| Image from Rosarium Philosophorum —Image courtesy of ARAS |
Couples and Marital Psychotherapy and Counseling
Being a couple can offer love, comfort, support, pleasure, and security but it is also a situation in life, through its very intimacy, that has the potential to become most troubling. People come for help as a couple when they find that they are having difficulty communicating with each other, sexual or financial problems, or their relationship has soured in the face of either excessive conflict or withdrawal by one or both parties. Sometimes these problems are related to changes in the relationship when the couple brings children into the mix, when children leave home, or when there is a major loss or other significant change affecting the couple. Generally, it can help to have a forum for discussing problems together when one finds that repeated attempts to work things out have not produced the desired or needed results.
The main goal of my work with couples is to address obstacles to the developmental process, freeing the potential of the couple for continuing and deepening the relationship on their own. My approach is practical, systemic and relational. By “practical” I mean that I work with the problems that are brought for resolution in a “hands-on” manner that involves a dialogue about the problem(s), their root causes, and what can be done about it. I will help reach agreements about how each party can contribute to the solution to problems in the couple. By “systemic” I mean that I think about the problems couples have within the context of the entire family as a system of interacting parts with the understanding that the system as a whole is greater than the sum of its components. By “relational” I mean that I work with couples from a basis of understanding that problems in living together often arise from a complex network of factors including conscious and unconscious dynamics that are often carried over from each person’s experience growing up in their family of origin. These experiences form certain pre-ordained patterns that are often repeated in adult relationships, where each partner finds himself or herself cast into ways of being that are related to how they were treated or what they saw in other relationships in the family while they were growing up. When these patterns can be identified there is the potential for differentiating them. In other words, when we can recognize how the troubling ways we and our partner are behaving is connected to parts of early family history then we have a chance to see our present day partners more truthfully and realistically, and to change problematic interactions. Generally I meet with couples weekly for an hour until it is decided that the problem is adequately resolved.
If you are interested in an initial meeting to discuss couples or marital psychotherapy or counseling, please contact me.