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COUPLES COUNSELING
Intimate relationships provide some of life’s richest pleasures and, much to our chagrin, greatest challenges. I work with couples to rekindle intimacy by resolving old fears and bitterness and by risking greater vulnerability and open-heartedness. Couples often get stuck blaming each other for the feelings their relationship evokes. I help couples to use these unwanted challenges – and feelings – as doorways into themselves, thereby taking each partner off the hook and allowing mutual empathy to flourish.Individuals are often terrified (or just plain tired) of feeling hurt and disappointed in familiar old ways. Early in life, they develop self-protective strategies that insure against these painful experiences, including withdrawal, criticism, defensiveness and contempt. Tragically, these strategies can undermine couple intimacy and deaden a couple’s desire for each other.
I work with couples in all stages of relationship to understand these strategies and to mitigate their impact. Over time, as couples learn to share the vulnerability behind these self-protective strategies, each can develop a rich and nuanced empathy for what the other must endure on the inside to be related. The fantasy relationship can then become a real and abiding partnership, based on mutual recognition and respect. With newfound relationship intimacy, desire, creativity, spontaneity, playfulness and passion can then flourish.
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