Who This Service Is For
Who Is Couples Therapy For?
Couples therapy is for partners who care about their relationship but feel increasingly stuck in patterns they can't seem to change.
Maybe you argue about the same things repeatedly. Maybe one of you pursues while the other withdraws. Maybe conversations that once felt easy now become defensive, critical, or silent. You may feel lonely even while sitting next to the person you love.
Some couples arrive after a specific crisis such as infidelity or betrayal. Others have slowly drifted apart and aren't sure when the distance began.
Challenges You May Be Facing
Couples may seek therapy because of:
- Repeated arguments and unresolved conflict
- Communication breakdown
- Emotional distance or loneliness within the relationship
- Difficulty feeling heard or understood
- Pursuing/withdrawing cycles
- Resentment and unresolved hurts
- Infidelity or other breaches of trust
- Sexual or intimacy concerns
- Difficulty reconnecting after conflict
- Major life transitions affecting the relationship
- Parenting disagreements
- Differences in expectations, priorities, or family roles
- Uncertainty about whether the relationship can be repaired
The Unspoken Need
Most couples aren't simply looking for better communication techniques.
They want to feel close again.
They want to feel understood, chosen, safe, respected, and important to one another. They want to be able to disagree without destroying the relationship and to know that difficult conversations don't automatically lead to distance or defensiveness.
How We Help
Our Therapeutic Approach
My primary approach to couples therapy is Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT).
EFT focuses on the emotional patterns that develop between partners. Instead of simply asking, "Who is right?" or "How do we stop arguing?", we look at the cycle that keeps pulling you into the same conflict.
One partner may criticize because they feel ignored. The other may withdraw because they feel inadequate or overwhelmed. The withdrawal then intensifies the criticism, which increases the withdrawal—and the cycle continues.
The goal is to slow that cycle down, understand what is happening underneath it, and help partners develop more secure, responsive ways of connecting.
I also draw from the Gottman Method, CBT, family-systems approaches, and other therapeutic tools when they are appropriate.
What a Session Looks Like
Couples therapy is not about deciding which partner is the problem.
We work together to understand the relationship's patterns and how each partner contributes to them. Sessions may involve slowing down a recent conflict, identifying the emotions underneath a reaction, practicing a different way of communicating, or addressing deeper injuries that have accumulated over time.
I will provide structure and guidance while helping both partners have a voice in the process.
Expertise in Couples Therapy
As a Marriage and Family Therapist, relational patterns are central to my clinical training and work. My primary use of EFT gives couples a framework for understanding not only what they fight about, but why the same patterns keep happening.
The goal is not simply fewer arguments. It is a relationship in which both people can experience greater emotional safety, understanding, responsiveness, and connection.
Specific Issues We Address
Couples Therapy for Communication Problems
Communication problems are often about more than not knowing how to talk. Couples may be communicating from fear, hurt, defensiveness, or frustration. Therapy helps identify the pattern beneath the communication problem and creates opportunities for partners to respond differently.
Couples Therapy for Conflict
If every disagreement turns into the same argument, the problem may be the cycle rather than the individual issue. We work to identify that cycle, slow it down, and help partners develop more productive ways of handling disagreement.
Infidelity & Betrayal Recovery
Infidelity can profoundly disrupt trust and emotional safety. Couples therapy can provide a structured environment for processing the betrayal, understanding its impact, addressing the conditions surrounding it, and determining what rebuilding trust may require.
Emotional Distance & Disconnection
Some couples rarely fight but feel increasingly like roommates. Therapy can help identify how emotional distance developed and create opportunities to reconnect, become more emotionally available, and rebuild a sense of closeness.
Intimacy & Sexual Concerns
Emotional and physical intimacy are often affected by unresolved conflict, hurt, stress, communication patterns, and changes in a relationship. Therapy can provide a safe place to explore these concerns and understand how they fit into the larger relational pattern.
Marriage Transitions
Marriage changes as couples move through parenting, career changes, financial pressures, aging, family responsibilities, and other major transitions. Therapy can help couples adjust to those changes without losing connection with one another.
Why Choose Renew Relational Therapy?
Couples often come to therapy hoping to:
- Stop having the same argument over and over.
- Feel heard and understood rather than blamed.
- Understand the cycle that keeps pulling them apart.
- Rebuild trust after hurt or betrayal.
- Feel emotionally closer and safer with one another.
- Learn how to handle conflict without damaging the relationship.
What to Expect
The First Session
The first session gives us an opportunity to understand your relationship, what brought you to therapy, what you've tried already, and what each of you hopes will change.
We'll begin identifying the patterns that have developed between you and consider what may be keeping those patterns in place.
Following Sessions
Sessions may include exploring recent conflicts, slowing down emotional reactions, identifying underlying needs, practicing new ways of responding, and addressing deeper injuries or patterns.
Couples therapy is active work. The goal is not simply to understand the relationship intellectually but to practice relating differently.
How Long Are Sessions?
Couples therapy sessions are 50 minutes.
How Do We Track Progress?
We'll regularly return to the concerns and goals that brought you to therapy. Progress may involve fewer destructive cycles, improved communication, greater emotional responsiveness, restored trust, or a growing sense of connection and safety.
Insurance & Investment
Insurance
Renew Relational Therapy is a private-pay, out-of-network practice and does not bill insurance directly.
Superbills are available upon request for clients who wish to pursue possible out-of-network reimbursement.
Couples Therapy Rate
$155 per 50-minute session.
