Find a couples therapist who meets your needs.
Couples Therapy
Couples therapy can be a great way to reconnect with your partner or resolve the conflict between you. In therapy, couples have the opportunity to work through their most difficult or emotionally challenging problems.
“Great marriages aren’t about clear communication – they’re about small moments of attachment and intimacy.”
— Dr. John Gottman
What is Couples Therapy?
Couples therapy, also called relationship counseling, or marriage counseling is a form of therapy that supports people in intimate relationships. In couples therapy, the relationship itself is the focus. However, each partner is expected to pay attention to self-improvement and self-awareness.
Isn’t Therapy Difficult?
Therapy can be difficult, but so is living disconnected from your partner. The purpose of therapy is to provide you with the skills and tools for you as a couple to manage your relationship in positive and healthy ways. With the right guidance, you’ll find it much easier to navigate your relationship.
What’s the Purpose?
A couples session gives you and your partner the opportunity to bring to the surface any relational concerns and work with an unbiased therapist. Couples therapy may also be right for you if you’re considering separating and want to do so with intention.
How Therapy Can Help
Couples therapy can help you resolve issues with your partner, rekindle your connection, gain insight into your relationship “dance”, increase communication, strengthen emotional bonds, change negative patterns, and even end your relationship amicably.
Why Couples Therapy?
There are many reasons why couples therapy might help you. Here are a few of the best ones.
Rekindle Connection
Some couples report having lost the initial connection that brought them together. They find themselves thinking: How did I end up here? The reality is, there’s always a spark of joy, an emotional moment we can return to in order to find the love we once felt so deeply for another person. Therapy can help you return to that place.
Strengthen Emotional Bonds
Intimacy is the wind beneath your relationship’s wings. If your relationship has lost intimacy, it’s important to learn how to strengthen those emotional bonds that tie the two of you together. Therapy can help you find activities to rejuvenate your emotional connection and refresh the levels of intimacy you experience with one another to bring your relationship back.
Resolve Issues
The most common reason couples seek out therapy is to resolve conflicts. Couples often argue & fight on occasion, but if these arguments are constant, recurring, and putting a strain on the relationship, then it might be a good idea to reach out for some support. Therapy can help couples communicate & listen to each other, and reach a compromise.
Change Toxic Patterns
Many people in relationships find themselves stuck in patterns that create problems in their relationship. Arguing about the dishes is rarely about the dishes; more often it’s about feeling unsupported or undervalued. These feelings seep into other parts of the relationship. Therapy can help you change the patterns of relating and find the love you want in your relationship.
Gain Insight
Often, issues between couples are not so much about the other person, but about your own emotional experience. Anxiety, depression, and many other mood disorders might get in the way of a successful relationship, and through couples therapy you’ll be able to better understand your own mental processes.
End Relationships Amicably
Sometimes, the end of the relationship is inevitable, and both partners want to make sure it ends on friendly terms. This can be extra helpful if you have a lot you have shared over the years, like property or even children. Therapy can help you find a common ground and learn to move forward with each other, not as partners, but as two people who once loved each other.
Common Symptoms of Relationship Distress
If any of the following symptoms prevent you from enjoying your daily life, you might benefit from therapy to address these issues.
Emotional Distance
Do you feel emotionally disconnected to your partner? As the years go by, it is common for couples to loose the strong emotional connection they had at the beginning of their relationship. You might feel dissatisfied with your partner’s involvement in your life, and further step away from theirs, creating a vicious cycle of detachment that could put a strain on your relationship.
Lack of Communication
If you’re not talking, not sharing your day with each other, not asking each other for input during stressful moments—that’s a huge red flag for a relationship. It tells the other person that you don’t value what they have to say. Healing begins by acknowledging your participation in communication difficulties and learning to listen in the ways your partner needs.
Lack of Intimacy
Intimacy and even sexual satisfaction, although not always the most important aspects in a relationship, are still important to consider when you are feeling unhappy in your relationship. You may feel like you’ve lost the passion that once tied you together, or that you’ll never be able to trust in them again. Therapy can bring you some perspective on these and other issues.
Non-traditional Relationships
For those in non-traditional relationships, many issues may arise like jealousy, emotional distress, and being uncomfortable with boundaries. For many people, non-traditional relationships are uncharted territory, and it really takes a professional intervention to help you navigate the relationship and steer it in the right direction, together.
Constant Conflict
If you are constantly fighting with your partner, you probably feel drained after spending time with them. You might find that you repeat the same arguments, or that you are never able to compromise even on little issues. Few relationships can survive constant conflict without support because it takes time and effort to change the ways we relate to one another.
Infidelity, Finances, Etc.
In life, we go through many situations that test our relationship. Substance abuse, differences in parenting style, infidelity, and even financial troubles can cause so much stress that it sends the relationship through a tailspin. These problems often take precedence over the relationship, and couples feel like they have lost each other trying to solve the issue.
The Gottman Method
The Gottman Method is a specific approach to couples therapy that helps couples rebuild intimacy and love for one another. Based on the research by Drs. John and Julie Gottman, this method is most known for its marriage of science and math with relationship concerns.
What You’ll Work On:
Accept Influence.
Solve Problems That Are Solvable.
Manage Conflict & Overcome Gridlock.
Create Shared Meaning.
Build Love Maps.
Express Fondness & Admiration.
Turn Toward One Another.
How It Works
The Gottman Method offers couples the benefit of realizing their shared relationship goals. By working through the Sound Relationship House Theory, couples will firm up the foundation of their friendship and their life together and build a relationship to be proud of.
What Can I Expect?
In the Gottman Method, and couples therapy in general, you can expect that you may attend in a variety of formats. For instance, while the first session tends to be a joint interview, the second week may involve seeing each partner separately to gain a better understanding of each individual’s history before coming back together and targeting areas for change.
How Can Using The Gottman Method Help?
Through a structured, meaningful couples session, the Gottman method helps you and your partner develop your relationship together. The effort you both put in demonstrates a willingness to stay together and make it work, which will carry through the rest of your relationship and long into the future.
Separating with Intention
Many people who intend to break up will ask: why do I need a therapist to break up? It’s a good question, and while many feel as though it’s unnecessary, having a therapist guide a couple through the process makes it much more likely that healing will occur and you’ll be able to move on from the relationship unscathed.
By having a non-judgmental third party involved, couples can feel free to express themselves and learn why this relationship didn’t make it. In the future, both partners will know more about themselves, how they act in relationships, and will have better outcomes because of this insight.