Couples counseling

Fighting, bickering, or mutual withdrawal. Your partner spends more time on their phone than they do talking with you. Your sex life has withered and died; you can’t remember the last time you were touched by your spouse. The little things are becoming ENORMOUS. You’d rather stay at work late than come home. You or your partner wants to open the relationship. Any of these situations may indicate that your relationship could benefit from counseling. Don’t wait until there’s a mountain of resentment, injury after injury heaped onto a very solvable issue. All relationships need tending and care.

Monogamous, polyamorous, anarchic, and more

An increasing number of us are looking to create a more permeable boundary around our sexual and romantic partnerships. I use the phrase “couples counseling” to refer to counseling where more than one individual is usually present in session, and my client is actually the relationship itself, rather than any of the individuals comprising it. A more accurate, but less well-known term, might be relationship counseling.

My approach to Couples Counseling

Much of the work we’ll do is around refining communication. Our experiences are so heavily mediated by our interpretations that it’s a wonder any two people can agree to any kind of shared reality—we’re all living inside our own minds. That’s where our words and our actions count. How we express our inner worlds to the people with whom we share so much of life is critical. In session I’ll focus on your communication with each other, and help you build skills to communicate accurately and effectively. I rely heavily on the work of researchers such as John Gottman, Sue Johnson, and Esther Perel.