Starting Couples Therapy can be vulnerable, and it can feel intimidating to welcome a therapist into your relationship. If you choose to invite me into your work, I appreciate you opening your hearts to me. I will value and honor your hopes for your relationship with genuine compassion and acceptance.

I’m an LGBTQ+ Affirming Couples and Marriage Therapist

Further, I welcome all relationship varieties, identities, and stages. I believe that all relationships are unique, because each human is unique. I absolutely love the work that I do because I get to experience, firsthand, the special qualities of each relationship and each person that I work with.

Couples may decide to start therapy from a variety of different places, or for a variety of different reasons. Below, you’ll find a few of the challenges that the couples I work with tend to be facing and how couples therapy can help. 

Trust Ruptures

Couples sometimes start therapy because a trust rupture has occurred. If they’ve experienced a trust rupture, like an affair or other similar crisis, they may feel like the foundation of their relationship has been broken or shattered. The relationship that they thought they knew has changed, seemingly overnight, and they are experiencing deep pain and often don’t know how to heal or repair from this. 

Repairing Trust Ruptures in Relationship Counseling

In our work together, we create a contained space to move through, express, and share the pain, hurt, and sadness connected to this trust rupture. We explore the potential avenues or options for repair and healing, and identify any factors that may have contributed to the rupture in the first place. As the couple shares and expresses their emotions, and sits in vulnerability together, they have the opportunity to build back a secure foundation. Over time, they may even begin to notice new ways of interacting that feel more connecting, more secure, and more trusting. While this work is not easy by any means, it is possible to reconnect and heal from this hurt. 

Other Crisis, Adjustment, or Change Period

If the couple is going through an adjustment, period of change, or other significant event, they may feel their relationship is going through uncharted territory. They may not know how to adjust or adapt to this experience in a way that maintains connection, security, and satisfaction. Maybe they’re not sure how to best support their relationship or each other through this event or adjustment period, which may be causing some challenging and confusing interactions and feelings. 

In couples therapy, we can leave space to allow the open processing of thoughts, feelings, and reactions to this experience. In doing so, couples begin to feel more connected and more capable of moving through this experience in a way that maintains the integrity of their relationship. Whether we’re moving through a trust rupture, or other adjustment to change, the ultimate hope is that what you have experienced does not overpower your truest desires for your relationship.

Conflict Resolution & Communication Styles

Some communication patterns can feel tough to break, and a lot of times couples can find themselves repeating the same conversation or argument over and over. They can’t figure out a way to change it, despite their best efforts. Sometimes they explain feeling like they’re speaking two different languages, like they keep getting their wires crossed, or like they just can’t figure out how to feel heard.

In couples therapy, we can gain awareness into the interaction patterns that are keeping you stuck. In order to break down the barriers to understanding each other, we’ll slow your pattern down and identify new ways of relating. Through our work in couples therapy, couples begin to talk and listen in different ways that tend to work better for them. They may start noticing that they’re understanding their partner more, they feel more connected, and overall more satisfied in their relationship.

Couples Counseling Can Help You Explore External Factors or History

Some couples start therapy because they have noticed that their past is impacting their current relationship, including past trauma, previous hurts, or old patterns of relating. Sometimes even expectations from extended family members, personal internal thoughts about how things “should” feel or be, or trouble with boundary setting begin affecting how they are feeling and relating together. In the face of these external impacts, the couple may be struggling to figure out how to be present and communicate in the relationship, which is getting in the way of the relationship that they’re currently wanting. They may be noticing that these external factors are causing disconnection or tension in the relationship, but they’re having trouble figuring out what the change can be.

Together, we can start to explore what is affecting how you and your partner are interacting and feeling. While doing so, we’ll seek avenues to enhance your ability to choose for yourselves what you want for your relationship. Maybe this leads to setting boundaries or interrupting old patterns that are no longer working for you. It could also mean empowering the already existing strengths in your relationship. In discovering the patterns and opportunities to affect change, we begin to find the most satisfying and authentic version of your relationship.

Address Feelings of Disconnect Through Couples Therapy

Sometimes couples start to feel like one or both partners is distant, or that their connection together has been feeling different or even absent. They might be unsure about how to meet their partner’s needs, or how to get their own needs met. A lot of times couples express feeling like they’re so busy and that life just keeps going, making it difficult to prioritize their connection together. They’re really struggling with figuring out how to reconnect, but they know that they want to find their way back to a fulfilling relationship.

It’s possible to find ways to begin to rebuild the connection you are each hoping for and prioritize your relationship. In our work together, we can identify what is and isn’t working for you right now. Everybody has different needs, so we’ll practice defining what connection means to each of you, and then put that understanding into action. As we start to do so, couples tend to begin noticing that they’re more aware of how to connect with their partner and may even find more ease around prioritizing the relationship.

So, what can you expect from couples therapy? 

Overall, couples therapy can be tough and is a process that can have both highs and lows. Difficult topics, feelings, and experiences can be discussed, which can feel pretty vulnerable. But through this work, your relationship can shift from where it’s been stuck to where you’ve always hoped for it to be. Couples tend to say that the insight they gain about the relationship and communication patterns they’ve felt stuck in have led to better ways of relating and more security overall. They begin to say they feel more connected, more able to openly share thoughts and emotions, and heal, repair and rebuild. 

How We’ll Start Relationship Counseling and what you can expect

I’ll start by learning about you and your relationship. This will mean exploring and understanding your relationship as a whole, but also who each of you are as individuals. Your first couples therapy session will be with both you and your partner, where we’ll take time to understand where you’re stuck and what you’re needing from our work together.

After this initial session, we’ll set up a plan for separate individual sessions for each partner. These individual sessions will be used to support each of you in sharing more about your individual history and your experience within the relationship. This helps us to gain a better understanding of the patterns we might be stuck in, and where our work may lead us.

From there, we’ll continue with couples therapy sessions with both of you present, unless we’ve discussed a specific reason for individual sessions. Continuing with conjoint sessions is to support openly sharing and communicating together, which allows space for the chance to enhance emotional connection, shift your interaction patterns, and ultimately reconnect and heal together. Each time we meet is an opportunity to do just that.

In our first few sessions, I’ll help you to identify your shared goals for the work that we’ll be doing. If knowing what your goals are is tough, no worries — we can figure it out together. In our ongoing work together, we’ll identify and highlight the patterns you’re stuck in, leave space for freely identifying and expressing your emotions, reactions, and needs, and begin discovering new ways of relating. 

You deserve the relationship you’ve been hoping for. Together, we can discover and create that relationship. 

If you’re ready, let’s get started! 

My Couples Therapy Approach

Curious about what approach, theory or model I use? I have a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy, and blend this systemic training with a collaborative and client-centered style, utilizing an Emotionally Focused Therapy lens in my work with couples. What does that mean? You can read more about my approach, education, and training here.

Couples Therapy and Marriage Counseling in Cincinnati, OH

Clarity Together Counseling offers relationship counseling in Cincinnati and across the state of Ohio via a HIPAA compliant, secure, telehealth platform.