Couples Therapy

Do You Feel Disconnected From Your Partner?

A couple sitting together

Have you been struggling to communicate with your partner and cycling through the same arguments over and over? 

Does it seem like you are growing distant, with no idea how to close the gap between you? 

Are you struggling to recover from infidelity or some other relationship crisis and unsure whether or not you can move through it together?

Perhaps you keep returning to those same conflicts to the point of exhaustion or even complete disconnection and silence. 

You might feel like you're grieving the relationship you once had or the loss of the affection you used to feel. 

Maybe you’re missing the emotional and sexual intimacy you once enjoyed. Your sex life might have shifted from vibrant to practically non-existent, and although this frustrates both of you, neither of you knows how to bring back the spark.

Relationship Troubles Can Influence Every Area Of Your Life

When your relationship is struggling, it can feel all-consuming, even if you try to push it aside and "just keep going." 

Living with constant conflict, grappling with the fallout of infidelity, feeling alone in your relationship, or worrying about your future with your partner can leave you distracted and detached from other responsibilities. Ruminating on relationship issues can spill over into other parts of your life, affecting your work performance, friendships, parenting, the enjoyment of hobbies and activities, and generally causing low self-worth and depression.

Whether you're dealing with a difficult life transition, facing infidelity or some other relationship crisis, or want to revive your romantic connection or need to improve communication, a couple's therapist can help you navigate the steps toward healing and improving connection.

In Our Fast-Paced, High-Tech Society, It Can Be Hard For Couples To Make Time For Each Other

Today, many couples are so busy that they find themselves prioritizing everything but their relationships. It’s easy for a couple to assume that their strong connection will endure no matter what. While having a strong connection can help weather the storm of life demands, parenting and professional responsibilities can shift romance and intimacy to the back burner, leaving the relationship feeling empty. Sometimes, people will say they feel like roommates. For couples nearing retirement or becoming empty nesters who are facing each other for the first time without the distraction of employment or parenting children at home, the sudden awareness of their disconnection can be alarming. 

Because our culture demands so much of our time, couples spend less time talking with each other face-to-face and resort to text dialogue for its efficiency and ease. This means less eye contact and the loss of body language and tone in communication overall. These elements of communication can make all the difference in how couples give each other grace and understand each other.  

Additionally, in our social media-laden world, it can be hard not to make assumptions about what we see in other people's relationships and leave us feeling like our own experience is lackluster.

Many People Struggle To Communicate Their Needs Authentically 

People learn communication patterns from their families of origin and wider cultures, which often means imitating relational dynamics that they unconsciously adopted as children. As people bring these patterns into their adult relationships they often find that their strategies for achieving connection are mismatched with their partner's family of origin patterns.

Even good-faith attempts at honest conversations between partners might lead to defensiveness, deflection, stonewalling, or projection. When internal protection takes over in this way, it becomes difficult for the couple to engage with vulnerability. Without vulnerability, connection and resolution may feel hopeless. 

If you’re feeling distant and unfulfilled, and you and your partner are both invested in overcoming these obstacles together, couples therapy can help you feel understood, appreciated, and connected within your marriage or relationship.

You Can Strengthen Your Bond Through Couples Counseling

a couple smiling at each other

Treatment Approaches For Couples Therapy

I draw on a wide range of counseling approaches to help you and your partner address the root causes of ongoing challenges and revitalize intimacy within your relationship. 

  • The Gottman Method aids couples in removing barriers to emotional intimacy in therapy, encouraging couples to turn towards each other and create shared meaning.

  • Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy can help you and your partner recognize which “parts” of you are showing up in ways that keep you from each other and begin healing those parts to reduce conflict and increase connection.

  • Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) can transform the beliefs you share about your relationship as a couple, enabling you to let go of limiting narratives.

  • Utilizing the tools of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) will enable you to tolerate distress and regulate emotion when feeling triggered by the dynamic of the relationship.

