Couples Therapy
For couples looking for a new way to be together.
For couples stuck in conflict, distance, or a careful dance around what actually needs to be said.
Sometimes the same dynamic dance keeps repeating: One person reaches, the other pulls away. You both want to find each other beyond the pain, but keep ending up in the same place. Over time, these patterns can become so familiar that it becomes difficult to see the relationship underneath.
In our sessions, we look to the deeper dynamics shaping your relationship—how you each learned to protect yourselves, what you need to feel safe, and how old wounds can be activated. We’ll discover what you need to make true vulnerability safe and possible..
The task is to develop a relationship where you both have more room to be fully yourselves.
A Relational and Depth-Oriented Approach
Our present relationships are shaped by our past and our environment, which sculpts how we relate to ourselves and others. I also believe our attractions and partnership dynamics invite us to grow toward something more. The challenges our partners present us with can be opportunities to discover more of ourselves.
My style of couples work is integrative and informed by my psychodynamic training and my humanistic and Jungian perspective on human and relational challenge and change. I draw from Gottman Therapy, Emotionally Focused Therapy, attachment, and Imago Relationship Therapy to help us understand the patterns you get caught in, what each of you is needing underneath them, and how you might find a different way of relating.
We can know things intellectually without being able to embody or act on the change we seek, so I am also active in session and invite couples to try practices and rituals at home.
When Substance Use Creates Conflicts Inside Relationships
Sometimes couples therapy includes concerns about alcohol or other substance use. Traditional psychotherapy has often been unequipped to address the complexity that substance use or addictive behaviors can create within a relationship. This can leave the person using substances positioned as the “problem” patient, with couples therapy postponed until the substance use has been addressed at a higher level of care.
An unfortunate reflection of the limitations of therapist training, I believe there are many cases where couples therapy during active use can be a part of the change. Many times, the relationship challenges and the substance use are interwoven, and the patterns that develop around use can unintentionally reinforce the cycle. Behaviors on both sides—such as pursuing, withdrawing, rescuing, controlling, or avoiding—may have become part of the cycle.
This doesn’t mean responsibility is shared equally, or that the impact of substance use will be minimized, but that we can look at the whole relational interactions. We can work on the relationship, the substance use, and codependency at the same time.
Substance use and the behaviors surrounding it can affect trust, intimacy, communication, emotional availability, and shared responsibilities. At the same time, substance use is often connected to much more complex questions about coping, trauma, loneliness, identity, and what each person is trying to manage. We need to untangle both to create a new path forward.
I can hold the impact of substance use seriously without reducing either partner to a label or turning the complexities of the relationship into a simple problem of behavior.