Couples Therapy
The Couples Therapist’s job includes providing a holding space for important conversations. One step at a time, the couple and the therapist can explore and influence cycles of interaction.
The therapist Annie Rogers writes “What you fear most has already happened.” In our partner relationships, the demands of everyday life together join with the inevitable exposure of ‘our warts and all’ to re-invigorate those old fears. Feeling needy and exposed can make us reactive which is often met with reaction. These cycles of interaction come to dominate when couples are over-burdened and isolated, which describes most of us. Further debilitating us, we often do not have good role models for talking about essential matters, among them - money and sex. We do not have practice asking for what we want and showing our needs without resorting to anger and judgment in an effort to protect ourselves. Important conversations and moments of connection are postponed and that postponement becomes habit. The prospect of breaking that habit raises anxiety about what might be unleashed, and whether the relationship can withstand that.
The therapist can aid a couple in seeing the circumstances in which a pattern developed, and help them gain a richer understanding of each other and their life together. As a couple understands and begins to alter patterns of interactions, symptoms of distress can lessen, creating relief and thus opportunity to engage in important conversations. Social context matters in the lives of families and couples. Exploration of how relationship dynamics are impacted by identities and experiences such as gender, race, class background, educational and salary level, citizenship status, and other issues is challenging work that a good therapist acts as a guide for.
Trust breaches, including infidelity and addictive behavior, in the life of a couple add challenges to those inherent to intimate partnership. These breaches are often overwhelming and traumatic, making the exploration of the conditions that led to the breach hard to get to. The therapist’s job includes attending to the hurt engendered by the breach, while making room to explore the holistic experience of the couple.
I am in a long-term committed relationship myself. I am a gay man, and have experience and enthusiasm for working with couples across the range of sexual orientation and gender identity; in monogamous and open relationships; and with significant differences between them, including differences in culture, race and ethnicity; and across the neurodiversity spectrum. I have counseled long-married couples and those in newer relationships who are making decisions about levels of commitment.
“I want to love you without clutching, appreciate you without judging, join you without invading, invite you without demanding, leave you without guilt, criticize you without blaming, and help you without insulting. If I can have the same from you, then we can truly meet and enrich each other.”
— Virginia Satir