Couple’s Therapy
Communication is Key to Healthy Relationships
Our intimate relationships deeply impact the quality of our health and well-being. Yet, few of us grew up learning the communication skills needed to create fulfilling, loving, and meaningful intimate relationships. I have found that no matter what particular events or feelings may cause a couple to seek therapy, their problems almost always involve their difficulty communicating. Without effective and positive communication skills, the couple is prevented from feeling understood by each other. That failure to feel understood leads to negative communication patterns. Only by gaining an understanding of the dynamics of your relationship, and the reasons for destructive patterns of communication, can you and your partner improve your life together.
Negative Communication Patterns Stem from Childhood
Invariably, a couple’s negative communication patterns have their genesis in each partner’s own emotional history and earlier experiences stemming from their childhood. Those earlier experiences leave each partner with certain feelings and issues that they bring, most often in a completely unconscious fashion, into the relationship. While we all enter into loving relationships to find the emotional fulfillment we desire, we also unconsciously bring along our unmet longings and needs from our prior relationships.
How Couple’s Therapy Works
As your psychologist, I work to help you and your partner understand each other’s emotional history and the issues each of you bring into your relationship. By placing your individual histories within the proper framework, and understanding their impact on your relationship together, you can work towards changing the dynamics of your relationship for the better. Through couple’s therapy, you will gain knowledge of your own unresolved issues and the impact they are having on your relationship, and by doing so increase intimacy and strengthen your bond with your partner.
I work with couples in both the straight and LGBTQ communities, in addition to treating couples with different ethnicities and religious backgrounds.