"The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives."
Esther Perel
Couples therapy
Relationships can be hard.
You can love each other deeply and still find yourselves having the same argument again and again.
One of you wants to talk, while the other shuts down. You both want to feel heard and understood, yet somehow neither of you does.
Maybe you don’t show each other love and affection in the way you used to. You may have started to feel more like housemates than partners, with parenting, financial pressures, work or family life taking their toll.
Trust may have been damaged, leaving you unsure how to rebuild it.
Or maybe nothing specific has happened, you just know that something between you doesn’t feel the way it once did.
You know you don’t want to carry on like this.
You might both be desperate to make things better, or one of you might be more convinced about couples therapy than the other (this is very common).
You might even be wondering whether you want to stay together.
You don’t need to have the answers before you come to therapy.
The relationship is the client
When I work with couples, I’m not there to decide who’s right, who’s wrong or whose side I’m on. I’m interested in what happens between you. We’ll get curious about the places you keep ending up, how you each get pulled into them and what gets lost when you’re trying to reach each other. That doesn’t mean everything gets treated as equal or hurtful behaviour gets brushed aside. Sometimes someone needs to take responsibility for something.
Your relationship, not a formula
I don’t have a formula for what a good relationship should look like. Whatever your sexuality, gender, background or the shape your relationship takes, I want to understand your relationship - what matters to you about it, where things have got difficult and what you’d like to be different.
How do we keep ending up here?
Sometimes it starts with something tiny and, before you know it, you’re having that argument again.
It’s much easier to spot a pattern when you’re not the one in the middle of it.
I’ll help you slow things down and look at how it all gets started, what each of you does next and how you somehow end up back in the same place.
We’ll also look at what might be going on underneath the argument.
How do we do something different?
Once we can see the pattern, we can start figuring out how to change it.
I draw on approaches including the Gottman Method and Imago dialogue.
We might try different ways of talking, listening and responding to each other, giving you something different to try when you feel yourselves slipping into the same patterns.
We’ll use what’s useful for the two of you.
Can we really say what we think?
You might both have things you've struggled to say to each other.
Part of couples therapy is making space for those conversations.
We'll also talk about confidentiality and what happens if either of you shares something with me outside your sessions together.
I'll explain how I work from the beginning, so you both know what to expect.
You might be wondering…
What if one of us is more keen on therapy than the other?
That’s really common.
You don’t both have to arrive feeling equally sure about couples therapy. We can start where you are, and there’s room for each of you to feel differently about being there.
What if we don’t know whether we want to stay together?
That’s okay too.
Couples therapy isn’t about keeping a relationship together at all costs.
Sometimes the work is about understanding what’s happened between you, what each of you wants and working out what comes next (whether that’s together or apart).
What if we argue during a session?
If the pattern you get caught in at home shows up in the room, that can actually help us understand it. I won’t just sit back and watch things escalate.
I’ll intervene when I need to, slow things down and help us look at what’s happening between you.
There’s room for anger, frustration and difficult conversations but not for intimidation, threats or abusive behaviour.
If I have concerns about either person’s safety, we’ll need to think carefully about whether couples therapy is the right kind of support.
Is couples therapy only for relationships in crisis?
Not at all. You don’t have to wait until things feel really bad.
Some couples come because they keep getting stuck in the same arguments or have started to feel disconnected.
Others want to understand each other better, work through a change in their relationship or simply make some space to think about how things are between them.
How many sessions will we need?
There isn’t a set number of sessions that is right for every couple.
Every couple is different, but my aim is to work as effectively and purposefully as we can so that you’re not in therapy for longer than you need to be. We’ll review how things are going as we go.