Relationship & Couple Therapy

Sometimes the difficulty is the argument you keep having. Sometimes it is what you have stopped bringing to one another.

You may still love each other, while finding that your attempts to connect leave you feeling further apart. One person reaches for a conversation; another feels overwhelmed and withdraws. Something small becomes the place where a much older hurt is felt again. Or there is little conflict, but an increasing sense of living alongside each other rather than inside each other’s worlds.

You may be coming after a betrayal, through a change in identity or desire, or because your lives have changed in ways the relationship has struggled to make room for. You may want to find your way towards each other, or need space to think about whether that is what you want.

Relationship therapy offers somewhere to begin looking at this together.

My approach

I work relationally, with attention to what happens between you as well as what each person brings. We might begin with a recent argument, a silence, something that has become difficult to ask for, or a moment when you felt close.

Over time, we look at how these moments unfold. What happens when someone feels hurt? How is care offered, and can it be received? What becomes difficult when you need different things?

At times, I may slow a conversation down so that something can be heard more fully. We make room for what hurts, what has been misunderstood, and the care, humour or tenderness that may still be available between you.

Difference, identity and power

People can share a relationship and experience it very differently.

I pay attention to whose needs tend to organise things, who is expected to adapt, and what happens when someone disagrees. Understanding a pattern includes recognising its effects and where responsibility for hurt lies.

Culture, race, gender, sexuality, neurodivergence and experiences of belonging may all be part of what you are navigating. We can consider how these shape your relationship, including the expectations you have inherited about care, commitment, independence and intimacy.

What we might work with

People come to relationship therapy for many reasons, including:

• Recurring conflict, withdrawal or feeling unheard.

• Loneliness or distance within the relationship.

• Betrayal, broken trust and attempts at repair.

• Differences around intimacy, sex, desire or affection.

• Boundaries, jealousy, commitment and relationship agreements.

• Parenting, grief, migration or other changes that affect life together.

• Changes in identity, sexuality or relationship structure.

• Uncertainty about staying together or separating.

There may also be something harder to name: a sense that you have become smaller in the relationship, that familiar roles no longer fit, or that important parts of you rarely find their way into the conversation.

Staying, changing or separating

You may arrive with different hopes for therapy. One person may want to repair the relationship while another feels uncertain, exhausted or close to leaving. That difference itself can be part of what we need to understand.

We can explore what each person wants, what has become painful, and what would need to change. Sometimes this supports renewed closeness. Sometimes it helps people acknowledge an ending and think about how to move through it with care.