If a relationship is suffering...
Maybe you find yourself getting into the same kinds of arguments with your partner or spouse, which is frustrating for both of you. They seem to come out of nowhere and are impossible to avoid. You make up, but soon enough, it happens again.
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Maybe you crave to be closer to your loved one, but you’ve been growing apart for months- even years. Your attempts to grow closer aren’t working. Maybe you’ve stopped trying, and you’re losing hope.
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Maybe there’s been infidelity, or you or your partner want to explore polyamory or nonmonogamy, and you don’t know how to preserve your boundaries at the same time you expand your sexual horizons.
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Maybe you feel that you’re giving up too much of yourself for a partner or family member, and you want to protect your boundaries. At the same time, you want to avoid conflict and preserve what’s good in the relationship.
How I can help
Using my experience in systems theory as a foundation, I help individuals and couples address patterns common to all relationships, in varying degrees, that affect communication, cooperation, and bonding (including sex). Below are three goals of relationship work.
Identifying patterns
As the researchers John and Julie Gottman discovered, all suffering relationships exhibit the same basic four patterns: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. I help clients identify them and ways to respond with constructive alternatives: polite honesty, emotional neutrality, responsibility, and self-regulation.
Supporting values and principles
When unhealthy patterns are present, we tend to act reactively. Thus, to help clients establish healthier patterns, I help them identify preferred ways of being (values) and ingrained codes of conduct (principles) that can guide them in the heat of the moment. The road to healing involves repeatedly relying on such values and principles.
Applying a systems approach?
A key step to moving toward healthier patterns is moving beyond blame, and moving beyond blame requires looking at patterns like an electrical circuit, where each person, like each electrical component, plays a part. And a key step to looking at patterns as a system is looking at how our original family conditioned our behaviour!