COUPLE THERAPY

What brings you?

I work with such a variety of couples - partnerships in all their identities, at all ages and stages of life.

Maybe life events have brought you to a place where your relationship has lost its way.

It could be the arrival of children, the absence of children, or the fledging of children that brings you to this place. Often it’s a change in the pressure or commitment of work (too much, not enough); it might be illness, ageing, responsibilities of caring; the death of loved ones.

Sometimes infidelity or addictive behaviours have dealt a wound to the relationship that is just too raw to attend to without the support of an impartial but invested third party.

Some couples tell me they need to work together to change patterns of relating that feel historic but are so hard to let go.

Other couples come to therapy in service to their separation. Separations often need to carry the ongoing care for children or other family members. So our work is to create the conditions for a conscious separation that can adapt with respect and care to the changes ahead.

Increasingly I’m meeting young couples or ‘second time rounders’ who want a space to mindfully explore their values, needs and expectations as they embark on a deeper commitment to one another.

Whatever your motivation to come here, there is the common ground of wanting to do some serious work in service to your relationship. I would welcome joining you in that work.

Working with the difficulty

When a loving state becomes unreliable, our most formative coping responses are activated. In an adult intimate relationship, this activation (which often contains unresolved early trauma) becomes painful, self-defeating and exhausting. Patterns of missed contact get repeatedly re-enacted, forming into states of reliable disappointment.

When we work with the difficulty everything described above becomes the stuff of transformation.

Whether towards a reunion, a new beginning or an ending, couple work is hard work. The path from one place to the next can be painful and humbling. Together we will explore patterns of power struggles, victimhood and blame, bringing awareness to the undercurrents and histories that inform your ways of coping and being. From awareness springs the potential for change.

All of these difficult experiences can be met as invitations to co-create a deeper, reciprocal, life-seasoned and enduring love. A love that learns to embrace differences; one that prizes connection over and above being right. A love matured and enlivened by challenge and conflict, not defeated and cowed by it. A love that leans into curiosity and away from judgement, trusting and forgiving in its commitment to mutual growth.

Relational couple therapy can be wonderful work. Plentiful moments of humour and joy can arise from the earthy struggle of being vulnerable together in a well held space, as we engage in the most fundamental human endeavour - to love and be loved.