Couples Therapy
The quality of our relationships matters.
Our daily lives with our romantic partners, family members, young or adult children, in-laws, former spouses, coworkers, and friends can bring us incredible joy and indescribable pain. Feeling stuck in painful thoughts and feelings about past or current relationships wreaks havoc on our personal, professional, and relational well-being.
Couples therapy can help you reach a wide range of relationship goals. You may want to deepen or rekindle a connection, address intimacy concerns, define healthy individual and relational boundaries, break free of old maladaptive relationship patterns, improve two-way communication, minimize fighting, or heal from emotional or physical betrayal.
Couples become disconnected when they feel misunderstood and resentful, fearful of vulnerability, display aggressive behavior during disagreements, show contempt, fight, feel confused, or are overly critical. Any of these feelings can pull couples apart rather and make connection feel elusive.
Relationship therapy is not about blaming, shaming, or guilt.
Blame and shame are not a part of any kind of relationship therapy, couples counseling, marital counseling, or premarital counseling.
Accountability, healing, being truly seen and heard, and moving forward towards a shared future in which there is space and abundance for everyone's needs to be met.
Couples therapy can be helpful if
You feel stuck in never-ending arguments.
You feel resentful.
You feel misunderstood, unseen, or unheard.
You feel fearful of being or being seen as vulnerable.
You feel that if you don't "win" a fight or argument, you've "lost." And vice versa.
You feel like you have to "stuff" your real feelings.
You feel like you have to "walk on eggshells" on certain topics.
You feel like you have to "give up" your needs for things to be resolved.
You feel like you frequently "give in" because you can't see any other path forward.
You feel like your intentions are frequently misunderstood.
You feel constantly critiqued or attacked.
You feel nervous or avoidant when it comes to bringing up difficult topics.
You feel like the communication in the relationship is unproductive or downright destructive.
You feel like your conflicts become mean or childish.
You feel like your conflicts end up so far from where they started, you can't remember what started it.
A few of the common thoughts people have about relationship difficulties.
Ever find yourself searching for explanations for why the challenges in your relationship aren't so bad?
For example . . .
"We've survived rough patches before; we'll get through this." "Hey, passion dies. That's just getting older." "We don't need counseling. That's for people who are really in trouble or thinking about divorce or something." "We never fight, so how bad can it be?" "They will get over it. This stuff happens." "I don't need a therapist taking my partner's side and making me out to be a bad person." "No one's ever gotten hit. Why would we see a therapist?"
Sound familiar?
Seeking help is not a sign of relationship failure.
You may have avoided getting professional relationship help because it feels like some kind of embarrassing admission that you've somehow "failed" to "fix" a problem, or it feels like a daunting acknowledgement that the problem is "really that bad."
Deciding to seek couples therapy is the opposite of failure.
Seeking help with important relationships is courageous, forward-thinking, and a sign of caring, commitment, and investment. It's taking an active leadership role in making your life better, and the other person's life, too.
As a therapist, I stand up for the relationship and provide paths of integrity for both individuals to learn to get their needs met while also meeting their partner's needs and those of the relationship. No one should feel like they're being asked to "give up" or "give in" in order to make it work.
The sooner you get professional therapy, the sooner you can engage in the healthy repair journey that restores connection, intimacy, friendship, and the other qualities the relationship has been missing.
People commonly have worries about trying couples therapy, so they minimize the problems.
It's very common for a person to be dissatisfied or worried about a relationship, but doubtful about couples counseling or relationship therapy. You may have avoided getting professional relationship help because it feels like some kind of embarrassing admission that you've somehow "failed" to "fix" a problem, or it feels like a daunting acknowledgement that the problem is "really that bad."
Anxiety about couples therapy is totally normal.
Maybe you worry that therapy will turn into another conversation in which you feel blamed and misunderstood? People who are experiencing a hard time in a relationship but are also nervous about couples work often minimize their discomfort by telling themselves things like:
"I don't need all my old mistakes thrown in my face." "I don't need to take any more blame." "My partner doesn't get me." "My partner doesn't care that they're hurting me/about my feelings." "If my partner cared, they'd stop doing/do more of ______." "If my partner cared, I wouldn't feel this way." "I wouldn't get so frustrated if my partner would just listen." "I'm embarrassed of how I react when my partner criticizes me. I try and keep a lid on my feelings, and then I end up blowing up." "I try to let the little stuff go, but my partner never lets anything go."
Feelings of disconnection, resentment, anger, withdrawal, and alienation can be transformed. An experienced couples therapist can help you get there.
Here's a glimpse of what it's like to get therapy for couples, marriage, or relational issues.
Couples therapy is not about shame, blame, or guilt.
In couples therapy, you and the other person can develop essential insights about what drives your partner's and your own behaviors, and improve pattern recognition. You can gain strategies to choose impactful, responses instead of being held hostage by your reactions, and drastically decrease and even eliminate all-consuming, exhausting, never-ending arguments.
