Couples Therapy
Are you struggling with your partner?
Have you struggled with infidelity?
Do you feel like you have reached a dead end?
Has your romantic life stalled?
Do you feel like they don’t understand you and/or that you are communicating in different languages?
Perhaps you want to rebuild your connection and feel close to your partner again.
All Relationships Go Through Periods Of Distress
Marital distress is one of the most common forms psychological suffering. For some, these issues can reach the level of profound disappointment and lead to doubts about the marriage surviving. Even seemingly strong marriages can suffer greatly if a single shattering event, such as an extramarital affair, occurs. It’s very common for relationships to go through periods of stress and for couples to grow apart. Often times major life transitions, such as the birth of a child, death of a relative, or a change in career paths can strain a relationship. As one partner grows and changes, the other must accommodate these changes. The process can be challenging, even for those couples who have a strong bond. Marital issues can have long lasting and powerful effects on each partner, often resulting in sadness, worry, guilt, anxiety, and even depression. The good news is, however, that with the help of a skilled couples therapist, even the most difficult of couples relational issues can be resolved in therapy and relationships can be restored and even enhanced beyond what each partner thought was possible.
Couples therapy helps to restore and enhance your relationship by opening lines of communication and rebuilding romantic bonds. In therapy, you will learn new skills of communication, build emotional understanding and acceptance, enhance intimacy building behaviors, and ultimately rediscover your partner and rebuild your bond. Often couples come to therapy with imbalances that have gone unchecked for years. For example, one partner may always dominate the decision making or one partner may feel their needs are not being met due to the other’s constant working patterns. Examining these patterns and imbalances can help to build insight into areas of stress and dissatisfaction in the marriage. Adjusting behaviors to better meet each partners’ needs can be transformational.
Couples therapy can also help to clarify paths forward. For some intimate relationships, couples therapy is the final step in a long process of unwinding the union that can result in a healthy decision to separate. Doing so in a coordinated, respectful, and mutually understanding manner is often the best way to avoid collateral damage to children, finances, other family members, and careers. For couples who do decide to uncouple, therapy can be helpful in identifying common ground and learning new ways of communicating that support respect and reciprocity rather than further devaluing or degrading the other person.
Objections
Our marriage is broken beyond repair.
Often one or both partners may feel their marriage has been damaged beyond repair and that no amount of therapy will help to restore the union. While it may feel hopeless, it is not. With the help of couples therapy, many find a renewed sense of understanding and appreciation for their partner, they may grow to a new fuller understanding of their partners motives and intent and learn to forgive, trust, and be intimate again. Therapy can help you to remember what initially brought you together and to restore the fire and chemistry that was present in the early days of your marriage. Making small every day changes and working towards better understanding can result in long lasting changes and save even the most challenged relationships. It’s very normal to feel a sense of hopelessness or despair about your situation, especially when it is so dependent on your partner’s actions. But what do you have to lose? Your relationship is worth taking the risk of opening up in the presence of a safe, trusted, expert couples counselor.
We will just erupt in fighting.
If you have found yourself in a highly volatile and explosive marriage, you may fear coming to therapy will only result in more fighting. It’s often scary to think about opening up a can of worms that “may overflow and not be able to stop.” Our trained couples therapists will help to ensure safe boundaries before therapy begins. We set ground rules and require each partner to abide by those ground rules during sessions so that each person can safely open up and express their feelings and thoughts.
Our problems aren’t serious enough to come to couples therapy.
Perhaps you are going through a “rough patch” or a major life change has brought about dissatisfaction and sewn distance in your bond. These too are reasons to reach out for help. Marital enrichment or enhancement is absolutely a reason to engage a skilled couples therapist and Larsen Behavioral Wellness. Within a few sessions, we can help to identify and learn specific skills and behaviors that can strengthen and build your already strong bond. It is never the wrong time to prevent future issues. Every marriage can use a tune-up once in a while.
We aren’t married or don’t plan to marry.
Being married is not a pre-requisite to couples therapy. Often couples work can be helpful in a relationship to build understanding and trust before, during, or in the absence of a martial commitment. Over the years, we have served clients in a variety of non-traditional/non-conforming unions, such as those who never plan to marry, in open relationships, in triad relationships, LGBTQ+ couples, and so on. We welcome the opportunity to work with diverse groups in all forms, as long as each person arrives with the spirit of mutual respect and understanding. The trained couples therapists at Larsen Behavioral Wellness are here to help you. We are a group of clinicians focused on family and systems work. We have clinicians trained in a broad range of evidence based couples therapy modalities including Emotion Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) and IBCT. Our founder, Dr. Larsen spent a great deal of her academic career focused on couple functioning in the context of severe and persistent mental health issues such as PTSD, Depression, and Anxiety, and has several publications on the topics (please see her bio for list of publications and talks). Our therapists work collaboratively across disciplines and training models to ensure that your care is the best care possible. Additionally, if you are concerned about how your martial difficulties have impacted your children, one of our trained child therapists can work collaboratively with your couples therapist to ensure the entire family is being served in a coordinated and collaborative manner.
Helping Your Marriage Is Possible
Change is possible! You don’t need to be stuck in this seemingly unending cycle of negativity and conflict. Larsen Behavioral Wellness will offer you answers and support. Please call 201 639 3361 or contact us for a free phone consultation. We would be happy to address any reservations or questions you may have about our approach to couples relational issues and marital distress.