Couples
Most of us want the kind of fulfilling relationship with a partner that includes deep intimacy and mutual support. This can be one of life’s greatest satisfactions.
Creating and maintaining such a relationship is a challenge which takes real focus and attention, as well as a willingness to sometimes work through struggles involving difficult emotions.
Most couples who come in are in distress and pain, with each partner feeling that the person they looked to for understanding, support, and love has instead turned into a critical, withholding, and disappointing other – almost an adversary.
Other couples, who are in the early stages of their relationship, want to move to greater connection by getting to know and understand one another better.
And still others want to find a way to continue relating to each other in a comfortable way despite ending the romantic part of their connection – because of wanting to remain friends, or because of their children, or in celebration of what they have shared together.
Concerns that indicate you may need couples therapy:
- You feel more criticized than supported in your relationship.
- It feels like there is a wall between you.
- You feel lonely within your relationship.
- Attempts to resolve your conflicts seem to leave you feeling more distant than before.
- There is an ongoing power struggle between you and your partner.
I have found Imago Relationship Therapy to be the best model for understanding relationship functioning, as well as for helping couples to grow and heal. Using this approach, I am able to create a safe therapy space in which partners can say what they are thinking and feeling. This is done by structuring the Couples Dialogue so that the individuals listen respectfully to each other instead of arguing. I then assist each partner to become aware of and then communicate why stressful interactions between them are so painful – including what wounds from earlier life experiences a particular interaction brings up. In communicating this, the individual is not blaming the partner; instead they are coming to know themselves in a way they may have never felt free to know and say before.
By using this format each partner becomes able to view the other more objectively, from outside of the typical power struggles between them, and comes to understand the other person’s deepest needs, fears, and typical ways of handling them. It often turns out that both partners have similar needs but different and incompatible ways of handling them – ways which unintentionally evoke the other’s deepest wounds.
Many people enter couples therapy secretly hoping to change their partner. But this never works. Instead, I help the partners find new ways to meet their own needs within the relationship, in ways that enlist their partner’s caring rather than their resistance.
I work on the relationship between the couple, not on the individuals in the relationship. But once a relationship heals, the individuals within it do so as well.
You can read about Imago Relationship Therapy in a paperback by Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., called "Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples." It is available in most bookstores, and is reader-friendly. Or, since I give each couple I work with a copy of this book, you can get one from me.