Are you feeling disconnected from your partner?
Does it seem like the two of you aren’t as close as you used to be? As if you’re not really hearing each other anymore? Are misunderstandings leading to more frequent fights and less successful communication? In the constant striving to meet the demands of family, friends, work, and community, intimacy can suffer—or it can disappear altogether.
Feeling lonely in a relationship can be more difficult than being lonely on your own. Many times, the distance from your partner that you experience can feel like failure. Perhaps when you try to broach the subject of getting closer, the discussion spirals into one more squabble or stalemate. The gulf between you appears unbridgeable. When relating to each other starts to falter in this way, things can seem hopeless.
Talking, the thing that once came easily, now feels fraught, and when this is so, reclaiming an emotional connection looks harder than it ever has. Resentments pile up, affection dwindles, and your sex life suffers. But what if there were a safe and confidential setting—like marriage therapy—with a third person in the room, who could help you start to relate to each other with more ease, genuineness, and maybe even playfulness?
All couples hit rough patches.
Every relationship undergoes challenges—differences about money or parenting; a demanding job; the death of a parent. Each member of the couple brings their own history to the relationship (struggles with anxiety, trauma, depression, or substance use, to use a few examples) that may be leading to more arguments or stretches of isolation from each other. Infidelity can result.
You may manage stress differently than your partner, which is why you were drawn to each other in the first place. But the differences that once drew you might now be infuriating.
In a spouse, you may have sought the very qualities that you wish you possessed more of. If you’re used to expressing your feelings freely and showing emotions openly, you may be attracted to someone who’s more private than you about emotional expression and appears quiet and reserved. At the same time, your quiet, reserved significant other may have been drawn to your easy warmth and demonstrations of affection.
So how is it that what once was affectionate now seems like clinginess? Why does calm stability now feel like coldness? Your frustration at your partner’s lack of ability to see things from your side may be overwhelming.
On the other hand, you may have sought sameness and safety with someone whose life experiences mirror your own. It feels as if you’ve found your true soul mate. So why are you now butting heads, looking for something in the other that might not be there?
Relationship therapy sheds light on frustrating interactions and helps you reclaim your bond. As the third person in the room, my only investment is to support each of you in easing suffering and charting a course forward that’s right for you.
Couples therapy allows you to grow in your relationship.
It will be my job to understand your goals for therapy and to leverage your strengths as a couple to help you reach those goals. The initial part of our work often involves focusing on your history together, so I can learn about the early days of your relationship and what drew you to each other in the first place. This helps us identify conflicts, recognize patterns, and select the tools you’ll find most useful for easing tensions and working though misunderstandings together.
Early on in relationship therapy, I often find it helpful to meet with each of you individually so I can learn as much as possible about your histories, including parents, siblings, and other caregivers, and anything you’d like to tell me about previous relationships. Hearing about any prior experience you’ve had with therapy will also help me offer you the most effective treatment.
Can marital therapy offer you a nonstop ticket back to how things used to be? No.
Does it hold the possibility of opening a new chapter, acknowledging that you may need to mourn the one you’re closing? Yes.
Can marital therapy help you move past piled-up, longtime resentments and anger? Maybe—it goes a long way, for sure.
Does couples therapy teach you to improve awareness, cultivate empathy, know each other better, and acquire a greater understanding about how the differences between you play out in your everyday?
Absolutely.
Maybe you still have concerns about couples therapy…
Relationship therapy is too expensive.
Treatment will be an additional expense, yes. I make every effort to keep my fees as reasonable as possible and reserve spots for sliding-scale patients, though those spots are often full. If your tooth were hurting, you’d call a dentist. If your back went out, you’d go see a bodyworker. So it is with the health of your relationship, which is at the core of your life.
I want marriage therapy, but my spouse refuses.
That’s a tough spot to be in. When one partner is willing and the other isn’t, it’s easy to feel hopeless. If you’re having trouble convincing your significant other that couples therapy is worthwhile, one strategy could be to start slowly. To begin, you might come for an individual session. This way, you’ll take a first step toward healing by talking about the relationship.
What if couples counseling makes things worse?
The longer you put off getting help, the greater are the chances that resentments will pile up and problems will deepen. It’s true that sometimes when new awareness is acquired, things get worse before they get better. But couples counseling can help you identify the troublesome patterns that are causing tension. It’s important to note that if there’s violence between you right now, couples counseling isn’t recommended. Individual therapy for each of you has to come first.
Couples therapy offers a way forward.
Call me at 213-807-6021 for a free, 20-minute consultation. Let’s talk about how I can help.
