Couples

Couples Therapy

When You Love Each Other but Keep Missing Each Other

You can love your partner deeply and still feel incredibly alone in the relationship.

You may have the same argument over and over.

One of you wants to talk now. The other needs time.

One reaches for connection. The other pulls away.

One wants reassurance. The other feels pressured to make things better.

Sometimes neither of you is trying to hurt the other. You are both trying to find your way back to connection—and somehow the ways you are reaching for each other keep making things worse.

I work with couples who want to understand what happens between them, not simply decide who is right.

I Want to Understand the Dance

When couples come to therapy, it can be tempting to focus on the content:

"We fight about money."

"We can't agree about parenting."

"She gets too emotional."

"He won't communicate."

But often the content isn't the whole story.

I'm interested in what happens underneath.

How does each of you know you're beginning to lose each other?

What happens inside you when your partner doesn't respond the way you hoped?

What do you do when you feel misunderstood?

What does your partner experience when you reach for them?

And what happens next?

We slow the interaction down enough to begin seeing the pattern while it is happening.

Not to blame either person.

To understand the cycle you have both become caught inside.

Different Doesn't Mean Wrong

Partners don't always process the world in the same way.

One person may think through a problem sequentially and need time to arrive at an answer.

Another may experience several emotional and conceptual connections at once.

One may experience talking as a way of becoming connected.

Another may need connection before they can talk.

One person may experience emotion as a path toward closeness.

Another may experience intense emotion as disorienting or threatening.

These differences can become painful when each person assumes their own way of experiencing the world is the obvious way.

I am interested in helping couples become more legible to each other.

Not identical.

Not perfectly synchronized.

Connected while remaining two separate people.

Infertility, Pregnancy & Parenthood

I have a particular interest in working with couples navigating infertility, reproductive treatment, pregnancy, pregnancy loss, postpartum experiences, and the transition into parenthood.

These experiences can bring enormous love and enormous stress at the same time.

There may be grief that doesn't have anywhere to go.

Different ways of coping.

Different relationships to risk and uncertainty.

Different experiences of the pregnancy or parenting journey.

And sometimes the relationship itself becomes the place where all of that pressure lands.

Therapy can create room for both partners to have an experience without requiring the other person to experience it in exactly the same way.

When OCD Enters the Relationship

OCD can become a third presence in a relationship.

One partner may become caught in uncertainty, checking, researching, reassurance-seeking, avoidance, or mental compulsions.

The other partner may gradually become part of the system answering questions, providing reassurance, helping avoid triggers, checking things, or trying to make the anxiety go away.

Both partners may genuinely be trying to help.

And both can become exhausted.

I work with couples to understand the OCD cycle without reducing either partner to the cycle.

The goal isn't for the partner without OCD to become cold or detached.

And it isn't for the partner with OCD to simply "try harder."

It is about finding ways to remain connected without requiring certainty.

Slowing Down Without Losing the Thread

Sometimes couples need to slow down.

But slowing down doesn't necessarily mean announcing:

"Okay, we're going to slow down now."

Sometimes it means following one sentence instead of ten.

Staying with one feeling.

Clarifying what someone actually meant.

Noticing the moment a conversation changes.

Letting someone finish expressing something before we decide what it means.

Sometimes the most important thing that happens in a session is that one partner realizes:

"Oh. That's what was happening for you."

And the other realizes:

"You actually heard me."

Those moments can be small.

They matter.

Differentiation and Connection

Healthy relationships require both connection and a sense of self.

You don't have to agree in order to remain connected.

You don't have to take responsibility for your partner's emotions.

You also don't have to protect yourself by disappearing from the relationship.

We can work toward a place where each partner can say:

This is what is happening in me.
This is what is happening in you.
I don't have to erase either one.

That is not always easy.

But it creates a different kind of relationship—one where closeness doesn't require losing yourself.

My Approach to Couples Therapy

My couples work is grounded in attachment and Emotionally Focused Therapy, while drawing from parts work, developmental perspectives, EMDR, ACT, Polyvagal Theory, and other integrative approaches.

I pay attention to both the emotional experience and the way each person's system organizes that experience.

Sometimes we'll work directly with the cycle.

Sometimes we'll explore the protective parts that appear inside it.

Sometimes we'll slow down enough to understand what happens before either partner even realizes the conflict has begun.

And sometimes we will simply stay with something that has never had enough room to be expressed.

The goal isn't to create a perfect relationship.

It is to help you understand each other more deeply, remain more connected to yourselves, and create more possibilities for how you respond to one another.

Because sometimes the problem isn't that you don't love each other.

Sometimes you haven't yet learned how to find each other in the places where you are most different.

New parents

Moms, dads, mapas, and caregivers, in general:

Becoming a parent can bring love, joy, grief, exhaustion, and uncertainty—sometimes all in the same day. I work with new parents navigating the transition into parenthood, including the changes in identity, relationships, expectations, and emotional well-being that can come with it. Therapy can be a place to slow down, make room for your experience, and find your way through this transition without having to do it perfectly.