Couples Therapy
Are You And Your Partner No Longer On The Same Page?
Have you and your partner become emotionally disconnected? Do you go through the motions of daily life without feeling seen or heard? To protect yourself from feeling hurt, have you turned away from your partner and put up defensive walls?
When you aren’t connecting well as a couple, distorted perceptions of how you see each other begin to write the primary narrative for your relationship. For example, a simple miscommunication may kick off yet another pointless argument:
Maybe you want to disconnect in front of the TV after work but your partner wants to run through tomorrow’s schedule for the kids. The ensuing argument leaves both of you wondering what the hell just happened.
After such interactions, you may feel overwhelmed, discouraged, or hopeless.
You may fall into familiar patterns that seem to always end the same way. Maybe the more one of you reaches out, the more the other pushes away and withdraws. If left unaddressed, you may find yourselves drifting further apart as it grows increasingly difficult to foster meaningful communication and be vulnerable with each other. Sadly, the more isolated you become, the more the unease between you multiplies.
The State Of Your Relationship Has the Power to Affect Everything Else
Feeling alone in your romantic partnership can unleash a cascade of emotional, social, and relational effects. Emotional disconnection from your partner can foster the perception that something is inherently wrong with you or how you interact with others. What’s more, feeling like you have to remain defensive to keep yourself safe, or just drop it to keep your partner appeased and conflict to a minimum can lead to varying forms of anxiety and depression.
More than anything else, you wish you could repair this conflict that sits between you. You wish you could share yourselves honestly and openly while feeling safe and supported. Couples therapy offers you a platform to foster connection and rebuild trust. Working with a couples therapist, you can dedicate time to breaking these patterns.
Divorce Statistics Confirm How Difficult Sustaining Relationships Can Be
“Statistics indicate that between 35-50 percent of first-time marriages end in divorce, increasing to approximately 60 percent for second marriages and 70+ percent for marriages after the second. [1]”
Unfortunately, the U.S. has one of the highest divorce rates in the world. Although some may conclude from this data that marriage is an outdated concept, it’s not that simple. The truth is, meaningful connection is hard to come by and even harder to hold onto. Being able to cultivate, sustain, and protect an intimate relationship with others is something we all struggle with.
Genuine Human Connection Is Increasingly Hard To Come By
In a culture that has glorified individualism while undervaluing the importance of communal experiences, we have lost sight of the need for genuine, safe, and vulnerable connections with others. More recently, we’ve been impacted by additional factors—such as the Covid shutdown, the advent of social media, and the implications of technology—all of which have contributed to physical separation and disembodied interactions that fuel anxiety.
Our society seems to suffer from collective amnesia related to our fundamental human need for embodied connection. In our pursuit of individualistic achievement, we seem to have forgotten what is truly essential to knowing ourselves and connecting with others.
In addition to the macro-level issues we face, nurturing a healthy intimate relationship is challenging when we lack the necessary skills. Many of us were raised without positive role models to demonstrate how to actively listen and effectively communicate. What’s more, our fear of rejection and being hurt could prevent us from dismantling our walls of protection and letting someone else in.
Nurturing a deep emotional connection with another person is hard, but it’s also one of the most profound and rewarding experiences you can have. Committing to couples therapy is a worthwhile endeavor you won’t regret.
Couples Therapy Is How You Can Learn To Reconnect
When we enter a romantic partnership, we bring along the pain we experienced in previous formative relationships. We have all been wounded in some way, shape, or form by our past relationships. Therefore, wholehearted emotional healing can only happen by fostering and nurturing the ability to reconnect with your partner. Couples therapy provides a supportive environment for such healing.
Together with your marriage or couples counselor, you will explore the experiences of past pain that will improve your communication and conflict resolution skills, build empathy, and foster your desire to turn toward your partner at challenging moments. You will learn how to keep yourself safe and hold safety for one another. Not shying away from having hard conversations about things that matter to you will foster mutual trust and help you develop confidence in expressing your needs.
What To Expect In Sessions
Couples therapy focuses on increasing the connection with your partner and deepening trust in your "us-ness." To do so, we take a process approach to your relationship. This means that our attention will focus on the patterns and processes of how you and your partner connect and relate with one another.
Although the content of any particular disagreement will change from situation to situation—one day, it may be money, the next, it’s parenting—the process of how we engage in conflict seems fairly consistent. To best set you up for long-term success, we will co-create a new process of interacting that leads to connection.
An Integrative Approach To Couples Therapy
We utilize Restoration Therapy while also integrating insights from Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for couples, the Gottman Method, and attachment-based therapy. Our initial focus will be to better understand how you interact in moments of conflict, what triggers your individual experiences of disconnection, and how you engage in protective behaviors that ultimately lead to more isolation.
From there, you will practice making choices that promote connection amid conflict. Learning how to stay grounded in the heat of an argument by identifying the root emotion causing the conflict will help build self-awareness. Adopting these tools will provide insight about yourself, your partner, and the things important to your "us-ness" with increasing clarity.
Although relationships are hard, they are what makes life worth living. When two people are committed to leaning into learning and growing as a couple, the possibilities are endless. There is no greater feeling than knowing that you are loved and seen by your partner, even in the darkest of seasons. Couples counseling is an investment in honoring one of the most meaningful things you can do in life—love and be loved.
But Maybe You’re Not Sure If Couples Therapy Is Right For You…
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When embarking on couples counseling, it’s natural to worry about things getting worse. Embarking on this journey together can bring up emotional baggage you’ve likely been avoiding. However, couples therapy provides a safe space to explore your issues and increase the quality and depth of connection with your partner. Yes, growth can be scary. But we challenge you to weigh the fear of growth with the pain of staying the same.
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It's normal to have concerns about being judged or feeling like your couples therapist might take sides. The idea of bringing your relationship to a stranger and exposing its unspoken aspects is intimidating. However, a good couples—or marriage—therapist won't take sides or judge. Their role is to observe how you interact, providing an objective perspective on the issues you're facing. They aim to support both of you equally and facilitate healthy communication so you can work together as a team.
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Unfortunately, there are no guarantees when it comes to relationships—or anything in life, for that matter. Couples therapy provides a supportive environment for growth and change, but the outcome ultimately depends on the efforts and commitment of each of you. Although there is no magic fix, marital—or couples—counseling can equip you with the tools and insights to navigate challenges more effectively. With open communication and a willingness to work together, couples counseling can greatly improve your chances of building a lasting relationship.
Deepening Your Connection Will Foster A Happier Life Together
If you are ready to heal the wounds of your relationship and rekindle your spark, we’d love to talk to you. To find out more about couples therapy with Praxis, visit our contact page or call 626-578-5803 to schedule a free 15-minute call.
[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/divorce-rate-by-state
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