Couples of all types occasionally need guidance to recognize and resolve conflicts. The main purpose of couples therapy is to offer a neutral and supportive mediator to help you make sense of what’s going on. Couples therapy will help unlock your ability as a couple to make thoughtful decisions about your relationship and guide you towards new channels of communication with each other. With this type of counseling, the therapist’s responsibility is to the relationship as a whole, so both of you will get equal time, attention, and understanding.
Couples are comprised of three parts: you, your partner, and the relationship itself. In choosing a partner, we are usually choosing to blend our lives with someone we love and believe to be a source of support, harmony, and affection in our daily lives. But combining our individual needs with someone else’s can be more complicated than it sounds — factors originating from the families we grew up with, our past intimate relationships, and other life experiences can often find their way into our current romantic partnership.
Many couples find counseling helpful in improving their patterns of interaction because, let’s face it, it can be really challenging to stay level-headed when your feelings have been hurt or when things at home seem out of balance. We can fall into patterns of miscommunication and/or arguing and, over time, the imbalances at home can feel like they’re amplifying. In times like these, couples can find themselves unable to recover from fights or periods of withdrawal, and they each want support and nurturing that is not present or feels insufficient. Without intending to, we often fall short in both our ability to meet our partner’s needs and in our recognition of the impact we have on one another.
Whether you and your partner are struggling with major upheavals (e.g. infidelity, loss, changes to your household structure) or issues such as unpleasant arguments, misalignment about life goals, or communication difficulty, couples therapy offers you the chance to explore the possibility of establishing new patterns of empathy, communication, and trust in order to improve the sense of fulfillment you feel in your relationship. Couples therapists are committed to meeting the needs of the relationship itself and to honoring the goals and concerns of each individual within the couple.
Return to Services
