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Couples Therapy (Marriage Counseling)

When you feel like this isn’t the person you married; when you worry that the gap in between you is widening every day; when it feels like the rug has been pulled out from under you after discovering the affair... it can feel like you are in over your head, and you may ask “Is it too late to save my marriage?”

Couples counseling can lead to restoring the broken trust and intimacy your relationship once had. Your marriage or committed relationship is definitely worth fighting for, and needs to be given a real chance to succeed. My Walnut Creek couples therapy practice offers the tools and space you need as a pair to give your relationship that chance. Some possible areas of focus in couples counseling are:

• Healing from an affair
• Endless arguments
• Feeling distant/Growing apart
• Getting past hurt
• Differences in parenting
• Sex and intimacy

Together we will create a safe space to explore your relationship. As a skilled witness, I will help to uncover underlying dynamics and destructive patterns in your interactions with one another, and help you to break out of them, providing new tools to communicate your needs without falling into familiar conflict patterns. This works to restore trust, allowing you to rediscover the joy, surprise, and closeness in your relationship.

You might be feeling very little hope for your relationship right now. As your couples counselor I see my job as holding that hope for you for a while, until you can see whether it is possible to rebuild your commitment. The question isn’t whether you’re committed for life, but whether you both can commit now to working hard in couples therapy on your relationship by taking separation off the table for the time being.

You can read my articles on common couples concerns here.

Pre-marital Counseling

Despite looming divorce statistics, most young adults today still hope for a happy marriage in their future. The will is there, but what seems to be lacking are the tools to make that work. In our society the success or failure of a marriage is often attributed to “luck” and finding the one “right” partner. Especially in the beginning of a relationship, when getting along is easy, partners tend to underestimate the work and care that is necessary to maintain any long-term relationship. Pre-marital counseling provides young relationships with a tool set to master difficult situations that will likely occur in their shared future. Examples of subjects that might come up in pre-marital counseling include:

• Children
• Former relationships
• Fighting fair
• Gender roles
• Relationship with the in-laws
• Cultural and religious differences
• Responsibilities at work and home
• Attitudes towards money

These can be sensitive topics that evoke strong feelings, which is precisely why it helps to work through them together with a skilled neutral guide. Learning to anticipate and effectively negotiate issues like these early in your relationship will greatly increase the chances for the long-term success of your marriage.