A couples therapist will also teach you to increase your freedom within the relationship while also growing your teamwork and connectedness, without giving up on individual needs and or "giving in" to unsatisfying relational dynamics.
Compromise makes everyone 50% miserable.
You can also learn to understand the mythology of "compromise" and develop the tools to decrease resentment, increase generosity, and support each other in meeting both your needs.
You'll discover that it's completely possible, as Relational Life Therapy founder Terry Real says, to "give voice to the I and cherish the We at the same time."
Whether your relationship is causing you significant distress, you want a relational tune-up, or you're having a great experience and want more tools to keep it going strong, couples therapy can help.
No matter what happened in your past, you can be an incredible partner, friend, or family member.
Build a powerful personal toolkit so you can show up in your relationships as the person you want to be without compromising your values, needs, or desires.
Go past "better communication" to a deeper, more connected, healthier relationship, and learn how to set healthy, compassionate boundaries in the relationships that aren't serving you.
Whether you want to transform an existing relationship or build new, deep, and rewarding personal connections, relationship therapy can help you get there.
I offer therapy for couples, marriage counseling, premarital counseling, family issues, and other relational issues in Colorado, Massachusetts, Maryland, Nevada, Nebraska, and Rhode Island.
If you're ready to fix the parts of your relationships that are dragging you down, let's talk.
People Also Ask
Can relationship therapy help?
Relationship therapy can absolutely help you have healthier, tranquil, and more fulfilling connections with your partner, friends, and family members. Relationship therapy can mean family therapy, marriage counseling, and premarital counseling, among others. Relationship therapy can help people get their own needs met in a relationship without stuffing their feelings, shaming, blaming, or fighting. In relationship therapy you will learn skills for effectively managing difficult feelings without "stuffing" them or "exploding," and how to advocate for yourself and the relationship at the same time without creating a "winner/loser" dynamic.
What kind of therapist is best for couples?
The best therapist for couples is the one who makes you both feel comfortable, accepted, and heard; and who also is trained and experienced in getting the results you want. For example, Discernment Therapists specialize in helping couples or an individual decide if separation is the right answer for them if that's something that one or both individuals are considering but have not committed to; they do not help couples work on the relationship in order to go forward.
If you know you want the relationship to get better, you've come to the right place. Let's chat.
What is the most effective form of couples therapy?
The most effective form of couples therapy is the one that's the most accessible and relatable to the individuals in it, that gets the results they want, and that’s evidenced-based (that means it's shown effectiveness in controlled, scientific studies). I use several different evidenced-based with couples therapies including Cognitive Behavioral Couples Therapy, Solutions-Focused Brief Therapy, and concepts from The Gottman Method, Imago Relationship Therapy, Relational Life Therapy, and Emotionally Focused Therapy.
Is therapy worth it for couples?
Well, that depends on the couple and their individual and collective commitment to and engagement in the process. Results from therapy aren't all that dissimilar to other endeavors . . . often, you get out what you put in.
Is couples therapy real or scripted?
Couples therapy is not "scripted." Some evidenced-based couples therapies (and individual therapies as well) do utilize more structured formats than others, which means there may be certain key concepts, phrases, vocabulary, exercises, and interaction frameworks that are frequently and intentionally repeated. When we're learning something new or trying to change an old habit, it's helpful to use safe, predictable, and replicable structures.
What is the difference between couples and marital counseling?
The difference between couples counseling and marital counseling is mostly that not all couples are married. The focus and goals of the therapy may be different between married and non-married couples simply because they are at different phases of life as well as in the relationship. The goals, concerns, and needs of a married couple may be (or may not be) different than a non-married couple. But really, there's no meaningful difference. Therapy should focus on what the couple needs and wants relative only to their own unique relationship.
We're not religious. What's the point of premarital counseling or precommitment counseling?
Premarital counseling is a great way to initiate important conversations about your future in a safe and supportive environment.
You may have considered this type of therapy, but worry that it will "bring up" something that will throw the relationship off track. But most couples find that having challenging conversations before they become actual challenges is a tremendous relief . . . and much preferable to anxiously worrying about when/if it will "come up" unexpectedly.
Some frequent topics for premarital or precommitment counseling include:
Managing conflict style differences
Negotiating coping style differences
Preparing for a life with your person's people
Discrepancies in daily life preferences
Family of origin issues
Sex and intimacy
Roles and responsibilities
Kids and parenting
Where do you provide couples, marital, and premarital therapy?
I am licensed and work with couples in Colorado, Massachusetts, Maryland, Nebraska, Nevada, and Rhode Island via a secure telehealth platform that is HIPPA compliant and easy to use from any desktop, laptop, or mobile device. Couples are able to access sessions together from the same physical location or independently from different locations, which makes it easy to accommodate challenging schedules.