Couples Therapy
"Don’t torture yourself, Gomez. That’s my job."
― Morticia Addams, The Addams Family (1991)
I love him – that’s why I want to kill him!
For as long as there have been couples, there have been couples that needed therapy. Adam and Eve, Lucy and Ricky, Shrek and Fiona, and others struggled and could have benefited from couples therapy.
As different as every individual and every couple is, the problems that bring them to couples therapy are common. There could be money worries, concerns about how the kids are doing, or concerns about who is doing what around the house. These problems are frequently just window dressing for what’s going on.
Communication is always a challenge, and maintaining a healthy line of communication between two partners can be a Herculean task.
Trouble in couples also varies.
Perhaps you can’t have a conversation without it escalating into an argument. Maybe the neighbors have called the police once too many times complaining about the screaming and glass shattering coming from your home.
Or, perhaps, it’s the opposite. Maybe you go whole days without speaking, and then when you do speak, it’s only about logistics. The talks about your hopes and dreams and the pillow talk that used to carry you to sleep are now distant memories. And it seems no matter what you do or how hard you try, there’s just no getting back there.
You need help – someone outside your couple. That someone can be us.
Finding who’s to blame isn’t the answer.
It’s not that one of you is right and one is wrong – it’s that you’re both wrong.
The main difference between couples therapy and individual therapy is that in couples therapy, we are not just your therapist or your partner’s therapist. We are the therapists for the relationship. Your goals together as a couple become our goals.
Sitting in a room with us, the objective is always the same – for us to understand your needs and desires and your partner’s needs and desires and find a way to ensure that both of you are getting those met. It is a balancing act, but we always want to hear from both of you.
Along the way, our job is to mediate and avoid the volatile conflict that can arise when we struggle to understand one another.
A couple named Gottman provided the right approach.
An excellent way to look at couples therapy is that we are not trying to stop all arguments. We are trying to enable you to argue more civilly and effectively so that you both have a happier relationship and a better quality of life. When we often perceive our partner as uninterested or unwilling to consider what we need, the problem is not their lack of interest or desire but how we express our needs.
As individuals, we can recognize what we want and prioritize it however we see fit. When we have a partner, we have two people’s needs to address, and sometimes those needs seem to be in conflict. In couples therapy, we practice approaches that allow both of you to be heard and avoid what Drs. John and Julie Gottman call the Four Horsemen – criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.
Our approach to couples therapy is heavily grounded in the Gottman Method. Drs. John and Julie Gottman are therapists (and a happily married couple) who developed a model for couples therapy based on decades of research. We integrate their ideas and interventions to focus on the foundation of your relationship, building and reinforcing every level of your connection so we ‘flip the script’ and guide you to enjoy far more positive interactions with one another than negative ones.
New hope for love awaits you.
Taking the first step and inviting us into your relationship can be intimidating, but it can open doors you never knew were there.
The wonderful early days of your partnership do not have to remain in the past. The simple joys and romance of connection are still there, just waiting for you.