More about
Couples Therapy with Me
Couples work with me is first of all about safety and connection. Couples work is hard as we're breaking patterns and creating new ways of relating. Couples that I frequently see in my practice are couples that are in transitions of life (kids, marriage, aging parents). These couples in transition might want to renegotiate and assess how/what they want their relationship to look like as the changes occur. Couples also come in when they get stuck, feel disconnected and need to find a way to reconnect. Reconnecting for couples can be rebuilding emotional intimacy, rebuilding physical intimacy or rebuilding emotional and physical intimacy. I really love supporting clients as they move through different stages in a relationship and find ways to get unstuck.
Most couples I see, even those in discernment therapy, deeply care and some even still love their partner but things are not feeling great. They either want to see how they can grow and change for each other or how they can support each other in a different formation of their relationship. I don't think one size is right for any relationship. For example, what is codependent to one might be a really loving, supportive relationship to another. And one couple might decide no sex is completely fine and another might say sex is a fundamental requirement. Some couples might want to explore non-monogamy. There is no one way; maybe just ideal ways we can share what we share and how we hear our loved one... which even that can have some room based on your family, cultural and geographical expereinces.
Sex Therapy and Couples Therapy
Undoing, re-igniting and re-aligning sexual intimacy is most of the work I do with couples. This means understanding the narratives of what you think sex should be and creating a sex life that can actually be. Sex is just not a topic we talk about honestly. So many couples live stressful lives and have stable relationships that doesn't translate to sexual desire. I say that to say, you are not alone.
I work with desire discrepancy, sexual dysfunction (pain with sex or erectile dysfunction), kink mismatch and introduction, sexual/gender identity and the impacts on your current relationship and sex when there was sexual trauma before the relationship.
More on Couples work with Me
A community I love to support, especially with the complexity and impact on the relationship and sex, are couples where one or both has a past eating disorder or autoimmune/chronic health conditions. Clients coming in with past eating disorders or body image have unique impacts when it comes to relating to a partner sexually. Let's be real: sex requires being in the body which is the opposite many people with past eating disorders or body image issues have practiced. Sex and desire is all about being in the body.
Individuals with chronic health conditions, autoimmune diseases and cancer diagnoses, have different mental and physical experiences that can impact emotional and physical connection.
As a person who grew up in the Deep South and knows what it means to miss home and also not want to live near "home" due to political, lifestyle or other reasons, I also really love working with couples who are transplants or moved from other parts of the country and world. Moving from other places can be hard and wonderful. It can mean maybe you wish you could be back, the lack of support is limited, feeling misunderstood in the current place you live or missing out on moments. The compromise of creating a life from where your family, "home" or culturally formed shows up in many ways.
