Couples Therapy
It usually starts out great… but, somewhere, feelings change.
You meet. You hit it off like you never have with anyone else. You feel those butterflies just thinking about them.
Free time gets scheduled around theirs, so you can spend as much time as possible together.
Spending more and more time together, because you just can’t seem to get enough…
Like a flower in springtime, love feelings bloom. Their gaze makes you melt, and their touch makes you tremble.
Then life happens…
Kids. Careers. You both build a life, focusing on what you thought was a shared vision of your happy life together… your “forever after.”
Work demands, child raising, aging parents… you take it all on, confident your partnership is and always will be solid.
Feelings change… some not for the better. Responsibilities become drudgery. Time for each other becomes scarce; and when it happens, it’s more and more often conflictual and contentious. Seemingly important decisions get made without your input. Resentments build.
Respect takes a vacation… sometimes even an extended one! You start wondering what’s happening, knowing it just doesn’t feel the same anymore. You bring up the changes you can clearly see, and your partner sees them, too… or they don’t.
So, you plug along feeling alone, building resentment and frustration. You miss the closeness and connection you both so passionately once shared.
Maybe you’ve tried everything to get back to how things used to be…
You’ve tried talking till you’re blue in the face. Maybe your partner “gets it,” and works with you to try to fix things. Or, maybe they see the problem differently and seem to be working against you. In either case, you notice communicating has become a chore. Rather than open arms and a sweet kiss greeting you when you arrive home, you are met with a grunt and sometimes not even that.
He says he understands and doesn’t want you to be unhappy. He also said he’d “work on it.” You do see effort, but because nothing seems to stick, you start believing his effort is really just placating of your now seemingly incessant “nagging” (as he calls it).
Changes occur, but they are short-lived. You’ve both started withdrawing from each other, making it even MORE difficult to discuss challenges, let alone sustain any gains. Conversely, maybe there’s plenty of “talking,” it’s just become “yelling,” instead. Perhaps one of you has started discussing your issues with others outside your relationship, even getting the emotional connection you both found in each other with someone else.
You try to be accommodating. You sacrifice your preferred routine, give up the activities you love, or even cut certain people out of your life hoping your partner appreciates it and that will make things better.
One day you wake up and find you’ve lost yourself. You realize you’ve made so many concessions, you don’t even recognize your life anymore.
It seems now that mere tolerance has supplanted the love you once both shared and cherished.
You’ve probably figured out that you have three choices…
You can ignore the tension in your relationship and just hope that it fixes itself.
Ignoring it is not going to help. In fact, it will likely make things worse. The longer ineffective, unhealthy, or negative patterns remain, the firmer and more resistant to change they become. Avoidance, inconsideration, and even disrespect become the norm.
You can plan your escape from the relationship.
Perhaps you know it’s irretrievably broken (beyond repair?). That love you once had has now given way to bitterness and disdain. Or, even worse, emotional, mental or physical abuse is present. If any of this sounds familiar, please don’t despair.
Couples counseling can be a great help smoothing the transition out, too, by helping you establish and maintain mutual boundaries, improving communication skills, as well as processing, accepting, and letting go of hard feelings.
You can stay in the relationship and continue to work on it…
I have to believe that this is where most of you are. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading this. But, as you probably already know, making the same attempts at fixing things and getting the same results usually just hardens your negative feelings. This is where couples counseling comes in. You can improve your relationship, yes, even when there’s been infidelity.
Whether you’re willing to do whatever’s in your power to make it work, contemplating your departure, or somewhere betwixt or between the two, I can help!
You have options, and you don’t have to sort them out alone.
You’ve done plenty of talking – with your partner, your friends, your family, and your co-workers. It’s become wallowing, and you realize that simply won’t do.
You desperately want to repair your relationship, both for your sake and your children’s; but you do not understand your partner’s point of view and rarely understand how your own actions contribute to conflicts.
My goal in working with you is to teach a method of communicating that will allow you to resolve your issues during and after therapy.
The goal is NOT to resolve specific issues! If I were to attempt to resolve one particular issue (or several, for that matter), one or both of you will likely become defensive. Even if you both were to accept my solution(s), rest assured you will have many more conflicts lined up that I can’t resolve for you!
During our couples therapy work together…
We will establish a clear understanding of the goals of therapy. I will develop trust with each of you without alienating the other.
I will set the boundaries of therapy, so each of you will feel safe to express his or her point of view in a way the other can hear and understand, even though he or she may not agree.
