Couples Therapy for When You Feel Stuck

Relationships are complicated, and even strong couples can get stuck in patterns that are difficult to change on their own. You may find yourselves having the same fight again and again, feeling misunderstood, or becoming more distant after repeated conflict. Over time, it can become harder to turn toward each other for comfort, support, affection, or sexual connection.

Couples also move through many transitions together. Having a child, changing careers, caring for aging parents, experiencing health concerns, or simply growing and changing over time can put pressure on a relationship. Sometimes there is a clear rupture, like an affair or loss of trust. Other times, the disconnection happens gradually and you realize that you no longer feel as close as you once did.

Couples often come to see me when they feel stuck in conflict, disconnected from one another, or unsure how to talk about what they really need.

Does This Sound Familiar?

  • Having the same fight again and again

  • Feeling unseen, unappreciated, or misunderstood

  • Recovering from an affair or infidelity

  • Conflict around roles and responsibilities

  • Difficulty talking about money

  • Navigating major life transitions

  • Feeling emotionally disconnected

  • Feeling like the spark is gone

  • Wanting more sex or intimacy

  • Difficulty talking about sex

  • Feeling sexually disconnected

What to Expect From Couples Therapy

Therapy can help you better understand the patterns that shape your relationship and create new ways of responding to each other. The goal is not to eliminate conflict, but to help you navigate difficult moments with more clarity, connection, and a stronger sense that you are on the same team.

Feel more deeply understood

Learn to communicate your needs and emotions more clearly, better understand your partner’s experience, and feel safer turning toward each other during difficult moments.

Handle conflict better

Recognize the cycle you get stuck in before it takes over, and develop ways of working through disagreements without becoming overwhelmed, defensive, or disconnected.

Rebuild trust and connection

Work through hurt, betrayal, or periods of disconnection while rebuilding emotional safety, trust, affection, intimacy, and sexual connection.

1

Getting Beneath the Fight

My primary approach to couples therapy is Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). Instead of deciding who is right or wrong, we identify the cycle the two of you get caught in and slow it down enough to understand what is happening underneath it.

EFT is grounded in attachment and focuses on the emotional bond between partners: the need to feel important, loved, understood, and able to depend on one another. It is also one of the most extensively researched approaches to couples therapy. ICEEFT summarizes outcome research as showing approximately 70–75% of couples moving from relationship distress to recovery and around 90% showing significant improvement.

My Approach

2

Longer and Deeper Sessions

My typical format is 90-minute sessions every other week rather than 50-minute sessions every week. Couples work can take time to unfold: you both need space to settle in, understand what is happening, access what is underneath the conflict, and work toward something different. In my experience, 90 minutes gives us the room to do that without having to stop just as we are getting somewhere.

Every couple is different, though. I have flexibility around frequency and session length, and we can decide together what makes the most sense for your relationship, schedules, and finances.

3

A Deep Dive Into Your History

Before I meet with you both as a couple, I meet with each partner individually for a full intake session. I want to understand who you are outside of your relationship: how you grew up, what relationships looked like in your family, experiences that shaped you, and what you learned about closeness, conflict, vulnerability, and love.

The goal is not to blame your childhood for your current relationship. It is to better understand why certain moments with your partner can feel so powerful—and why each of you responds the way you do when you feel hurt, afraid, rejected, or disconnected.

FAQs

  • You don’t have to arrive equally motivated or convinced. We can start by getting clear on what each of you wants, what feels difficult, and what would make therapy useful.

  • No. My role isn’t to pick a side. I’ll help you understand the pattern between you, name what isn’t working, and challenge both of you when needed.

  • No. Couples therapy can help with ongoing conflict, disconnection, sex and intimacy, trust, communication, major transitions, or simply feeling stuck.