners can show up as PTSD, put great stress on the relationship, and cause confusion for the couple. In relational counseling, we will work to understand how the trauma/sexual abuse impacts your connection, and ways each partner can work to both heal and support the other.

Repair is possible - how we begin

Too frequently, we don’t know how to effectively repair our relationship back into health, before things get out of hand. The relational work of the psychotherapist is to first understand unhelpful patterns that surface between you and your partner in difficult moments, and then help create new pathways intended to rekindle and strengthen intimacy, restore trust, and secure the bond you created with each other.

We provide relationship counseling to married couples, polyamorous relationships, LGBTQ+. We help clients confront issues including loss of emotional/physical/sexual intimacy, infidelity, communication, trauma and sexual abuse, narcissism/codependency, and estrangement. Our relationship therapists are trained in couples interventions including The Gottman Method, in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) and Relational Life Therapy (RLT), among others. Click on a specialist for more information about specific approaches and focus.