I will set the stage for both of you to have a conscious relationship; that is, one where each partner begins to understand how he or she is contributing to your conflicts and how using a different communication style can lead to the joyful and harmonious relationship you both desire and deserve.
Typically, I will meet privately with each partner (either in a separate session or part of the first session) to learn about any sensitive issues. Sessions of 90 minutes work best rather than the 50-minute session typically used for individual therapy.
What our work together will look like…
Intake
It is useful to collect some basic information at the start of the first session, such as the number of years you’ve been together, your current living situation, special health issues, prior counseling experiences, employment, and special interests.
I will take some notes and start learning how you relate to one another. The intake also offers you both a chance to become comfortable with me, which is of course vital to our process.
Goals and Why I’m Not a Referee
You will be learning a new method of communication, so you can better understand each other in the office and incorporate this process into your relationship at home. This process will work if you “are willing to try on some new ideas.”
By pointing out the importance of the “we” and not the “me” in your relationship, you’ll begin to understand that I expect both to participate in the process by making changes. This means that counseling is a joint venture to better understand your relationship rather than an adversarial one.
Brain Parts and the Dishwasher
You will learn about basic brain functions and how the 100 billion neurons in your brains make decisions and help you to think of therapy as a conscious exercise.
You’ll discover that when your partner says to you, “That’s no way to load the dishwasher,” they may be thinking they are speaking from their analytical brain to yours; but in fact, they are stirring your limbic system. You react emotionally and, in turn, stir their emotions. This small incident can blow up into your “War of the Roses.”
The Sun
Appreciations are to a relationship, as the sun and rain are to a flower. They trigger the happy neurons in the limbic system and bring people closer together.
Most couples who come to therapy have not heard appreciations from their partner for months or years, so this exercise sets the tone for rebuilding warm feelings and trust. You’ll be encouraged to offer at least one appreciation each day at home and prepare one to begin each therapy session.
You’ll learn that appreciations should not be wrapped in frustrations; such as, “I appreciate that you finally took out the trash.”
A Conscious Relationship
A conscious relationship requires each of you to recognize your own role and reactivity levels when conflicts arise, as well as to become aware of your partner’s thoughts and feelings.
After living with conflicts for so long and having to defend your own ego against attacks, I will help you learn to truly listen and understand what your partner is thinking and feeling.
Summarizing the Session and Preparing for the Future
To end the session, each partner is asked for their thoughts about the session and what they can personally do before the next appointment to improve the relationship. This information helps me plan for our future work together.
I’ll also assign some “homework.”
Future Sessions
In future sessions, you’ll continue learning to understand each other’s desires, feelings, and thoughts. The Imago Relationship method of therapy developed by Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., is a powerful process for this purpose. It uses the mirroring technique along with couples validating and empathizing with each other.
Along with continual dialogue and mirroring, there are a variety of other communication tools that can be used during sessions. One is constructing genograms to enable you both to understand how each of you developed your values during your upbringing with your families. When you explore your genogram, you’ll experience revelations that improve your understanding of your current relationship, which is a wonderful experience!
Another useful communication tool is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator that will help you both understand how character differences can cause conflict yet serve to energize the relationship. You’ll begin to realize that having different character traits adds spice to a relationship that may otherwise be bland.
As you both listen and express more positive feelings, you’ll develop trust and feel closer. Hendrix puts it this way: “Through daily repetition of positive behaviors, our old brain [limbic system] repatterns its image of our partners, and we again become a source of pleasure for each other.”
Gold vs. Platinum
I’m sure you know the Golden Rule, right? “Do unto others as you would have them to do unto you?”
This doesn’t work very well when you order anchovies on her pizza (which you love, but she is not fond of), and she buys yogurt for you (which she loves but which causes havoc to your taste buds).
Instead, I ask couples to adopt the Platinum Rule: “Do unto others as they would like you to do unto them.”
It’s amazing how one motto can bring happiness and harmony over many, many years.
Whether alone or with your partner, help is here…
I’ve been successful helping couples—whether they both come in together from the start… or if just one partner starts off. It really does depend on many factors, including your paired and individual interests, motivations, desires, and fears.
Whatever you do, though… stop going it alone or going in the wrong direction.
You can do this… you can get your relationship where you want it to be. You deserve it… and so do your loved ones.
I’d love to talk with you briefly to discuss your relationship and make an initial plan. Determining what will work best for you is as simple as a phone call: (941) 544-4822.