Most couples put a lot of effort into changing one another. This may not be working, but are for the most part motivated by love and caring. Couples therapy works best when you have more goals for yourself than for your partner. You will both need to focus on improving your responses to a problem rather than focusing on why the other should do the improving.

The object of the first consultation includes:

1)    Information: How to get the most from couples therapy

2)    Assess the problem(s) you are having as a couple

3)    Goals for therapy. (Share goals?)

4)    Feel comfortable with me as facilitator?

5)    Timeframe and fees

Here's a sample of what we'll address.

Attachment and Differentiation
Tension exists between the desire for connection/closeness and the push towards individual development and self-fulfillment.

For many couples attachment occurs easily in the beginning when they first get together as a couple. Most couples experience strong feelings of being one together, understanding and accepting each other.

This is what couples do in the first stage of the relationship when they fall in love. Sustaining the attachment is for many couple difficult.

To sustain attachment over time and at the same time allowing the partners to grow as individuals in the relationship, effective differentiation is essential.
Couples often perceive the process of differentiation as rejection/abandonment. Attachment has to be secure for the couple to “risk” being two different individuals in the relationship instead of being one together.

If attachment is not secure (they are not sure if they are a couple) differentiation is often viewed as a threat to the relationship. Remarks such as “You don’t love me if you take that job!” or “You don’t love me if you don’t want to have a child together!” makes the partners take opposite sides, instead of clarifying what it would mean for them individually and as a couple that he/she took the job, or they had a child together.

Differentiation is the active, ongoing process of defining self, expressing and activating self, revealing self, clarifying boundaries, and managing the anxiety that comes from risking either more intimacy or potential separation.

In my couples therapy work I am inspired by:

• Ellyn Bader, Ph.D. & Peter Pearson, Ph.D from The Couples Institute
• Susan Johnson, Ph.D. Developer of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy
• Solution Focused Couples Therapy by Michele Weiner-Davis MSW