When the same fight keeps returning, the relationship needs a new map.
One partner reaches harder. The other pulls away. One criticizes, the other defends. The topic changes while the emotional sequence remains painfully familiar.
I begin by listening closely to each partner’s experience: what hurts, what each of you hopes will change, and what you have learned to do when closeness feels difficult. Together we look at the cycle that brings you back to the same place.
We also look at what happens within that cycle, including the impact of each person’s behavior and the ways responsibility, safety, and power can differ between partners.
Who do you become when you're hurt?
When an old wound gets touched, most of us make a familiar move. Recognizing yours is part of learning how to stay connected.
I was hurt, so now I get to hurt back.
Feeling wronged becomes permission to lecture, pursue, punish, or take one more shot. The original hurt deserves care, and the retaliation deserves attention.
I need you to admit that I’m right.
Cross-examining, correcting every detail, and keeping score can turn a painful conversation into a trial.
I’m disappearing before this gets worse.
Silence, shutdown, and leaving without an agreement to return can create distance from overwhelm while leaving a partner feeling abandoned.
I’ll give in to keep the peace.
Agreeing, minimizing needs, and swallowing resentment may ease conflict in the moment while gradually costing you your own voice.
Joining through the truth: honest conversations, handled with care.
My work with couples is strongly influenced by Terry Real’s Relational Life Therapy (RLT). At its center is the idea that telling the truth about a damaging pattern can deepen the therapeutic relationship when it is done with empathy, precision, and genuine care.
I want you to feel that I understand you, including the parts of your story that are painful or difficult to admit. I will also be willing to tell you what I see when something is hurting your relationship.
We begin with what each of you wants from the relationship and how each of you experiences the problem. I listen to both perspectives, ask for specific examples, and pay attention to what happens between you in the room. Careful understanding gives us a basis for making difficult observations together.
I take a clear position when behavior causes harm. Contempt, intimidation, entitlement, dishonesty, chronic withdrawal, and the loss of one’s own voice all deserve careful attention. RLT describes one-up positions of superiority or control and one-down positions of shame, accommodation, or self-erasure. Responsibility varies with the circumstances. When power is unequal, I support the partner whose voice has been diminished and address the behavior maintaining that imbalance. At times our work will focus more closely on one person’s behavior because that is where meaningful change needs to begin.
Many patterns began as ways of protecting ourselves in earlier relationships. Anger may have helped someone feel powerful. Distance may have offered relief from criticism or intrusion. Appeasing others may have made childhood feel safer. We can respect how those strategies developed while examining what they are costing the relationship today.
I remain engaged with both partners through this work. You can ask questions, disagree with an interpretation, request a slower pace, or decline an exercise. My role is to help you face what is difficult, understand where it came from, and develop the capacity to relate with greater honesty, self-respect, and care.
How the work develops
RLT brings together direct examination of relational patterns, developmental and trauma work, and practical skills. These parts of treatment can overlap as the relationship changes.
See the pattern and its cost.
We identify the familiar moves—pursuit, withdrawal, blame, control, appeasement—and examine their impact with care and specificity.
Understand the adaptive child.
We explore the early experiences that taught you how to protect yourself, helping your wiser adult self respond to old triggers.
Practice a different response.
We work on speaking up with care, listening, setting limits, taking responsible time-outs, negotiating, and repairing hurt.
The relationship changes through what you practice.
The Gottman Method offers practical ways to change behaviors that damage connection. Criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling are patterns we can learn to recognize early and respond to differently. These tools support the relational skills developed throughout our work.
Begin gently
Describe a specific concern and make a clear request, allowing room for a productive conversation.
Own your impact
Recognize your part, listen to your partner’s experience, and acknowledge hurt before explaining.
Restore respect
Interrupt mockery, superiority, and contempt. Practice appreciation and speak with dignity.
Pause and return
Take a responsible break when flooded, regulate, and come back to finish the conversation.
Couples often seek help after the relationship has become organized around tension, distance, or unfinished hurt.
Couples seek help with recurring conflict, emotional distance, betrayal, sexual disconnection, recovery strain, or significant decisions about their future. We begin by assessing what kind of support will be most useful and appropriate.
Repeating conflict
The same arguments, positions, and emotional reactions continue without meaningful resolution.
Emotional distance
Partners feel lonely, disconnected, unseen, or increasingly separate within the relationship.
Betrayal and broken trust
Affairs, secrecy, dishonesty, broken agreements, or repeated injuries have destabilized safety.
Sexual disconnection
Avoidance, mismatched desire, resentment, shame, pressure, or emotional distance has affected physical intimacy.
Trauma or recovery strain
Trauma responses, addiction recovery, relapse, shame, or emotional instability affect the partnership.
Premarital clarity
Couples want to examine compatibility, values, conflict, boundaries, expectations, finances, intimacy, and long-term goals before marriage.
We examine the difficult things together.
I take an active role. I may ask for a recent example of an argument, interrupt an exchange as it unfolds, identify a familiar defense, or invite one partner to speak directly to the other. Some sessions involve recognizing the cost of a behavior; others involve grief, the history behind an old strategy, or practicing a different way of responding while we are together.
I want each partner to experience me as careful, candid, and personally engaged. We can question observations, slow things down, and make room for hard feelings while maintaining clear expectations about respectful behavior. I will help you recognize what needs attention, find words for what matters, and carry the work into the relationship outside the therapy room.
Build a relationship that can handle hard conversations and remain connected.
Relationship counseling is available for couples who want to address unresolved injuries, rebuild trust, improve intimacy, or make meaningful decisions about the future of their relationship.
Schedule Relationship CounselingCouples and relationship counseling are offered on a self-pay basis.