Couples Therapy

But it doesn’t have to be this way. You have a choice.

The way things are now… it doesn’t have to be the end of your relationship. I know you’re torn right now…

A part of you feels like you should end it – that it’s basically over already. So, why not make it official and just move on?

Another part of you is scared to make that decision. You’re afraid that you might be making a mistake – that you might be giving up too soon.

But there’s another part there with hope. It’s usually hard to find hope, but there are those moments… moments where things feel like they used to (even if just a little bit).

Really, what you long for the most is clarity.

The limbo is the most painful thing. If you just KNEW the right thing to do and what needed to happen, you could do it.

Without that certainty, though, you don’t know how to move forward. You’re afraid to leave because you might regret it. But you’re afraid to stay because… well, what if you are just wasting your life in the wrong relationship?

The worst thing you can do is nothing, helplessly and hopelessly watching your relationship deteriorate.

There is a solution, but it’s not on the surface.

The worst place to decide what to do with your relationship is inside your head. The endless debate is exhausting and debilitating, and it drains the lifeblood from your relationship.

Debating is also very shallow water. It frames the questions as a yes-no question without acknowledging the extreme complexity of the decision. After all, it’s a decision that will affect everything: your finances, your work life, your family, and the timeline of your entire life. Trying to reduce it to a “yes” or a “no” will leave you lost and floundering.

You need to take the question deeper, where real answers exist.

Because that is also where your clarity exists. That clarity will either equip you to begin the steps of ending this relationship… or it’ll form little tendrils of growth, new signs of life, signs that the relationship can heal.

Reading that… how does it make you feel?

That your relationship can be healed? Did you read it with disbelief?

Do you doubt that anything new is even possible here?

I don’t blame you. OF COURSE, you’re skeptical. After all, all of the evidence of the timeline of your relationship is pointing to “no reason to hope.”

But just because something hasn’t happened YET doesn’t mean that it is impossible.

“Will therapy save my relationship?”

In therapy, the goal is clarity. To discover the truth of this relationship so that you can move on in your life, with or without your partner.

In truth, the whole concept of “saving a relationship” is a bit of a false narrative. Some people split up – but do so with great love, understanding, and healing. And some people stay together but stay at war with each other (even if it’s a silent war). It slowly erodes the foundation of the relationship from the inside out.

The goal of therapy is “healing into love and loss”… because whether you stay together or split up, there will need to be healing. If you stay together, you’ll need to heal the losses and betrayals of your marriage.

If this relationship is ultimately unworkable, the healing gets you to a place where you can decide what needs to be done. And you want to make that decision with enough clarity that you don’t live the rest of your life regretting it.

So, therapy will not “save your relationship,” but it will save you. And in the midst of “saving you,” it could be that your relationship is preserved, too.

“How does it work?”

We’ll begin by exploring the major “dynamics” of your relationship using a new language: the language of “parts.” You can think of “parts” as strategies we use to protect ourselves.

The reason relationships are good early on is because we don’t yet feel the need to protect ourselves from the other person. The lack of protection creates a kind of a “flow state” where things feel simple and uncomplicated, and any problems that come up are easily solved.

But, being human, other people are bound to hurt us – eventually. And when there is pain, we move to protect ourselves, usually by employing a strategy that has worked (in some way) in the past. Humans protect themselves in four major ways:

FIGHTING for what they want, usually verbally, but sometimes physically…

FLIGHTING by avoiding, withdrawing, or physically leaving…

FREEZING by dissociating, shutting down, or stonewalling…

FAWNING by people-pleasing or attending to others’ wants and needs to get what THEY want or need.

The problem is that each of these protection methods impedes love.

When we protect ourselves, our partner feels cut off, and the flow of love is blocked. And when THEY feel cut off, they pull out their OWN method of defense. That then cuts YOU off. See the cycle? Pretty soon, you are both so well-defended that there’s no room for love to flow.

Once you see plainly that the walls you’ve built are actually keeping love out, you can begin to test the ‘new waters’ of allowing them to lower.

“How will it go?”

In challenging relationships, it’s usually easy to see the other person’s contribution to the problem. But it can sometimes be very difficult to know the part we’re playing in it. I’m not saying that we can FORCE others to mistreat us. Mistreatment is always the responsibility of the one doing the mistreating.

But relationships are hard because they share some features of a dance. Whether we know it or not, the other person is impacting us, and we are impacting them. Beginning to understand the dance of your particular relationship will give you both the clarity you need to change up your steps and make the dance go much more smoothly.

When you’re no longer at war within your relationship – when you’re not both protecting and defending – you’ll be able to return to that flow state.

And in that flow state, you’ll become aware of the love that was there all along.