  • Attachment-based therapy provides insight and helps reduce blame as you both learn how your attachment styles developed within your family of origin and guides you in building a more consistent and trusting attachment to each other.

  • Relational life therapy can assist partners in identifying areas where they are overstepping unspoken boundaries which may be leading to codependence and other challenging relational patterns that cycle and negatively reinforce each other. 

  • The development of mindfulness skills and somatic awareness in therapy allows you to attend to the physical escalation that may take you out of the present moment and cause too much distress to talk about sensitive topics.

  • Esther Perel's work and insights can support authenticity and vulnerability around creating desire and eroticism, allowing for a couple to develop their unique connection through sexual intimacy. 

  • Interventions to address monogamy and agreements about your relationship help to reduce uncertainty and create clarity around expectations to improve trust and safety.

We’re all human, and there’s no such thing as a perfect relationship. If you and your partner are both committed to making a change, therapy can help you learn how you want to love and be loved and build a brighter future while honoring where you’ve been together.

Couples therapy involves a process of identifying, exploring, and changing relational patterns by increasing awareness of those patterns to shift blame from each other to addressing a problematic dynamic. Improving communication, developing connection, repairing injuries, and creating hopes and dreams for the future are all aspects of building the relationship you want.  This process is meant to bring you closer together!  

As you work together to create goals for improving your relationship, I will support you in defining the strength of a solid base for your relationship. This is achieved by creating "love maps," regularly turning toward each other and appreciating your relationship and yourselves for the work you are giving to each other. You'll create space for your relationship in session and at home and use tools learned in sessions to effectively communicate feelings and needs so that they can be heard and cherished. You'll work as a team.

What To Expect In Couples Therapy Sessions

In couples counseling, I’ll help you and your partner map out your individual goals and your mutual desires, allowing you to build a relationship based on interdependence. I won't "take sides" during sessions so that you'll experience a neutral party advocating for your healthy relationship.

We'll discuss how certain boundaries and relational patterns may contribute to the pain and frustration of feeling misunderstood and disconnected.  We will work toward understanding how those patterns came into existence and how they function in your relationship. Furthermore, you’ll work towards rebuilding trust through empathy and honoring each other’s love languages to show affection. I’ll also aid you in finding more opportunities for quality time and enhancing your emotional, physical, and sexual intimacy.

You’ll practice healthy communication skills including Imago dialogue to let go of blame-based language and avoid misinterpretations.

But You May Still Have Questions About Couples Therapy…

What if talking about our issues in couples therapy makes things worse?

If you’ve been avoiding uncomfortable conversations about your relationship, it’s normal to worry about how therapy could change your dynamic. But trying to suppress these issues will only deepen the divide between you and your partner. Seeking therapy represents a positive change. As a couple’s counselor, I encourage my clients to share these vulnerabilities in sessions, and we’ll work at a pace that feels comfortable for you and your partner.

Our schedule is so busy—I’m not sure we have time to consistently attend sessions.

I understand that making time for couples therapy can be tricky, especially if you and your partner have packed schedules. I offer in-person and virtual sessions, and I’m also available for early morning sessions before the workday begins. We’ll work together to create a flexible scheduling plan that works for you, and I’ll equip you with skills that you can consistently practice at home between sessions.

I’m concerned that we can’t afford therapy.

Therapy represents an investment into your relationship and your future as a couple. Many of my clients feel that given a choice between working on their relationship in therapy or continuing to feel unhappy and potentially separate, rebuilding their connection in therapy is well worth the cost. If your insurance plan is not in-network, I offer statements for out-of-network benefit reimbursement that you can provide to your insurance company.

Through Couples Counseling, You Can Heal Your Relationship

With support and guidance, you and your partner can come together with a new sense of empathy. If you’re interested in scheduling an appointment, I encourage you to fill out the contact form on my website or call my office at 415-517-4506.

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Couples Therapy in Limerick, PA

296 W Ridge Pike, Limerick, PA 19468