Couples Counseling Seattle
Maintaining an intimate relationship probably
ranks as one of the most rewarding and also the most challenging activities in which
you will likely
engage. While you stand to derive terrific benefits from the companionship of a partner in
life, you also make extremely painful sacrifices to your own values to make a
relationship work over a long period of time. Whether in a traditional marriage
or a same-sex couple, the issues are largely the same.
| Do you and your partner fight about the same issues
repeatedly? |
| Does your partner push your buttons, seeming to want
to hurt you? |
| Do you wish that you had a more fulfilling sex life? |
| Have you faced issues related to infidelity in your relationship? |
| Do you feel distant from your partner? Like you don't
connect? |
| Do you and your partner avoid making difficult joint
decisions? |
| Do you feel like you cannot be yourself around your
partner, sexually or otherwise? |
| Do you sense that your partner does not respect your
point of view? |
| Does your relationship feel like it revolves around
power struggles? |
I perform couples counseling with the intention of helping you and your
partner to develop the skills and strengths that will make your relationship
more satisfying.
I typically will see you and your partner together every week for the beginning of our time together and
then move to a biweekly or even monthly schedule depending on the nature of the
issues involved in therapy. Once I have worked with a couple, I expect that I
might hear from the couple as new challenges confront the relationship. I
occasionally will meet with each member of the couple individually, though only
when I feel like it will help me to more expediently get information about
you--anything that I learn about you I will assume that I can share with
your partner as well.
Three key principles will come up repeatedly in my work with you as a couple.
First, I will help you to understand that some of the issues that you are trying
to solve are not amenable to an easy compromise. These issues represent places
where a clash occurs between very strong parts of who you are as distinct individuals. For
these cases, I will help you to communicate effectively about these differences
rather than making the differences go away. Helping to preserve your individual
self while still maintaining intimacy with your partner is a very important part
of my work with you.
Second, I will often look at your issues through the perspective of a family
system. Quite frequently, the problems that you exhibit in your marital
relationship mirror similar issues that existed in each of your families while
growing up. I will help you to understand--and move past--the patterns that keep
you stuck. Relationships also act as a system in that they tend to push
individuals towards opposing roles, accentuating differences and hiding the real
person of you and your partner. I will help you see these cases and balance
them.
Finally, I believe that relationship issues often have a sexual component to
them. Therefore, when working with you, I will often ask for information about
the sexual aspects of your relationship to see how they compare with the other
issues in your relationship. While I don't consider myself a sex therapist, I do
view the resurrecting of a fulfilling sex life as a cornerstone of my work with
any couple.
Many people wonder whether couples counseling is a prelude to divorce or if
it makes the relationship worse by dwelling on issues in the relationship. I
strongly believe that the attention that couples counseling directs to a
relationship--with all the difficulties that sharing a life with another person
entails--serves to make the relationship stronger and more satisfying. Clients
who seek couples counseling usually feel some discomfort from their relationship
already. Bringing into the open the underlying causes of this discomfort strikes
even the most skeptical client as productive. In some cases, couples counseling
might encourage a couple to go their own separate ways. In the vast majority of
cases, the focus is on strengthening each partner so that, regardless of whether
they stay together or part, they will approach future relationships in healthier
ways. In either case, I will work with
you and your spouse to make you the best possible relationship partners--for
your current or future relationships.
You may request more information or to set up
an initial session, call me at my office.
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