Couples Therapy

Do You Long for the Feelings of Closeness, Intimacy, and Understanding That Were More Spontaneous at the Beginning of Your Relationship?

Couples therapy can help you restore and maintain that closeness. In fact, all couples' relationships go through predictable phases of development. Once the honeymoon is over, it’s difficult to balance the need for intimacy with the need for alone time…and then to balance those with the daily demands of work, keeping up a home, children, in-laws, paying bills, etc!

I specialize in working with couples and offer many tools to assist with the common problems that couples face:

1. Communication – the number one problem that brings couples to counseling. Learn simple skills that will help your partner hear your point of view, and learn to listen, so your partner can feel safe enough to express his/her points better.
2. Conflict Management – Tools for dealing with disagreements in healthy, productive ways.
3. Stress Management – We live in a stressful world! Sometimes, it’s difficult to avoid taking those stresses out on a partner; sometimes we just let our partner fall too low on our priority list. Learn simple strategies for soothing stress in yourself and your partner, and effective ways to prioritize your relationship that are realistic in terms of time demands.
4. Romance and Sexual Intimacy – It’s common for partners to have different needs when it comes to romance and sex. Dealing with differences in a way that increases closeness and understanding is important.
5. Healing From Affairs and Other Betrayals – Couples therapy provides a forum to resolve old resentments, rebuild trust and promote forgiveness.
6. Emotional Connection – How to build or rebuild and strengthen your friendship with your partner.
7. Co-Parenting – Develop an effective co-parenting style. Learn techniques of positive discipline. Work with the difficult demands of homework and hectic schedules to help your children grow in responsibility and minimize stress.
8. Blended Families – The normal stresses of a relationship are often intensified when couples have children from former relationships. I enjoy assisting blended families to create strong, caring units.
9. Dreams and Goals – Talk about and honor one another’s individual dreams; create shared goals and rituals for connection.
10. Dealing With Different Styles – Neat freak vs. more laid back; strict parent vs. more permissive; save for the future vs. enjoy life and spend now; very prompt vs. O.K. with a little late; conflict avoider vs. comfortable with expressing feelings – these are some of the many differences that couples routinely face. While you can’t change your partner’s personality, you can learn to deal with these common differences in fair, caring ways.
11. Pre-Marital Counseling – Many couples I work with say they wish they had come for counseling before they married. Whether you have questions about commitment, concerns about whether this is the right relationship for you, or want to develop healthy habits of communication from the beginning, pre-marital counseling can help.
12. Thinking About Divorce? – Many couples want to know that they've tried everything before making such a high-stakes decision. This is especially true when children are involved. Therapy can help you to evaluate this important decision carefully.